Hang Time

I’m going to sound like a frumpy middle-aged housewife now but one of the things I love about living in Karratha is the fact that you can hang your clothes out to dry on the line in your garden every time you wash them. Yup, life really is all sex, drugs and rock n’ roll out here. Seriously though, don’t you just love that freshly washed, warm, sun-infused smell clothes that have dried outside have? Back in constantly weather bi-polar England we never dried our clothes outside as you never knew when the heavens would open. Even in summer, on a seemingly sunny day, the weather could change in an instant, dark clouds rolling in, blacking out the blue sky and turning day into dusk. You could hang your clothes out on a sunny morning, go to work and return in a thunderstorm to find sopping wet clothes strewn across your flower beds. Here, you’re pretty much guaranteed that in the winter it won’t rain and if by some odd chance it does, you’ll know about it from the moment you wake up. On land as flat as this, you can spot a storm brewing miles in the distance.


In the dry Pilbara heat, it only takes an hour or so for a full load to dry and I actually quite enjoy taking it down as with each unpegging a waft of pure sunshine hits me – that glorious smell of summer. In England, it could sometimes take a couple of days for our clothes to dry on the clothes horses dotted around our old, cold house. I was never a fan of tumble dryers, partly because I’m always terrified that I will turn my favourite dress into doll’s clothes, but also because I dislike the colossal waste of energy produced by the machines when it is perfectly possible to dry your clothes naturally, even if it does take days rather than minutes. Tumble dryers don’t hold a patch on drying your clothes in a warm breeze, and no softeners or fragranced powder can equal the smell of the sun.

It may not be glamorous (not much is in Karratha) but I love the ability to hang my clothes out to dry in the Pilbara sunshine and I will enjoy it while I can.