Ouyen may have hit the highest recorded temperature in Victoria’s history – and some fear it could get even hotter

‘When it gets hot like that, not many people are out working unless you have to be,’ says Deane Munro, a farmer from Ouyen, Victoria. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

In the slanting, late-afternoon summer sun, the fields around the small Australian town of Ouyen – almost 450km north-west of Melbourne – turn the colour of honey. The edges shimmer with silver, that old cruel trick of feigning water where it hasn’t rained for weeks.

Summer is always hot out here in the sparse, flat Mallee, but this year is shaping up to be particularly harsh. Just two weeks ago, on Thursday 8 January, Ouyen got to 47.5C. On Monday it reached 44.3C.