Born in 2019

If you were born in 2019, Scott Morrison won the "unwinnable" election in May — the opinion polls had consistently shown Labor ahead, Bill Shorten had run a detailed and ambitious policy agenda, and then on election night it all went wrong for Labor in Queensland and the Morrison government was returned. "I believe in miracles," Morrison said. The country was surprised and divided.

The year ended in catastrophe: the bushfire season that had been building for months exploded in November and December into something of a scale Australia had never experienced. The Gospers Mountain fire, the Currowan fire, the Snowy Mountains burning — the smoke blanketed Sydney for weeks, the air quality among the worst in the world, the photographs from space showing Australia on fire. Climate change — which had been the dominant political argument for fifteen years — was no longer an abstraction.

The temperature was 40.9 degrees in Sydney on December 18, a record. Cricket was played in smoke haze in Sydney.

The AFL season had been superb — GWS and Richmond in the Grand Final. Ash Barty won the French Open and became world number one, the best Australian tennis story in a generation. The flat white was $5.

50. The country was heading into a summer that would test it like nothing in living memory.