What is the highest recorded temperature in Australia?

Whilst it is probable that remote areas of the Australian desert have seen extreme temperatures that have gone unrecorded, the outback Queensland town of Cloncurry originally held the record for the highest known temperature in the shade, at 53.1 °C (127.5 °F) on 16 January 1889. Cloncurry is a small town in northwest Queensland, Australia, about 770km west of Townsville.

The Cloncurry record was later removed from Australian records because it was measured using unsuitable equipment (that is, not in a Stevenson screen, which only became widespread in Australian usage after about 1910). According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the current heat record is held by Oodnadatta, South Australia, 50.7 degrees Celsius, occurring on 2 January 1960.

The world heat record for consecutive days goes to Marble Bar in Western Australia, which recorded maximum temperatures equaling or over 37.8°C on 161 consecutive days, between 30 October 1923 and 7 April 1924.