I don't doubt 44 degrees is very hot.
The only relating experience I have is being in Perth on contract during summer and one day the temperature hit 42 degrees at maximum. I was working on another site and of course had full working regalia on - long sleeves, long pants, hard hat, gloves... I made the mistake of not covering the steering wheel before leaving the car. Needless to say, it was a hand-burning experience for the first 10-20 minutes.
I was staying at student accommodation at Curtin at that time. There's no air conditioning in the rooms, though the building was made of brick and I think we either had a ceiling fan or I might have had a pedestal fan. Temperature at night must have been about 28 degrees or so.
Yes, 2 degrees may be all the difference, but you can't say that's still quite hot. 'Twas a bit difficult to get to sleep; I think I ended up just getting the body used to sleeping on a hot surface and that was that (a bit like in monsoon climates - at night you get used to sleeping in a pool of sweat!). To be fair as well, we only experienced this kind of weather for a few days (or a few isolated days at a time).
Having come from QLD, the dry heat of 42 degrees seemed to be very tolerable in comparison.
One advantage of the dry heat was that I could put a load of washing in after arriving from work, and a few hours later, it's dry!