The First Day of WINTER: 1, June, 2007

COLD Days
Part One:

I wrote this about a year ago now but the weather took and warmed up, distracting me from publishing this post. As today is the first day of winter here and quite chilly I though I'd revisit my thoughts...

It’s so bloody c-c-c-cold in the house today I can b-b-b-barely type. Brrrr! My knuckles are stiff and my fingertips numb. Because we’re scrounging and saving every dime, we have refused to turn on the central heating. As a consequence we hole ourselves up in one room of the house that has a constant source of heat, the living-room. It’s here that we keep a fire stoked in the open fireplace. It’s in this room that we have become squatters in our own home. It’s here that we take our meals, work, entertain and sleep (on the hide-a-bed).

Four years ago, when I signed on to move to this country I had concocted in my head an image of a sun-kissed land ala Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) beckoning,” Throw another shrimp on the bar-bee!” This reinforced by the legions of travel books showing nothing but images of miles of bikini speckled beaches and kangaroo populated deserts and bloody big red rocks!

So I showed up with a duffle bag full of shorts and warm weather camping gear. It wasn’t so bad at first as I arrived soon after Easter, which is very early autumn (not fall as for lack of deciduous trees) and the days were sunny and warm.

Well before the cold set in we packed the car and drove as far north as a Toyota Corolla can go without being washed down a crocodile infested rainforest river. We made it as far north as the Daintree National Park in far-north Queensland before we turned south, staggering our return with beaches and warm pacific waters. This carried us into June…the gateway to the winter months.

It wasn’t until we returned to Melbourne that my illusion of a year-round tan began to fade with the ever-tumbling mercury in my Celsius thermometer. I was lost! What does 15* Celsius mean? Short sleeves and a light coat? I know 15* Fahrenheit is damned cold but this was true trial and error for me.