Prolonged Spring

I know its been a bit longer than usual since the last blog post. While we do have some fun life stuff happening right now, for some reason I don't feel like talking about that. Instead I feel compelled to do a bit of a deep dive into the weather. I hope you all enjoy my environmental observations, and stay tuned for some news and life updates in the next week or so.

Seasons are weird. They are connected to the temperature, not the months. So winter is always the coldest 3 months of the year, and summer is always the hottest 3 months. That means that Dec/Jan/Feb in Australia is Summer. I'm sure I knew this before I moved to the southern hemisphere, but it was inconsequential knowledge. It was something that never impacted my life. Another random fact that has little to no impact on my life: Australian seasons start on the first of the month. The first day of spring was Sept 1st. The first day of summer will be Dec 1st. Wacky, right? I find it so interesting how countries choose to organize themselves. But I digress. Back to the weather. I've been thinking a lot about how seasons/temperatures/environment impact daily life. I'm not sure if I have the right words to describe it yet, but I'm at least ready to make an attempt.

When Justin & I moved to Australia in late Feb, we left NS winter and entered the very end of Australian summer. The day we arrived as actually the start of a week long heat wave. I believe the swing in temp was -8 (in NS) to +30 (in Melbourne). It was a lot. For those first few weeks it felt like how you feel when you take a trip down south in the middle of winter. You are un-adjusted to the temp, so you are always sweating & warm. But its so nice to just be anything other than cold that you don't really mind. March 1st was the first day of fall in Australia. Technically Melbourne has 4 seasons. But barely. Recall that Cairns, only a 3 hour flight north, only has 2 seasons - wet & dry. If you look at the average monthly temperature for Melbourne, the warmest & coldest months only have a difference of about 13 degrees (27 in summer to 14 in winter). For reference, in Halifax this difference is 24 degrees (23 in summer to -1 in winter). We are used to rapidly changing seasons, particularly in the spring and fall. Through the Australian fall, the changes in temperature felt impossibly slow and gradual to me. Once we got to the winter months, I kept asking people 'So is this winter?' because the changes in temperature were so slow I felt like I couldn't tell if things were still getting colder.

The very gradual and temperate seasons have made Australian Fall and Winter feel like an incredibly prolonged spring. Spring in NS is already notoriously late compared to the rest of Canada. If you look at the monthly temperatures for Halifax and Melbourne, June and September are the two months where the weather is similar. July & August are the only months that NS is warmer. So it kind of makes sense that I feel like I'm living in perpetual spring.

But I suspect there is more at work here than just the external weather. Humans love habit & routine. We have parts of our brains that are specifically tasked with keeping us on regular daily cycle: Wake up - do things - go to sleep. Our days exist in a weekly cycle: 5 work days - 2 non-work days. Anyone who has worked shift work knows how easy it is to lose track of their days if they are on an irregular schedule. We also have yearly cycles. As far as I can tell, we measure these out via holidays and events: Christmas, Easter, May 2-4, Canada day, labour day/start of school, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Remembrance day, Christmas. A lot of this we do without conscious awareness or thought. The same way we automatically know to eat breakfast at the start of our day, we plan our summer activities for between May 2-4 and labour day, and our winter activities between Halloween and Easter. We also use holidays & events for timing. Most people know that once Remembrance day has passed, its time to start getting ready/prepping for Christmas. Again, this is not something we consciously think about, it just sort of... happens.

When we moved to Australia, I knew the weather would be different. I also knew, on some level, that the seasons & holidays would also be different. But for obvious reasons, these things weren't exactly top of mind until I started living them. I've thought a lot about how to describe what it feels like to have reversed seasons and largely unfamiliar holidays. It amounts to there being very few environmental cues that mark the passage of time. Not because the cues don't exist, but because they are completely unfamiliar to Justin & I. In September in NS, you wake up one morning and the air is super crisp, and you know fall has arrived. I'm sure there is an equivalent cue for Spring in Melbourne, but I just don't know what it is. While some of the Australian holidays are the same (mostly just Christmas & Easter). there are many missing (May 2-4, Canada day, labour day, thanksgiving), with additional unfamiliar ones added (Anzac day, AFL Grand final day, Melbourne Cup day**).

**Yes, there are TWO (2!) public holidays in Victoria dedicated to national sports. AFL Grand final day is for Australian rules football, and Melbourne Cup day is for horse racing.

So how does this impact our lives? Most days, it doesn't. My daily cycle (wake up-do stuff-sleep) and weekly cycle (5 work days-2 non-work days) are the same. But while I'm living my life, I feel like I'm constantly looking at the actions of the people around me so that I know what to do next. Its kind of like if you have ever stayed up for more than 24 hours, and suddenly you have lost track of where you are in your day. You can't tell if you are hungry or not, so you sort of look around you, to see what other people are doing. If they are all eating, you can assume its a normal meal time, so you should eat too. Or for those of you who have done shift work: you know how sometimes your work rotation ends on a Tuesday morning, and you just want to go out for a beer, because its your equivalent of a Friday night? But everyone else is on their way to work because its the middle of the week? It feels like that.

Sometimes, I feel like I absolutely know what I need & want to do, even if it doesn't match up with everyone else around me. Eg. Justin & I have already decided we are celebrating Canadian thanksgiving, because its my favourite holiday. Other times, I feel like I'm watching everyone else around me so that I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Eg. The constant questioning of 'Is this winter?'. Overall, this creates a feeling of being vaguely disconcerted all the time. Like you aren't exactly sure what you should be doing next. Luckily, as far as I can tell, the Aussie's I have met find this quality, along with my near constant peppering of questions about weather, seasons, holidays, etc, to be part of my charm.

So why am I talking about this now? Partially because I've finally lived in this strange, out of sync way for long enough that I feel like I can put words to it. And partially because I am convinced that my internal yearly cycle is still firmly instep with the northern hemisphere. Normally, August is the month when Justin & I would go on vacation. For most of August I've felt tired and relatively unproductive. I think that my internal clock still has August set to vacation mode, and there was just no fighting it. Mostly, I think I'm just impressed by how strongly these unconscious cycles and cues seem to impact my daily life. Especially considering how completely unaware I was of them before I moved here. Overall, this is just one more un-talked about part of living abroad. And its weird!