The Vicious Australian Winter

Okay, its finally time that I devote a blog post (or at least a significant chunk of a blog post) to Australian weather. Its winter here in Australia. At least - I think its winter? Its sort of hard to tell. I genuinely don't mean that in the 'haha, silly Australians don't even know what cold is' kind of way. Rather, its more of a 'I haven't lived here before, so I have no idea if this is as cold as it gets'.

As a Canadian, it feels very hard to casually ask questions like 'so..... is this as cold as it gets?' without Australians (understandably) getting a bit defensive. That + the weather shifts associated with being in the southern hemisphere has resulted in me totally losing track of where I am seasonally. Many of the other markers that I use to measure time (start of school, holidays, tax season) are also different here, so there is very little to help keep me oriented to where I am in the year. Objectively I know that summer in the northern hemisphere starts June 21st, which means that winter in the southern hemisphere should officially start on that same day.

Aside: I googled 'summer solstice' as I was typing that last sentence to check if it was the 20th or the 21st. Because google knows I'm in the southern hemisphere it immediately provided me with the date Dec 22nd. This pretty much perfectly encapsulates the theme of this post - switching hemispheres is weird!

So I guess we are in late fall? Essentially the equivalent of early to mid December, when its already cold, but winter hasn't officially started yet. As if that weren't disorienting enough, the pattern of weather here is different. So for example, the warmest hour of the day is usually 3 - 4 pm. And it doesn't immediately start to get cold once the sun has set. It stays relatively warm through dusk and the first few hours of the night. Because the seasonal averages are not as extreme as we get in Canada, the seasonal changes feel very gradual and drawn out. All this to say - I have no idea what is happening outside other than its started to get a bit chilly.

Today there is supposed to be a high of 15 and a low of 10: A bit chilly, right? This should be perfectly manageable, for both individuals and organizations. There are lots of places that have temperatures like this (Canada included), and survive without a second thought. Somehow, Australia is not one of those places. People are already being so weird about 'the cold'. I have been thinking a lot about why this is. As far as I can tell, its about national identity. The same way part of Canada's national identity is 'cold place', part of Australia's national identity is 'warm place'. For both of these places, this is true for most of the country, most of the time. If you are in a place where this happens to not be true, all the people there are somehow shocked & surprised. Even if it happens every year!

So dear readers, I have complied a list of all the backwards things that happen in Australia when it gets cold, the same way it does every year.

1) People wear their coats inside, all the time. I'm not just talking about one person, I mean I am now interacting with multiple people every day who are wearing their outdoor jackets indoors, all day. Specifically (and this could completely be a function of where I am working right now), I see lots of people just going about their indoor business in long wool coats.

2) Everyone continues to eat salad. If its cold outside, you have to embrace warm food: hearty soups & stews, warm spices and flavours. For some reason, this really isn't part of Melbourne or Australian culture. Probably because most of the country is still hot right now, there are no national traditions or holidays that embrace food or drink that would warm you up. No wonder they have to wear their coats indoors, its 15 degrees outside and they are all still eating sushi!

3) They go about heating their homes completely backwards. Rather than actually outfit their homes for cooler weather with double paned windows and insulated walls, instead people invest in electric sheets. Not kidding. I had never heard of electric sheets before, but they are exactly what they sound like: a big electric blanket that goes on your bed under your fitted sheet and has a low enough setting that you can leave it on all night. I'm not going to lie, it sounds super cozy. But in a place that doesn't really drop below zero, this should be wholly unnecessary! Remember how I talked in my last post about the large amount of window real estate in Justin & I's apartment? Yea, its all single paned. Ridiculous.

4) You can buy all kinds of fleece and flannel lined clothes, at regular stores. Now I totally understand the concept of lined clothing. I had fleece lined tights at home, and used to regularly wear flannels under my paramedic work pants. But at home, you generally have to search out this kind of cold weather gear, and only really find it for non-office work wear. Here, its so popular that you can buy it from a regular store at the mall. You can literally buy fleece lined dress pants! To keep you insulated at the office. Who needs that?!

As we actually get into winter, I'm sure I will have more thoughts on the weather. But for now, I will leave you with a couple of other fun things from this week.

- Justin's paramedic registration in Australia FINALLY came through. That means he is officially allowed to call himself a paramedic in Australia, and start applying for paramedic jobs. We expect the hiring process will still take many months, but having the registration is definitely the more challenging part. In the meantime, he still has his lucrative brewery position which he is really enjoying.

- As we have settled in, I have started baking. I didn't bring my intense bread cookbook with me, so I have mostly been doing cookies & muffins - things that I can bring in my lunch and aren't too sweet. Justin has a baked good problem. Left to his own devices, he will happily eat muffins all day. Our compromise is a daily household quota. We've decided that 2 muffins per person per day is an appropriate amount of muffins. We are still figuring out the most appropriate amount of cookies.

- We got bedside tables last weekend. Justin put them together early this week while I was at work. They are very basic bedside tables (we got them at k-mart, which is still a thing here), but they are bringing me an absurd amount of joy. After 3 months of having to put my phone & glasses on the floor while sleeping, having bedside tables feels downright decadent. That's right, we're fancy.

And for those of you who are curious about the knitted vines, this is what our front window looks like. See all that glass? All single paned. Ridiculous.