Let’s not romanticise it too much. Australian summer is also the season of anxiety. The fire danger rating on the BOM app: CATASTROPHIC . The smell of smoke on a January northerly wind. The distant thrum of a water-bombing helicopter. You check the Fires Near Me app the way other people check Instagram. It is a summer of sunburns so severe you sleep on your stomach, of paralysis ticks, of bluebottles washing up in a purple, stinging line along the shore. It is the season you learn that "she’ll be right" is a prayer, not a promise.
But the light brings new horrors. The mosquitos whine. And somewhere in the darkening garden, a Sydney funnel-web spider is thinking very dark thoughts. australian summer
And yet. And yet.
You just have to wait for the southerly buster to arrive. Let’s not romanticise it too much