Please note: I think there is enough raw material here to get some talented person thinking about an illustrated children's book. My project is not going that way: if that's your thing, please, go for it — and I will even help!
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When the First Fleet reached Sydney in 1788, they found “a
land of contrarieties”: the swans were black, not white; trees kept their
leaves but dropped their bark; it was warm on the hills and cool in the
valleys; the eagles were white; the bees had no sting — and the seasons were
wrong way around!
They had to adapt, and legend says the Marine soldiers soon
learned to change between winter and summer uniforms, using seasons based on
the first day of March, June, September and December. Those arbitrary dates sort
of worked.
The invaders would have been better off using a natural
calendar, as the Dharawal people of Sydney did. You can find the details on the
web: search on <Dharawal seasons>, or look at http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/dharawal.
Flying fox, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney |
Miwa Gawaian, or waratah |
This page is being written during
Ngoonungi, which is cool, getting warmer, the time when the Miwa Gawaian
(waratah) flowers, but Ngoonungi is mainly the time of the gathering of the
flying foxes.
I live in Sydney, just north of Dharawal lands, and as dusk gathers each night, I see these fruit bats fluttering east along the valley below my study, sometimes close to my window, rushing off to gorge on figs. I know then that the time has come to work barefoot during the day. It is the season of happy toes, and it will last six months.
Far to my north, in Yolngu country, the stringybark is in
flower now as Rarranhdharr comes to an end. In the Anangu Pitjantjatjara
country, in what we call the north of South Australia, it is the end of Piriyakutu/
Piriya-Piriya, when the hibernating reptiles come out. In Western Australia,
the Noongar people call this time Kambarang, when the rain gets less, and the
quandong is in fruit.
Angophora costata (it looks like a gum
tree, but it isn't).
|
When
my children were younger, they knew it was proper summer when first Bogong moth
got in and started banging around on the ceiling at night. For me, high summer
is when the trunks of the Sydney smooth-barked apple, Angophora costata, go orange-brown. We take friends on mystery
walks that pass through a grove of these, just to watch their wonderment.
Other season boundaries include the last mosquito, water
dragon, or channel-billed cuckoo; the pink haze of new leaves on the gum trees:
the first really hot, dry westerlies and the first evening storms with warm
rain that you want to run around in. Or the first real electrical storm that
you don’t want to run around in!
A few natural season markers come from introduced species,
like the jacaranda time in late October. There is a University of Sydney tradition
that if you haven't started studying before the jacaranda in the main quadrangle
flowers you will fail your end-of-year exams. Sydney’s very first jacaranda
comes out at Circular Quay, and I saw it the day I wrote this.
Jacarandas 14 October 2016, Circular Quay, Sydney. Look for the almost-out flowers on the right. |
Then there are tulips, daffodils,
petunias, and the autumn colours on the liquidambars. There are natural season markers everywhere, when you start to look.
But then I wondered about more human, more urban markers of
the seasons, so I asked my friends what they thought, and here is what we found
between us: the first time your breath comes out of your mouth like smoke as
the water vapour in your breath condenses in the cold; the time when you can stop
nagging the children to wear a hat and have to start nagging them to wear a
jumper, or when you wake up in spring and hate the thought of porridge, so you
go to muesli, and back again in autumn.
I really loved this one from Anil Tortop, a Turkish-born
illustrator in Brisbane: “The time I use/stop using hair dryer. Or when ants
start to invade the kitchen. Or when geckos start singing all together.”
Urban seasons are also divided by the first mention of “tinderbox”
on the news; first Christmas music in a shop; the appearance of footie
goalposts; first plastic bags of autumn; the first hot cross bun or plum
pudding; the first advertisements for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mothers’ Day,
Fathers’ Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Halloween, Christmas,
after-Christmas sales; the last swim of the season; first lighting of the gas
heater at night.
But that’s enough from me: what are your seasonal dividing markers, and what do you call your seasons? There are no rules about
numbers: most Indigenous calendars seem to have six seasons.
Guilty parties
Thanks to these friends who threw suggestions at me: Matthew
Ansell-Laurendet, Barbara Braxton, Mel Campbell, Peter Chubb, Toby Fiander, Jan
Gidge, Anne Graham, Rachel Hennessy, Serene Johnson, Mary-Ellen Jordan, Tamara
Kelly, Peter McBurney, Rob McFarlane, Kari McKern, Ian Musgrave, Judith Nelson,
KJ Price, Anil Tortop, Tamsyn Taylor, Emily Walpole, Alexandra Williams, Losang
Zopa.
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