True high summer

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be chatting about bicycle history, but the weather's getting to me.  Later, OK?

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Even in winter, we swim and surf.

Sydney's high summer has to make a few trial attempts before it really gets going.  Once the cicadas have started to sing in the trees, a day will come when it seems as though the oven door has been left open.  On that day, the pigeons in the city parks squat in the dust beneath the trees, seeking coolness from the soil.  At home, dogs lurk in the shadows, cats disappear, and people drive quickly to the beach, where they fight tooth-and-nail for a shaded parking spot.

Shade is a highly valued commodity at this time.  In high summer, walking in the street becomes a matter of scuttling from shaded spot to shaded spot, and otherwise mild and inoffensive citizens will stride down the wrong side of the footpath when it is the shady side, glaring at oncoming pedestrians, and daring them to contend for the right to remain in the shade.  High summer is a time when there is a tinge of madness in the Australian air, but not even mad dogs or Englishmen would go out in our midday sun.

The next day may be just as hot as the preceding one, but it may end in a cooling thunderstorm, or it could be more normal.  At other times, a cool gale, a ‘southerly buster’, may come rushing up the coast.  Whatever happens, over a few weeks the oven-door days get closer together.  That is when the holiday mood starts to show, for it is mood, rather than weather, which marks the true onset of high summer.  High summer is a state of mind, not a meteorological phenomenon, running from one point in the calendar to another — but assume it runs from about December until mid-March.

High summer in Australia means Christmas, warm nights, droning cicadas, and a gentle laziness and relaxation, warm sand as the sun goes down.  By late November, Australian school children have finished their annual tests and examinations while the oldest students in the high schools have moved into the limbo that lasts until the university places are announced.  No exertion will change anything, so nobody tries too hard.

Even the adults start to relax in early December, planning for the coming summer break.  Ties are left dangling on a hook behind the door, coats are hung up in the cupboard, and the sights, sounds and smells of summer are all around us.  Australia is the Lucky Country, we tell each other, and as December progresses, we feel even luckier than usual.

In mid-December, the morning rush hour gets progressively lighter, and the evening rush hour extends to a restful thinness as people try to fit in as many parties as possible.  The shop workers are still rushed off their feet, but even they get to party after hours, to look forward to the break that is coming.

But even if December brings us our first tastes of high summer, it can also be a time of heavy rainfall.  The rain will put off the bushfire risk, at the same time promoting growth and increasing the fuel that bushfires can feed on later.  And the rain has another marvellous effect for somebody who thinks like me.  When it rains, it brings out the frogs.