The first signs of spring

The pedants say we should wait until the first day of September to claim a true spring, but nobody ever told that to a body of water in the mid-Pacific, called El Niño.  This warm wet blob causes profound effects in our weather, and pays no attention to seasons at all.  Instead of having seasons, Australians have the El Niño cycle of flood and drought.  But if we ever have a spring at all, it truly begins somewhere in early August, and drifts into low summer soon after.

Early August is the flowering time for many bush wildflowers, the native flowers that cover our headlands and national parks.  August 1 has always been the traditional day to go out and admire the wattle trees, so it is no surprise to find them flowering, but a minute's searching can detect a dozen other species in five different families, in the bush just behind my house.  Even the imported plants, the magnolias and the flowering peaches and cherries are in full flower, and the first clover flowers are showing up in our lawn by the start of August, to the delight of the bees. Now, in late September, as I write this, the plants are all setting their seed.

Last Sunday, I went for a walk on a local beach.  As I expected, several local teenagers were in the water, boogie-boarding in wet suits, but I was a little surprised to see two more just swimming in the ordinary way, wearing normal swimming costumes.  We breed our kids tough!!

The best indications of promise come from the television, full as it is with football finals fever.  There are four main codes of football in Australia: Rugby League and Rugby Union, soccer (just 'football' to its adherents) and ‘Aussie Rules’, a sort of Gaelic football played 18 a side with eight goal posts.  There is also a bit of Gaelic football here and there, and rather more gridiron.  Each of these codes is reaching season's end, and so the TV news each night is full of rivetting facts about this player's groin injury, that one's hamstring, and the other's suspension for dangerous play.  Once we are free of football, then summer must be here. One more week, and that will be gone.

I drive every Tuesday morning on winding roads, so I am very aware of the sun's annual movements.  No longer does it shine straight down one hill near the sanctuary that I must climb in the morning, for the morning sun was already drifting south along the horizon by August, and now it is high enough in the sky to be behind a tree as I tootle up the hill at 7.30 am.

Our sunrise varies between 7 in winter and 5 in summer, while sunset is between 5 pm and 7 pm (ignoring daylight saving, that is).  By late August, the sunrise is  a minute earlier each day, and sunset is a minute later, so clearly we are over the hump. After October 20, the pace slows down.

An image from my book, Australian Backyard Earth Scientist. This shows sunset movement, close to the solstice.

By late August, the signs of spring were all round us.  Suburban parents send their younger children out wearing plastic ice-cream containers on their heads, with two eyes drawn on the back.  Magpies are beginning to stake out their nesting territories, and children can be pecked on the head quite painfully.

But the best sign that spring is truly sprung comes when we see fifty thousand sweaty, liniment-reeking Australians, all heading from the centre of the city to Bondi Beach in the annual ‘City to Surf’ run. That happens in mid-August.

This race begins almost outside Hyde Park.  Each year in the 1990s, two hundred sensible hedonists gathered on the museum's roof top for a champagne and croissant breakfast, arranged by the Australian Museum Society, one of my favourite organisations.  As sports-loving Australians, of course, we watched the start of the race first, to build up our appetite for breakfast.  The champagne would take a punishing during this gruelling period, but we remain respectfully hungry.

I travelled to town on an early ferry one morning six weeks back with my wife, and strolled up to the museum, through streets unusually full of Lycra and Reeboks. In the past, she has been known to run in the race, though a long-lasting injury has put her out, at least for this year, but she offered me some insights about what goes on when you are on the inside of the Gallant Hundred Thousand (I may be exaggerating: it may be only 70,000).

All competitors are colour-coded, she explained, pointing to the number on a 70-year-old matron trotting past us.  She was a blue, one of the ‘runners’.  Out front, we have the super-elite, people in the top ranks for marathon and half-marathon running.  Just behind them, are the ordinary elite, people who have previously run the 12 km City to Surf in good time. Then come the rest of those entering as ‘runners’, which is where our matron would have been.  There are probably 12 or 15 thousand runners in all, and they start first, led by the elite group.

In a street to the right, there are about the same number of ‘joggers’.  In this area, you will usually find a trio in gorilla suits, four men wheeling a refrigerator, a medical group wheeling a hospital bed, Coke cans, giant grains of rice, and other novelty groups, as well as some serious parents pushing strollers and prams at the jog, and some teenagers.

These classifications are a bit rough and ready, for there are always a few break-away joggers who dash out at the second gun, and quickly begin overhauling the last of the runners, but these are a cut above the ‘walkers’.

Finally, out to the left, are the 20-25 thousand walkers, many of whom run out at the third gun to start working their way up through the joggers.  Many of these are on their first attempt, and will move into higher ranks in later years, but there are also wheelchair pushers here, more parents with prams and strollers, and kids aged from about ten up, running in their own right.  This year, there was also a large group of fat people waddling along, carrying helium balloons.  My wife thought it was to camouflage their obesity, but I think they were hoping to take some of the weight off their feet.

Fifty thousand people make a lot of noise, especially when they cheer together.  They are a good-spirited crowd, and an hour before the start, the walkers were gathered in their starting area.  Soon, four inflated balls were bouncing around over the crowd, continually pushed aloft by willing hands.  If a ball went beyond their area, a marshal would run to retrieve it, and send it back into the crowd again.

Time passed, and people started to warm up in the three seething masses.  Soon sweat shirts, jumpers, and other forms of top cover were taken off and thrown to the sides of the eight-lane roadway.  People wear old ‘discardables’, and you just throw towards the nearest side.  Those closer to the sides take anything that lands on them, and throw it further to the side.  Just before the race, you look down on a sea of faces, with items of clothing leaping in graceful parabolas over the surface, like a school of mullet pursued by a large hungry fish.  Now they are in their racing finery, numbers pinned to their chests.

At the first gun, the runners start, as the marshals who have been standing in front of them sprint to safety at the roadside.  The lesser groups cheer, and then all is silent as they head downhill.  Silent, that is, except for about 30 000 running shoes pattering on the tar surface, which sums to an almost deafening roar. Before the last runners pass the start line, the leaders have reached the valley below, climbed the other side, and headed into the Kings Cross tunnel that leads to the next downhill run.

As the last runners clear the intersection, the joggers have their start, and soon after, the walkers take off.  Ten minutes later, as the last walkers cross the start line, the sweeping machines move in to clear up.  By the time the last Irish dancing team has jigged over the start line, stopping frequently to pose for the curious cameras wielded by swarms of shutter-hungry and bemused Japanese, the first runners have climbed Heartbreak Hill, and they are through the pain barrier at the half-way point.

By the time the last walkers reach the tunnel, the sweeping machines at the start line are done, the barricades are cleared, traffic is back to normal, and the first runner is already pushing through the tape at Bondi, 12 km and 42 minutes away.  People will continue to straggle into Bondi for around three hours more, and there will probably be forty thousand finishers.

As they run, they will pass below a number of cameras mounted strategically over the road, and are photographed from a position which shows their entrant numbers.  In a few weeks, letters will arrive in the mail telling people that there is a delightful picture of them, taken at _____, and available for the surprisingly small fee of $25.  I asked my wife if she had ever bought one.  No, she said: who would want a picture of one's self all hot and sweaty.  Of course, she adds, if it were a group picture, it would make a nice keepsake.  I detect an impending threat, and I am right.

Next year, she says , we will join the walkers as a family team.  I spread more jam on my croissant and say nothing.  I will walk 40 km in a day with a medium load, but only in wilderness.  If I want to be in a crowd, I will take the 200 with their champagne and croissants, not the fifty thousand in liniment, Lycra and Reeboks in the street below.  I decide to change the subject: ‘Look over the road,’ I tell her.

In the park opposite, Sydney's homeless emerged from the undergrowth to pick over the discarded clothing.  Two of the better organised had a long pole that they used to drag the more attractive items out of the trees along the road's edge.  Still, now that summer is coming, they will have less need of extra clothes.