The Weather Variable | Tuesday Travels

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Australia is known for being hot. I blame Neighbours, but more likely Home & Away (try not to sing the theme song, it will only make you cry) for my belief that Australia is constantly sunny, constantly dry, and constantly making people sweat. The latter is probably true, the other two not so much. Let's be honest, it's almost definitely always warmer than Britain because 99% of the year we live in a freezer and the other 1% we live in a broken fridge that we confuse for an oven as an excuse to wear the shorts that we'd rather not remember the cost of.

Anyway, I now realise - and have done for a fair while, I got an A in GCSE Geography for a reason (it was coursework based) that Australia has it's fair share, possibly not fair, of rainfall and also cloud coverage. In typical Emily style I'm arriving in Australia just as their winter is starting.

Except I'm not really because the Australian weather divides are more confusing that architect's rulers (have you tried using one of them, don't bother it's too much stress for a straight line). 

Essentially imagine Australia split in half. The southern half i.e. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, all those places I mentioned in a previous Tuesday travels about where we wanted to go, have seasons in the same way we do. Summer, spring, autumn, winter. I arrive in May, just as autumn is turning to winter in all these places. It's not ridiculously cold, thought it probably is for Australians for me, a girl toughened by winters spent wrapped in layers upon layers of wool, it's relatively warm. On average winters in southern Aus get as cold as 6 (that's cold even for me) degrees. 

Good news though. In the northern parts, or sub-tropic cities, Darwin, Cairns etc. Winters get on average as cold as 23 degrees. Much more pleasant and desirable. A bit of education now. Rather than seasons as we know them, they don't get winters like we do. They have wet and dry seasons. I'll get there in dry season. Colder but, as the name suggests, dryer. 

Due to all this learning I've been doing and talking Jack has been doing, we're now thinking of taking a more northerly route to Perth on the way there and the southerly, already mentioned, route back to Brisbane. That way we should get, essentially, one long summer. Only resulting in the English winter feeling so much colder when we return but nevertheless, I prefer this idea.

However, as of yet we know of all of two places on the northern half of Aus. Darwin and Cairns. Both relatively eastern but seeing as we want to travel pretty much as west as you can go we need to find some other stops. So this is now what's happening. 

Any suggestions are more than welcome - we need them! 

So there we go, emilyjdoesthings offers education on the Australian weather system as well as whatever else it is you come here for.

N.B. Today I enjoyed getting home early, being productive and doing some much needed exercise after two days of chocolate happening too much.