In researching our World Nomads Ambassador trip in Australia,
we knew that we would be charging headlong into winter. And after having
avoided the frigid winter of mainland North America by
being in Hawaii, I had started to
think that maybe we would never see winter again. We could somehow manage to
travel around the world in a way to permanently avoid winter.
Not so.
“Australia
doesn’t get cold,” Kelly reassured me. “Heck – they surf all year around.”
“Yeah, and they surf in Halifax
during the winter too. Doesn’t mean they’re not crazy,” I replied in my typical
skeptic form. I don’t like the cold. Period.
No really. I don’t like the cold.
Either way, we are here, and driving (of all directions)
south in the southern hemisphere, during the winter. As other travelers and
residents we meet are moving north en masse, they eyeball us strangely and tell
us to stock up on “woollies” and “jumpers” for the cold. If only I knew what a
woolly or jumper was.
So the question needs to be asked: Are Australians just
woosies when it comes to winter weather, or is it really that cold down south?
If our time in Springbrook National
Park was any indication,
I’m stocking up on woolies and jumpers.
We froze our way through our tour of Springbrook
National Park. The daytimes weren’t
so bad, especially in the sheltered canyons we were most often hiking through.
But camping at night in an unsheltered vast campground on the high plains was
torture. The layers started coming out. By dinnertime, I had donned no less
than 4 layers, hats, gloves, and boots. And I was still shivering.
The wind was blustery and cold. The van provided shelter
from the gales, but not from the ever-dropping temperature. As we shivered our
way through the night, I began to have serious second thoughts about continuing
our southward drive.
“We’re still near Brisbane
and I have most of my layers on! What the heck are we going to do when we get
further south?” I said in a panic.
“Don’t worry, Nora. It doesn’t get cold in Australia
like it does in Canada.
They don’t even get snow,” Kelly continued to reassure me in his well-rehearsed
fashion.
“Liar! They get snow down south! Sure, they say it doesn’t
stay on the ground aside from in the mountainous areas, but we say that about Toronto
too! And you know what? We’re lying when we say that about Toronto!
Melbourne is the city of
four-seasons-in-a-day – we’ve heard all about it. Four seasons. Four. In a day.”
Silence.
“What is the temperature right now?” I asked, hoping that my
temporary respite from shaking was a sign of my acclimatizing to the frigid
cold we were experiencing.
“18 degrees,” Kelly said, as surprised as I was at the
number.
“You’re kidding. We’re freezing our bloody butts off, and
it’s 18 degrees?!? This is a joke, right? What the heck are we going to do when
we drive further south and it actually gets truly cold? Our tropical asses
won’t be able to cope.”
And so began the intense conditioning regiment we are going
through in order to acclimatize ourselves for the cold weather to come. After
more than a year without a day under 20 degrees, we need to regain some of that
Canadian toughness in preparation for the oncoming winter. A little shivering
now in the absence of too many layers will make for less shivering when it’s
legitimately cold and there are no more layers to put on.
As an aside, we thankfully discovered that once we were out
of the highlands of Springbrook and on our way to the coast, the temperature
rose dramatically. We may yet be able to wear sandals a few more times before
relinquishing ourselves to the winter to come.
Snow or not, we’re in it now. It’s winter in Australia!
