9 Comments
Sep 3Liked by John Birmingham

As much as I am vehemently not a morning person, there is something magical about going for a walk in the dark and cold in winter. I'm weirdly resentful of the transition to spring when mornings are that little bit lighter, and a little bit less cold.

It's been overcast and raining in Perth for weeks, and over the weekend we had a gloriously sunny day. So sunny that when I left the house to run errands I was bamboozled by all the light, it felt like I'd fallen through a wormhole into a different universe. "WHY IS IT SO BRIGHT??" I screeched to my BFF when we met up for lunch. She also found it to be utterly unacceptable, and yearned for the dark and the cold again.

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I like the Perth weather over winter. It's cool or even a bit cold, it rains, it gets dark at acceptable times. Night times need a doona. I can wear uggies. It's a good time.

Perth summers though, can go fuck themselves.

I need to move somewhere colder.

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Yes, for all that we laugh at Sydneysiders horror when it cracks 40 degrees here (yeah, but it's a DRY HEAT mate) Perth winters are preferable to Perth summers by a large margin.

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"I quite like walking around in the dark and the cold" and any such comment of course requires a 'call that cold" from Melbourne. But I agree, some of my most treasured images of cityscapes are those taken in the cold bare middle of winter.

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I'm 500m above Melbourne in elevation. The Strathbogie Ranges regularly get a mention in the extreme weather pages of the news. It's all relative though. We are nothing on what most of the northern hemisphere live in, with their feet of snow per night. It's what you get used to and it is totally acceptable to complain when local conditions vary by a degree or two.

Besides, I sit at home with a hot cuppa every morn while the other half takes the animals for the breakfast stroll. Our now solitary alpaca has taken to joining the kelpie for past the gate explorations! They are all mad.

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That does sound like a delightful way to pass a morning

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yeah - i much prefer the dark hours and the odd dog free walk (when with the dogs i dont call it a walk but a "sniff, wee, poo, sniff" as there seems to be very little walking done). Those dark hours usually mean i am less likely to come across any other humans that i have to engage with, even if it is a casual nod, a hello or god forbid some chatty person who mentions how brisk it is requiring an answer. I also walk the dogs at that time because although they think everything on two legs is a walking pat machine they also got bailed up by some vicious dogs roaming the streets on a walk when they were young and its affected them ever since. They dont socialise well with other dogs when on a lead. Now of course its pretty much full light and the humans are out in force.

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I used to enjoy walking around West End early in the mornings back in the day, until it seemed that every other trip would involve the police wanting to 'ask me a few questions'.

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For 15 years, I walked each workday morning along the Brisbane River to work. Many a still morning, I have seen the dawn rowers. One morning, there was a single sculler accompanied by a trainer in a tinny. There was a flash of silver as a metre and a half fish leapt and splashed down noisily beside the boats.

‘What was that?!!’ loudly exclaimed the lad in the scull.

“Just a shark.” the trainer said.

I chuckled to myself. i wondered if that reassured the lad in the boat. It was JUST a shark. The bull sharks get a little lively some mornings.

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