A succession of briliant autumn days. Photos: Linda Cuttriss By Linda Cuttriss
OF ALL the seasons, autumn is my favourite and this year has been a beauty! Autumn is the settled season. Fine sunny days with hardly any wind. Soft light. Days that are not too hot and not too cold.
This year we had day after day of calm, clear, sunny days that started in late April and continued through May. The weather bureau explained that the unusually long run of fine weather was due to strong high-pressure systems called ‘blocking highs’ which stalled in the Great Australian Bight, blocking the usual eastward movement of weather and preventing rain-producing cold fronts from reaching the mainland.
OF ALL the seasons, autumn is my favourite and this year has been a beauty! Autumn is the settled season. Fine sunny days with hardly any wind. Soft light. Days that are not too hot and not too cold.
This year we had day after day of calm, clear, sunny days that started in late April and continued through May. The weather bureau explained that the unusually long run of fine weather was due to strong high-pressure systems called ‘blocking highs’ which stalled in the Great Australian Bight, blocking the usual eastward movement of weather and preventing rain-producing cold fronts from reaching the mainland.
   | May was a very fine time to walk or drive around Bass Coast. I roamed from Coronet Bay to Grantville, around Phillip Island, along the George Bass Coastal Walk, around Screw Creek and the Bunurong Coast and up through the Bass Hills. The landscape was gleaming green, the sky cornflower blue above a cerulean sea. She-oaks put on a magnificent show, bursting with pollen that lit up hillsides with a copper glow. Carpets of beaded samphire decorated the saltmarshes in rich autumnal red. There were blood-orange sunrises, fog filling the hollows and floating over the land. Sunlight sparkled through the morning dew and on crisp mornings thin strips of frosted grass lined the roadside. Five black swans visited our little bay and birds of prey were out in numbers. Swamp harriers circled over the Summerlands grasslands, an Australian kestrel hovered and dived above Cowrie Beach. Two little eagles sat atop fenceposts surveying the bluff below. A brown falcon swooped down from a power pole. A white-bellied sea eagle perched high in a tree at Rhyll and a wedge-tailed eagle soared above Screw Creek. All through the month of May people were sharing smiles in shops, on the street, among friends. Smiling and saying, What a beautiful day! What perfect autumn weather! It doesn’t get much better than this! |
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Autumn ended on a high note, but it didn’t start that way. By the start of March, the paddocks were parched, the landscape bleached. It had hardly rained all summer.
When summer warmth stretches into autumn it means more blissful swims and more of that free and easy summery feeling. But if it gets too hot and the rain doesn’t come I start to get anxious.
A forecast of three hot windy days early in March made me nervous about the threat of bushfires and I worried that last year’s tree plantings might shrivel and die. With no sign of rain, I hand-watered where I could, kept topping up the birdbaths and put out water for blue-tongued lizards, echidnas and wallabies.
When summer warmth stretches into autumn it means more blissful swims and more of that free and easy summery feeling. But if it gets too hot and the rain doesn’t come I start to get anxious.
A forecast of three hot windy days early in March made me nervous about the threat of bushfires and I worried that last year’s tree plantings might shrivel and die. With no sign of rain, I hand-watered where I could, kept topping up the birdbaths and put out water for blue-tongued lizards, echidnas and wallabies.
A week later, two more hot days with strong northerly winds pushed plant life into deep stress. The wind howled and storm clouds loomed. A couple of showers came but barely touched the ground.
Warm, balmy, sunny days followed through the last week of March but there was little joy in them. The ground, the grass and fallen leaves felt crispy dry beneath my feet and I counted the number of young trees and shrubs that hadn’t survived. Large brown patches were even appearing in mature shrubs in remnant bushland.
On the afternoon of April 1, I heard a rumble of thunder. The wind picked up. There were a few drops of rain. Then nothing. I quickly opened the weather app and the radar showed a huge band of rain stretching diagonally from Mildura to the Otways. Would it come our way or pass us by?
At 6pm the rain started falling and kept falling all night long. I woke through the night to rain drumming on the roof. Sweet music to my ears. By morning there were 42 millimetres in the rain gauge. Another 22 millimetres fell the next night. The autumn break had arrived. Sunshine and more showers followed and the paddocks were soon tinged a welcome green.
Warm, balmy, sunny days followed through the last week of March but there was little joy in them. The ground, the grass and fallen leaves felt crispy dry beneath my feet and I counted the number of young trees and shrubs that hadn’t survived. Large brown patches were even appearing in mature shrubs in remnant bushland.
On the afternoon of April 1, I heard a rumble of thunder. The wind picked up. There were a few drops of rain. Then nothing. I quickly opened the weather app and the radar showed a huge band of rain stretching diagonally from Mildura to the Otways. Would it come our way or pass us by?
At 6pm the rain started falling and kept falling all night long. I woke through the night to rain drumming on the roof. Sweet music to my ears. By morning there were 42 millimetres in the rain gauge. Another 22 millimetres fell the next night. The autumn break had arrived. Sunshine and more showers followed and the paddocks were soon tinged a welcome green.
*****
Today it is cold, grey and drizzly outside. Winter has arrived. But that’s okay, we need the rain. And, if you think about it, in a week or so it will be winter solstice, when the days start getting longer.