Spring Time In Australia Page

But spring in Australia also has a temper. One afternoon, the air went still. The cockatoos fell silent, then screamed and flew in a panicked white cloud towards the mountains. The sky turned the colour of a bad bruise. A southerly buster roared up from the Snowy Mountains, bringing a hailstorm that sounded like someone was throwing handfuls of gravel at the corrugated iron roof. Lila hid under the kitchen table, but Maggie just poured herself another tea.

“Right then,” she said to her old kelpie, Blue. “Time to wake up.” spring time in australia

Maggie smiled, scratching Blue behind the ears. “So do I, love. So do I.” But spring in Australia also has a temper

“I like the sprint,” Lila said.

Spring in Australia doesn’t tiptoe in like an English visitor. It arrives like a surfer catching a break—all at once, bright and reckless. Within a week, the paddocks that had been brown and hard as biscuit were suddenly dotted with a thousand different greens. The ironbark trees, which had stood skeletal against the grey winter sky, began to fizz with new leaves. And the noise! The magpies were warbling their territorial, caroling songs at 4:30 in the morning, and the raucous screech of the sulphur-crested cockatoos meant they were stripping the almond tree in the back garden. The sky turned the colour of a bad bruise