A Different Kind Of Winter

It’s officially spring down here in Australia and right in time we got a stunning day with heaps of sunshine and nice temperatures. They say that this year’s winter was the coldest winter in the past 26 years down here and I don’t really struggle believing it. It for sure seemed longer and colder than the previous winters we’ve spent here. I’m not sure if it’s because of that or the fact that I’ve been very sick for most of it that I’m really over winter now. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way.

Last week I wrote a post about how I remember winter from back in Switzerland. Believe me, I’ve been over winter there almost every year. And every year I couldn’t wait for the snow to melt and the grass to grow finally. Down here it never got close to such a strong crave for spring.

Although winter down here is very different from what I was used to in Switzerland it’s still really cold and feels like a proper season. There’s no snow where we are but it’s still only a “short” drive to the closest snowfield. It’s all sort of relative down here and over the last couple of years I’ve grown accustomed to the bigger dimensions of this country. A 30min drive to work used to be extraordinary back where we lived and I would have probably never considered driving for 3-4 hours one way to go skiing just for the day back in Switzerland. Over here though a 30min commute is nothing and we’ve done the long drive to only ski for the day a couple of times last year.

As I said, winter is very different here. Although it is very cold there’s always something blooming I find. Everything seems so much greener as there’s more rain and the sun is not as crazy hot as it soon will be again. When we first arrived here I looked around and could believe how green it was. I actually thought it would get even greener in summer, just like back in Switzerland. But I was so wrong. The moment the sun gets strong, which is basically from end of September on, everything slowly gets dry and brown. It’s only a matter of how much rain falls but even if there is a lot of it, summer is never really green here.

We kind of need some real snow in our life down here and so we started heading to the ski fields the first winter we properly lived here. We always said that we wanted the kids to pick up skiing but to be honest we just wanted to go to the snow. Both of us growing up in ski regions we simply missed it.

Everyone told us how disappointed we would be about the quality of the snow and the ski resort. All the Australians we met and who skied overseas told us how bad their ski resorts are compared to what we were used to. You know what? It’s not the case!

Of course it’s different. It starts with the drive up. When you actually only see snow from far and it seems like it’s way above from where the ski area should be. It’s a good kind of different. I’m still fascinated by the fact that you ski through forests of gum trees. The snow is really good. I still don’t understand why you would talk it down. Of course you get the feeling that the places are not really busy all year round and that tourism is only happening during a short amount of time but what you can you expect? Every time we are up there in winter I wonder how beautiful it would be in summer. So far we have not made it up there during the hot time of the year but we will get there.

Connect – Street

Yes, winter is different here. But it has it’s own charm and I’m really happy that we live fairly close to the ski areas so we can make our way up there on a regular base. Like that we can choose if we want to be in the snow or not. And that is so much more to my liking than having to shovel it for months and months…

Inspired by a little chat with Wasted Days And Wasted Nights and Tiny Expat’s ShowYourWorld