Australian - Seasons Months
August was the liar’s month. It could give you a day of warm sunshine that made you think spring had arrived, only to slap you with a hailstorm the next afternoon. The first lambs arrived—wobbly, long-legged creatures that the children named instantly. Sarah slept in the shearing shed with a torch, ready to help any ewe struggling in the cold. The paddocks began to show a faint green fuzz as the perennial grasses sensed the changing light. August was a month of false starts and fragile hope, but the hope was real. September exploded. There was no other word for it. The paddocks turned a brilliant, impossible green. The creek started to trickle again. The lambs grew fat and sassy, chasing each other in mad circles. The wattle was in full, glorious bloom—massive bushes of yellow that seemed to glow even on cloudy days. Magpies swooped from the sky, protecting their nests, and Leo learned to wear a hat with zip ties sticking out like antennae.
On the first morning of summer, Grandad Mac woke Leo before dawn. “C’mon, boy. The ewes need moving before the sun turns the yard into a frypan.”
Leo looked at the farm, not as a place, but as a clock. A clock that didn’t tick in seconds, but in seasons. December’s sweat, March’s harvest, July’s frost, and September’s wild, yellow wattle. The Australian year wasn’t a list of months on a page. It was a living, breathing thing—hot and cold, wet and dry, harsh and beautiful. And it never, ever stopped turning. australian seasons months
October was the busiest month. Shearing came, and with it, the shearers—rough, funny men who could eat a whole steak and three eggs for breakfast and still be hungry. The shed buzzed with the sound of electric clippers, the smell of lanolin, and the constant thud of wool bales being pressed. The children collected the fluffy, greasy wool scraps to put out for the birds to line their nests. Grandad stood at the wool table, classing the fleeces into bins: skirtings, bellies, and the precious, pristine main fleece. “This,” he said, holding up a cloud of white wool, “is our cheque book.”
“September is the party,” Mia declared, picking armfuls of wildflowers—everlastings, bluebells, and native peas. August was the liar’s month
July was the deep, dark heart of winter. Frost lay on the ground until ten in the morning, turning the yard into a crunchy, white crust. The southern aurora sometimes flickered on the horizon, a silent curtain of green and pink light that made Mia believe in magic. This was the month for mending—mending fences, mending shoes, mending the tractor’s engine. There was a stillness to July, a holding of breath. The wattle began to bloom, tiny yellow pom-poms that defied the cold. “Wattle in July,” Grandad would say, tapping the calendar. “That’s the promise. Winter won’t last.”
May arrived with the first real chill. The mornings were crisp, and the children woke to find the grass silver with heavy dew. Grandad lit the combustion stove in the kitchen for the first time since October. The smell of burning ironbark filled the house. The sheep’s wool grew thick and curly, and the kangaroos came down from the hills to graze in the bottom paddocks at dusk. In May, you could see your breath when you went out to feed the poddy lambs. The sky turned a deep, royal blue at sunset, and the stars came out sharp and cold. June was the shutting-down time. The days were short and often grey, with a persistent drizzle that the locals called “liquid sunshine.” The gum trees, stripped of their bark, stood like white skeletons against the low cloud. The sheep huddled behind the windbreaks, their backs to the southerly that howled down from the Snowy Mountains. Sarah slept in the shearing shed with a
“June is about keeping the core warm,” Grandad said, knitting a new jumper from the wool of last year’s best ewe.