Why winter (in Melbourne) is the best time of the year

Coming in from the cold and sidling up to an open fire is surely one of life’s pleasure, writes Bernard Salt.

I am a morning person. I still wake at 4.30 to catch a 6am flight to Sydney. I have everything laid out the night before. I look forward to the excitement of travel.

Plus there is something calming about being whisked through the city in the stillness of the morning to a destination, for a purpose. Everyone is asleep, the day has yet to begin. All is right with the world.

I have most creative energy in the morning. Even on a day when I am not travelling, I start work at 6am and become frustrated that I have to wait until 9am to make phone calls.

Each part of the day has a purpose. Mornings offer the prospect of what might be achieved during the day. Evenings are for reflection and relaxation. What genius is the concept of night and day! It is a rhythm of life that connects humanity across the millennia.

But it is not just mornings I like – it is winter, and especially in Melbourne. Is there no sweeter sound than rain falling on a corrugated iron roof? Well, yes there is. It is waking to the sound of thunder, to flashes of lightning, to rain and even hail lashing at the windows. And all the while being safe and warm inside. It is a primal feeling. It is also a seasonal reminder that not everyone has the same experience with the cold and with the idea of security.

I don’t remember being cold as a kid and yet Terang could be freezing. In winter, the grass would crunch with frost when stepped upon. There was caution, if not real concern, about the possibility of “catching” chilblains. Are chilblains still around? Or have I moved to a cosy world that is cosseted from the cold?

A few years ago I asked my mother on her 95th birthday what she thought was the most valuable invention during her lifetime. I thought she would say the internet or the mobile phone. She responded with “the electric blanket”. And I now understand why. To many older people, winter wasn’t a wonderland idyll, it was cold and brutal. Yet it is still my favourite season.

In my early career I was unaware that creative energy was best tapped (for me) in the mornings. Maybe as I have aged, creativity and energy has retreated to the margins of the day, to the pre-dawn wasteland. I will happily take that time and do something with it.

And the same goes for the seasons. Across the life cycle there are times when the coming and going of the seasons, let alone the drama of the daily weather, barely registers. Life’s crammed enough with kids and careers and relationships to worry about the weather.

And yet the weather, the seasons, the rotation of Earth through day and night is the stuff that connects us. Conversations can be initiated by the weather. It can be an exchange of barely a sentence or two but it serves a galvanising purpose.

Coming in from the cold and sidling up to a heater or to an open fire is surely one of life’s pleasures. Complaining about, remarking over, being concerned about the weather – hot or cold – is part of the Australian narrative. In the north it might be the coming of the wet. In the interior it is invariably the prospect of rain.

The rhythm of life expressed through the seasons, via the weather and how we interact, is one of the ways we connect and commune every day as Australians.