And so here we are in twenty-ten and January is racing away from us already! Predictably once back at work the weather turned from dreary to sweltering, the snow in Europe seemed all rather ridiculous and exploring Westfield’s air con rather sensible compared to wandering the Botanic Gardens in the midday sun.
Despite the heat, things don’t stop (i.e. life goes on… i.e. no slacking off… i.e. no stopping work because of the weather) and I’ve been busy meeting new year’s resolutions, including ridding the bike of cobwebs, giving it some air, tweaking with the brakes and using the damn thing. On a Monday night after work when it was still 38 degrees. Somehow it was really enjoyable, thanks largely to a reasonably flat route around part of the lake and the cooling airflow as I hurtled along at, ahem, great speeds.
I hope I am warming avid readers from Europe up. Sometimes I wish we could share more. Like when I can’t sleep because it is too hot, couldn’t you just dump a few piles of snow outside my back door so I can cool off? And when your tootsies are frozen from bitter Siberian winds, I can send you a puff of hot air blasting from the dead heart of Australia?
Having said that, things did chill out a bit later in the week thanks to the marvel of the cool change. This is quite an Aussie thing, and in geeky weather terms quite fascinating. An upper level trough which is responsible for directing the hot northerlies from the desert passes through and suddenly the winds are coming from Antarctica. On Wednesday the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in something like an hour. Just in time for a game of tennis. And then there was snow… well kind of…
Pleased to be on the open road, blaring away some tunes and passing through dirt bowl towns I headed down to the Snowy Mountains for a bit of a hike. Welcome back clothes! Up here at 2,000 metres it was time to break out the extra layers and head up into the clouds which were blowing around in quite a bracing wind.
While the Snowies might not be the most spectacular mountains in this world, you can’t argue with the contrast from virtually everywhere else in Australia, which is in itself refreshing. Openness, gravel paths, bogs and granite rocks. Dartmoor on steroids. Just to prove it is Alpine there are even a few glacial lakes, one of which, Blue Lake, was a rather delightful end point for an up and down walk. It even provided a perfect rock to sit upon for lunch and some sunshine. Someone is looking out for me… but then I haven’t really been a bad boy yet this year.
There were even a few blobs of snow around, and not a BBC news special on it in sight. Don’t think I can get away with a snow day tomorrow.
And so, despite the walk back the same way, the clouds lifting had made it seem more like a circular, and pleasingly it was mostly downhill to the Snowy River crossing. All this happiness and love tarnished by a killer uphill section back to the car park at Charlottes Pass.
Now it was quite warm again, and back on the road home, past those same old dust bowl towns, there was more crazy weather experiences, as some very funky clouds gathered, forks of lightning created near heart attacks each time they bolted down into distant bushland, and I got through unscathed. Rain cleared, BBQ on, beer in hand, thoughts of Westfield air con in mind, and sweet sweet dreams (of Reblochon cheese on sale in Coles no less). Some dreams are harder to achieve than others. 
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