It’s now 22 years since I first moved up to this part of the world. It’s referred to as New England, apparently because the early explorers/settlers thought it looked like England’s green fields – which always kind of puzzled me, because apart from some similarity in gentle rolling hills, I’ve never really seen the resemblance.
However, we’ve had a fair amount of rain this summer. In this part of the country we don’t get cyclones, or a ‘wet’ season, but in summer we do sometimes get the tail-end/after effects of the cyclonic weather systems that occur in northern Australia. So, we get mild summer storms, and sometimes periods of rain – and this year, although there’s been no really big storms, we’ve had some good falls, and lighter falls on a regular basis. Gordon keeps track of rainfall, and we had 134mm in January (that’s 6+ inches), and yesterday was the first day in about 12 days that we didn’t have rain. I was thinking just the other day what a wonderful climate – no too hot, not too humid, gorgeous sunshine, beautiful fresh mornings, a fall of rain in the afternoon or evening – what could be better?
The result of all this rain is that the countryside is currently green. Not the thin hint of new-growth green which is what we usually call ‘green’, but long, green-grass green – lush, abundant, green. Greener than I have ever seen in my 22 years here.
Now it looks like England! Walking along the road yesterday morning, I was reminded of wandering across fields and down lanes in the UK – although there are certainly differences. Wider roads, no hedges, and no village every couple of kilometres!
Here’s a few photos from yesterday’s morning walk:
