SEASONS: THE WATTLE IN BLOOM

This tree was photographed in Eltham, Victoria on 31 July 2010

One of the things that annoys me is that we post-1788 settlers, don't pay sufficient attention to the seasons.  Decades ago, when I first visited, Kakadu in the Northern Territory and heard that the Aboriginal people of the area counted six seasons not four, I began to wonder about this.

I know that farmers and keen gardeners notice local differences.  I once listened to a group of old fellows from my church talking about gardening and the differences between planting and growing at Box Hill and Upper Ferntree Gully.  But do we rationalist, mechanistic modernists take this sort of knowledge seriously.

Spring, in the Southern Hemisphere, is listed for 1 September but how arbitrary that is.  The wattle is listed as a winter flowering plant.  And yet Australia has a special day, Wattle Day, on 1 September each year - past the flowering time for wattle but - surprise, surprise - marking the first day of spring.

So you see, I think we have things quite wrong.  Wattle Day would be better celebrated on 1 August - and Australia would be better placed to mark Australian Spring as commencing on that date too.

So let's give a thought to where we live.  We might have to centralise certain dates for the whole of the country - but lets acknowledge Mother Nature at work where we live and the different seasons and time zones of weather she has made for us.  It might just be the beginning of a whole new way of thinking about  Australian ecology.