I mean, everyone knows that in January it’s hot in Australia, and in July it’s cold there.

But do Australians call it “winter” in January and “summer” in July? Or does just “winter” imply hot weather and beaches, and “summer” implies winter, eh, i mean, snow sports and wool socks.

And given that, most of the population lives in northern hemisphere, is there a body of dad jokes and culture tropes related to the fact that “we’re different”, or is it just too cringe and boring. (I realize both could be true on this one.)

71 points
*

No, summer and winter are reversed in the southern hemisphere.

But more than that, the seasons aren’t even consistent within each hemisphere—the exact beginning and ending dates of each season vary from region to region depending on the local climate.

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25 points

As an example, where I live near the equator we have seasons that are only a few weeks long. We alternate between “summer” and “winter”. The quotes are because the only real difference in our seasons is how much rain falls since neither the temperature nor the amount of daylight changes much. Winter seasons are cloudy and wet and summer seasons are sunny and dry.

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24 points
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The concept of 4 seasons itself is very Eurocentric, and leads to the inaccurate belief that the seasons/climate are messy and unpredictable in Australia.

The native aboriginal peoples have their own season system for each region, which much more accurately describes the weather. For example, the aboriginal calendar identifies 7* seasons in Victoria.

*Edit for previously incorrect info which stated there were 6 seasons (different area of Australia)

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6 points
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That’s actually really interesting, I had no idea. Do you have a link with the page to that image? It got jpeg’d and I’d like to read more.

Edit: thanks for the links all, really appreciate it.

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7 points
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found it the webpage it appears to have originally come from described it as being the Noongar 6 season calendar so the names on this chart are Noongar words from South Western Australia not from Victoria which is the South East, so maybe theirs are different.

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2 points
*

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/indigenous-science/indigenous-knowledge/calendars

Is some good ones, but it only covers one small part of the country.

Each mob basically has its own calendar, so you’re looking at tens or hundreds for the country. That one above for Victoria is different to my part of Victoria.

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21 points

Yeah if you think about it the idea of 4 seasons permeating culture has more to do with European colonization than anything scientific.

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6 points

Well, here in Austria we get about a day of skiing less per year since the 2000s.

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5 points

Also, for the northern hemisphere people, yes, Australia has snow.

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11 points

also for Americans, Austria is not Australia

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49 points
*

Yup we’re in the middle of winter as we speak.

The season names relate to the weather, not the period of year. It would be odd to have Spring be when all the leaves are falling off the trees.


There’s also many different Aboriginal calendars which relate much better to what the weather is like compared to an imported European system.

So for example this month I should see the cold weather end, orchids and wattles start to bloom, and brown butterfly caterpillars to start feeding.

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17 points

So March is just eels?

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7 points

Fuckin EELS

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2 points

The river eels are considered ‘trash fish’ to some here but they’re delicious, tastes just like Japanese eels. They’re just a bit of a pain to skin and prepare.

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4 points

Shout out the Merri Creek!

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2 points

The wattles are thick with buds that will be blooming soon. That means trout fishing time!

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26 points

I live in Brazil, we call cold season winter, hot season summer :). January is summer.

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2 points

As a scandinavian who has worked in Brazil for two years I can confirm that Brazilians do in fact call two identical seasons differently based on whether it’s closer to Christmas. I usually worked the night shift, and in July-ish, my Brazilian coworker usually wore a hat while on the backdeck while I was sweating like a hog.

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1 point

That depends on where in Brazil you are, but yes,in the north (near the equator), winter is as hot as summer, and spring/autumm are the warmest seasons.

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1 point

It’s rain season, not cold one =)

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19 points

No - it’s definitely Christmas in summer in Australia. But somehow my dear old Gran never got the memo, and insisted on making us sit down and sweat through a full roast Christmas lunch each year, sometimes in 40°C+ heat.

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8 points

An Aussie friend from a forum I was on ages ago posted a video of his family’s Christmas tree, and it blew my mind that they decorated it with snowmen and snowflakes and shit. They had a fire going, a big ass turkey or some such (baby emu?) on the table. Whole freaking classic Christmas affair.

Why? Why do you do this? If it flipped somehow, and Christmas now came during summer here in the US, I’d be decorating the tree with flip flops (thongs?) and sunglasses, and having mojitos with a light salad for dinner lol

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5 points

Yeah, now I have my own family and we do our own Christmas, it’s shorts, thongs, BBQ, seafood and beer.

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5 points

When I was a kid we lived in Florida briefly.* On Christmas, we went swimming, did a cookout, and went fishing. It was awesome. Looked it up, it was 82f/27c that day. 2 months later, in February, we were in North Carolina, where there was snow on the ground, and huge chunks of ice floating in the lake at the campground we were staying at. The lake had a giant slide in it, about 50 feet/15 meters. Right in the middle of the lake. Me and my brother could not resist. Ended up swimming there on my birthday. Haha. There’s no point to this story, hot Christmas just made me think of it.

*At times like this, I never know if I should explain things like Florida. On the one hand, I’m being presumptuous if I assume someone on the other side of the planet has a working knowledge of one of our 50+ subnational jurisdictions, on the other I’m acting like I have to explain Florida to someone who has access to a super US centric internet… Blegh.

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3 points
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I’ve never seen that in my whole life.

A roast for dinner sure, but never a fucking fireplace on.

And lunch has always been cold seafood while sitting out in the sun smashing beers.

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2 points

If it matters, they’re super wealthy, so it might be a class thing where they do it up for holidays

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2 points
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White Wine in the Sun is a Christmas song by Australian comedian Tim Minchin.

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3 points

Oz xmas is often sun, pool and beach oriented, with family big lunches.

Exactly like this at every house across Australia. /s

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14 points

Can’t comment on Australia, but South America calls Jan summer, and July winter.

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2 points

What about the other months

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3 points

Chaos reigns

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