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.)
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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.
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)
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.
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.
Yeah if you think about it the idea of 4 seasons permeating culture has more to do with European colonization than anything scientific.
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.
I live in Brazil, we call cold season winter, hot season summer :). January is summer.
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.
Nothing anyone wound mention but there are some ironic Christmas clothing like a shirt with Father Christmas with sunglasses and cooking a barbeque, or a rashie with a knitted sweater pattern.
We are also aware that if a foreign studio announces a game or movie with a season for their release window they probably mean the northern season. Our studios tend to just use a month instead.
spending christmas in australia or new zealand has been one of my top bucket list items for decades.
My friends who grew up outside Oz find it weird that to me “it ain’t Christmas unless it’s scorching hot”. To me the idea of having a cold Christmas is the odd one.
🎶 drinking white wine in the sun 🎶
