Wet and dry, fire and flood: the seasons that actually matter.

In much of the country the useful divisions are not four, and not evenly spaced.

The four season model is a poor fit for a continent this wide. In the far north the year divides more usefully into a wet period of humidity, storms and heavy rain, and a dry period of clear skies and comfortable warmth. Roads, tourism, construction and travel all reorganise around that split. In the south, seasons look more familiar but are still dominated by a warm dry stretch and a cool wet one rather than four balanced quarters. Between those extremes are districts that experience elements of both, and where local usage often carries far more nuance than any national scheme.

Two named periods carry particular weight in public life. There is a fire season, generally in the hotter months, when conditions in many districts can become dangerous, and there is a storm and flood period, which in the north coincides with the wet. Both are taken very seriously. Official warning systems, ratings and emergency broadcasts exist precisely so that people are not left guessing, and the settled convention is straightforward: the official warnings are the authority, and local advice is followed rather than debated. Beyond that, this is not the place for advice, and we do not offer any.

What a newcomer will notice is the vocabulary. Weather talk here is more technical than small talk elsewhere. People discuss humidity, wind changes, rainfall totals and warning levels with the fluency of people for whom those things have consequences. It is not anxiety. It is simply a population that lives in a climate with a wide range, and has developed a shared language for keeping track of where in that range today happens to sit.