A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday.
"So what season is it in New Zealand right now?" I've been asked this so many times over the years by (usually) young, well-meaning Aussies and it happened again on my most recent trip to 'Straya. It's normally the
follow-up to, "I really want to go to New Zealand but I hear it's really cold". Then comes the query about the season.
I love Australia and I'm sure the affliction of never having looked at an atlas is not limited to our transtasman cousins, but I still struggle to let things like this slide. If it's July and I happen to be in Australia and the "what season is it in New Zealand?" yarn enters the conversation, I can't limit my answer to merely, "winter". Did these people go to map-free schools?
Maybe it was due to an expat childhood with seven years in tropical, just Northern Hemisphere-qualifying Malaysia that I always had a concept of hemispheres, climates and where different countries were. But irrespective of where you grew up, to be so ignorant that you could reach adulthood and have no inkling that a country sideways and slightly down from you might have their winter at the same time is almost worthy of a dead leg. I'm a pacifist, but a good old-fashioned Charlie Horse (that's a swift knee to the side of the opponent's thigh, causing temporary and occasionally comedic leg paralysis) may be warranted.
Short of that you can do what I do and ask back, "what season do you think it'll be?" Then either correct or confirm with them it's winter, but not without quizzing them as to why a geographically parallel country may find itself in summer during the Aussie winter. And if all of that's a bit wordy and you're losing your audience, perhaps bust out the dead leg. God speed!
