WEATHER: To Bake or to Freeze?

Last Thursday we invited friends to join us at our place for morning tea. We assumed we would have a pleasant morning, sitting outside on the veranda, watching the birds and occasional water dragon enjoying our back yard and pool.
It was not to be, as by 10 am, the temperature had risen to 37 degrees Celsius and we sipped our tea and coffee inside, with the air-conditioner blasting away.

There are still more hot days to come but the heat of this Gold Coast summer will not last forever, and our familiar beautiful weather will eventually return.
Later this year will mark the 10-year anniversary of the day we moved from Victoria to live in Queensland.
We had lived in Victoria for all our lives, beginning in Melbourne. For the previous past thirty years we had enjoyed life in the small rural town of Briagolong in the foothills of Gippsland.

Apart from being separated from our (now well grown and settled elsewhere) kids, one of the drawbacks of living in Victoria, especially Gippsland, was wintertime.
July was brutal.
As minus degrees in temperatures registered day after day, and heaters and fire places battled to keep us warm, we finally took the plunge and moved 1,500 kms north, to be near our daughter and her family in Queensland.
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Ten years later, I try to never complain about the hot and humid weather we are now experiencing.  I have to just remember those minus 5 degrees days —with frost and ice and freezing toes and fingers — as I settle down with the air conditioner - or fan - blowing coolness in a super-hot day.