IT’S that time of year again.
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In Parade’s family, the first couple of weeks of winter in Bathurst are spent ignoring the weather (“it’s not that bad yet”) and the next couple of weeks are spent being stoic (“nothing that a big coat or an extra blanket won’t fix”).
The next two weeks of winter are spent being a bit grumbly (“does it seem colder than normal this year?”) and the two weeks after that, which is where we find ourselves now, are spent daydreaming.
Specifically, the daydreams are about warmer climates that are within a couple of days’ drive of Bathurst.
That’s why Parade was not at all surprised to find his dad on the computer the other morning looking up the temperature in south-east Queensland.
“It’s 14 degrees on the Sunshine Coast this morning,” he reported as Parade walked through the door.
Parade made an appropriately impressed sound.
“Looking at a maximum of 22 degrees today,” Parade’s dad said, carefully transferring the figures to a post-it note beside him so he could look at them later. “So that makes it 21 and above for the maximums for every day of the week there, with clear skies and no rain. And do you know what Bathurst is going to reach today? Twelve degrees. I repeat: 12 degrees.”
At least daydreaming is cheap entertainment.
Home truths as cold wind howls
THAT daydreaming led to some reminiscing about a trip Parade’s parents made to southern Queensland a couple of years ago as they sought to escape the Central Tablelands winter.
They stayed at a motel in Tenterfield to break the journey, where Parade’s dad woke the next morning to find it blowing a gale and the car windscreens covered in a thick layer of frost.
Wandering around the motel, he found three or four members of the staff huddled around a single bar heater in one of the rooms, warming their hands and trying to avoid starting the cleaning.
“Honestly, who would live here?” one of them called out.
How many Bathurstians have asked themselves the same question in July?