A cool breeze is blowing this morning, ridding us of the baked heat that normally sets in by 6am. It’s been coming on for about a week but this morning it’s definitive: Summer is over.

In the North, seasons don’t pass through the cycle of Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring the same way as other places. The year is divided into wet season and dry season, hot weather and cool. We anticipate the passing of each for different reasons. At the end of the dry, we look forward to rain that will revive the land, and often lament when it doesn’t arrive; at the end of the wet, we breathe sighs of relief that the hot weather has broken. Cool, crisp, clear days await.

The change brings a new mindset, not unlike the new year does. There are no resolutions as such, but people discuss things they’ve not been doing because it’s been too hot, too wet, too humid. Conversations bristle with excitement about plans to come.

For me, it means it’s camping season. Time to head bush, away from weekday concerns and things that take too much energy. Time for waking up to birdsong and campfire dinners under dark starry skies.

It’s always fun planning, it extends the holiday as much as trawling through photos afterwards does. This is my seasonal reset and after the long hot summer, and it feels past due. Time to get the calendar out.