The flipside is.......

So, having told you plenty about the beautiful surroundings here, the lovely outdoor life, sunshine etc, here's a glimpse of the other side of the coin.
The one thing people don't think of about moving to live in Australia is how cold you might feel. The sun always shines here right? And it does, about 90% of the time. That's the irony.

But its winter now and just like the bitter nights in the desert, so there is no cloud cover at night to keep any bit of the sun's warmth close to the land. The temperatures drop into single figures, even if its not actually frosty, and that makes getting out of bed in the morning pretty shivery.
By day, unless it is one of our very few dull and rainy days, the sun continues to shine and give some warmth. But the wind has a chill and unless you can sit in a sunny window behind glass, our house feels cold most of the time.

You see the houses are built for the hot weather. There is a tendency to point the largest windows away from the sunshine ( we have an inner courtyard which is glass on 3 sides but never gets any direct sunlight at all). Double glazing is an almost unheard of concept, and even the windows that we do have are rather draughty.

Next is the total lack of any heating provision. No central heating which we are so used to. But worse still in our house no fireplace at all. Some of the houses have reverse cycle air con, which you can switch round to provide a certain amount of warmth in the winter, but the only people I know who have it are unimpressed by its efficacy and have recently gone and bought a load of oil filled radiators to keep off the night time chill. Our house has a couple of gas bayonets into which one can fit a gas fire. We recently invested in one which has been a lifesaver but I tend to have it on all the time in the living area and then the bedrooms feel noticeably cold when its time for bed. In fact I have taken to hot water bottles again after 6 years of marriage as Brian simply isn't able to stand my icy feet any more. He said to me the other day "Why is this house so bitterly cold?" and the honest answer is simply that the fabric of the building never gets warm at the moment. Therefore there's no reserve of warmth for evenings and mornings when you need it most.

And it's not just that we chose an especially bad house, this is totally normal and in fact we are in a fairly newly built "quality" home. All the people I know (not that that is dozens I'll admit but i think it's a fair snapshot) are in the same situation. The concept that double glazing might keep out the heat in summer as well as the cold in winter has clearly not been taken on board. And oh how I long for a few radiators to air/warm the boys pyjamas before they put them on at night.

So there you have it. The flipside of all the heat and swimming and barbeques. We're cold!!