Robert Drewe: Taking a bite out of winter

Welcome to the first day of winter: June 1. Unless you’re a hairsplitter about solstices and equinoxes and insist that winter doesn’t begin until June 21.

Every year as the temperature drops and the days get shorter and, in Perth, wetter (and vivid memories return of walking to school with frozen knees in short pants), we know winter is nigh.

But when exactly is “winter”? Australians generally regard June 1 as marking the start of the shivering season, but the solstice means something different to Indigenous Australians and in many other countries. So which date is right, June 1 or June 21?

Bureau of Meteorology climatologists say that seasons are a matter of popular usage — there isn’t anything “official” about them”. The winter starting date of June 1 came about during early Australian settlement when the dominating NSW Corps changed from their summer uniforms to their winter ones at the beginning of the month.

The June 1 date made sense though — experience already suggested that the colony’s coldest days were in mid-July, and hence in the middle of the winter, not the beginning.

The other argument goes that June 21, the winter solstice, is the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere, when we receive the least energy from the Sun. If that isn’t wintry, what is?

According to Phillip Morris of the Queensland University of Technology, “It’s crazy to use the solstices and equinoxes as the beginning of seasons, as they’re in the middle of the solar seasons not the start. If you use the solar dates, seasons should actually start 45.6 days before each solstice or equinox. Hence seasons should start on the 6th or 7th of November, February, May and August .

“It takes longer for temperatures to peak and trough than the peaks and troughs of the sun so it’s more convenient and sensible to use the 1st of June, September, December and March as the start of the seasons.”

So there. Meanwhile, in the six-season Noongar calendar for south-west WA including Perth, based on weather rather than dates, the coldest, wettest and stormiest time of the year is Makuru (June to July) following Djeran (April to May) when cooler weather and rainy days start to occur.

After our record-breaking hot, dry summer you may have forgotten what a Perth winter is like (or used to be like in those frozen-knee schooldays). Here are a few reminders.

Maximum temperatures usually range between 16 and 22C and minimum temperatures between 3 and 13C. The coldest month is July, with an average maximum temperature of 18.4C and an average minimum of 7.9C.

The lowest Perth temperature ever recorded was minus 0.7C on June 17, 2006, and the lowest temperature in the metropolitan area was minus 3.4C at Jandakot on the same day. Perth’s lowest maximum temperature was 8.8C on June 26, 1956. The highest maximum winter temperature was 30C on August 28, 2019, and the highest minimum in winter was 17.1C on 7 August 7, 2013.

Perth receives most rain during winter, with an average of 397.3 mm, on 47.6 days between June and August. The rainiest metropolitan region is the Perth Hills. Snow has never been recorded in the Perth CBD, but light snowfalls have fallen in outer suburbs and the Perth Hills around Kalamunda, Roleystone and Mundaring. The most recent snowfall was in 1968.

So how do West Australians spend winter? Well, since the first official game in 1868, largely in watching or playing Australian Rules football. It’s the most watched sport. After Victoria, WA has the highest number of players of any State: 95,407 players (most per capita) from 237 clubs in 28 competitions, and its attendances are the second highest nationally.

And, a personal observation, in eating meat pies, at the football and elsewhere. In winter the smell of warm pastry and gravy permeates Perth’s shopping malls, schoolyards and workplaces. In winter even the most culinary-superior and health-conscious West Australians guiltlessly enjoy a pie and tomato sauce.

Last season I consumed my winter pie intake from a wide range of sources, from Bridgetown, Northcliffe, Pemberton and Mosman Park to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Bridgetown’s pie was the most delicious. The MCG pie was closest to the sloppy brown goop of childhood memory, but I put that down to the pressured football-crowd distribution. But it still wasn’t bad.

Only a small survey, but one thing is clear: our pies have never been tastier. The variety has risen dramatically. And now that national standards require at least 25 per cent meat content, the meat is, well, meatier than in the olden days.

I’m getting hungry thinking about them. Welcome to winter.