Australia may have misrepresented itself…

...Weather-wise, at least. As I write this, I'm huddled up on the sofa in sweat pants and sweat shirt, draped in a blanket, with a space heater pointing directly at me. It's not yet winter and already getting out of bed in the morning and exposing myself to the cold air is a daily psychological struggle. 

In Sydney the night temperatures drop to the 40s (Fahrenheit). Even the nights at Ayers Rock, a monolith sprouting from scrub in the middle of the continent where the sun regularly cooks the air to 100 degrees during summer, have crept down into the 30s.

Now, I know what all my brethren in the northeastern United States are saying: Oh, that's nothing, it drops below freezing here and we get dumped on by blizzards. Duly noted, but you also have indoor heating. That's right -- most housing in Sydney has neither air conditioning nor heating. This would be explicable if cold nights and chilly days were rare, but they're not. Fall and its lower temperatures came in late March and we won't get much relief until September or October. Space heaters do a brisk business.

On my walk to the bus stop in the morning I often see wetsuit-clad surfers, carrying their boards, on their way down to the water. Crazy, I think to myself. They all swear the water is warmer than the air, which it probably is, but I just don't have the willpower to throw myself from a dry cold environment into a watery not-quite-as-cold one. I'm happy to wait for summer to roll around again before jumping in the ocean.

The only solution is to reverse the migration direction of America's snow birds, the legions of mostly retired citizens who decamp to Florida during winter. In Australia's case, you'd have to drive some 1,500 miles north to Cairns or thereabouts, where temperatures are a balmy 80.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so unpleasant if it wasn't so unexpected. Before moving from New York, I got rid of my winter coat. I was going to Australia, you don't need coats there! Obviously I didn't do much homework, but I'm going to put some blame on the Australian tourism office. The A$180 million "So Where the Bloody Hell are You" tourism campaign from a few years ago -- which turned out, on analysis, to have decreased tourism from some countries -- prominently featured blue skies, stunning beaches, turquoise waters, kangaroos, and hot chicks in bikinis. In other words, they suggested this was paradise. It's pretty damn good, I'll grant, but paradise isn't cold six months a year.

"At home in front of a space heater."

The one benefit of the colder weather is that Sharon and I don't feel obligated to spend every sunny day by the water, soaking up the beach culture. Instead, we're exploring more of Sydney's neighborhoods, scoping out new restaurants, bars, and shops (including the coolest butcher shop I've ever seen, Victor Churchill). Still, I'll be spending three weeks out of the next eight in the U.S., where it will be summer. I'm pretty pumped.