I don't like autumn.
R says it's his favourite season, just like spring without the hayfever, but I don't agree. Sure, the ends of the day are cool and the middle warm in the sun, and the air is clear and crisp (when the smoke from stubble fires isn't settling below the hills). But there's none of the joy of spring, the rampant growth, rising crops, new lambs and daisies exploding across the paddocks.
Autumn reeks of desperation. Hungry animals pick resignedly at bare earth, the dams are parched and cracking, the land just seems exhausted. And then there's the dust. Bloody dust. Any movement raises great clouds of dry dirt into the air, where it settles in hair and mucous membranes. Mobs of sheep walking across paddocks can be seen from miles away by the dust clouds hovering above them. Running the dogs stirs up a wall of dust so thick we can hardly breathe, let alone see.
The worst part about autumn is the waiting. Every morning all heads turn to the west, hoping for a glimpse of an incoming storm bank or even a cloud. There are constant calculations, juggling absolute deadlines for seeding, potential modifications to planned crops, estimates of growing time and potential money lost. We watch the evening weather reports with sullen despondency, resentful of news of rain in other regions, wallowing in our dessicated gloom.
The rain will come, it always does. The dust will turn to mud, the dead paddocks will erupt into green life almost overnight.
In the meantime, we wait.
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