IF nothing else, the weather around our region teaches patience.
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In our age of instant gratification, the slow shifting of the seasons on the Central West Slopes and Plains is a reminder that some things simply take time - and maybe they are more appreciated for that.
Newcomers to the city - and there are hundreds of them each year, due to Dubbo's galloping growth rate - might be wondering about now when spring is actually going to begin, given that winter officially finished six weeks ago.
When will the chill be gone for good and the maximums move permanently into the 20s? When can the doonas be confidently packed away and the vegetables planted?
The answer, as any long-term local would know, is that the summer heat will really begin when the Dubbo weather feels like it - and that might be next week or it might be mid-November. Spring, may or may not choose to arrive.
If a few 16 to 19 degree days in September wernt enough to make that point, then an early October day last Friday that struggled to a maximum of 18 degrees certainly would have done the trick.
This week, the predictions will then really hammer the message home - the cooler days ain't over until they're over.
But that's the bad news.
The good news is that the Dubbo weather does not just occasionally irritate, it also influences. It creates character.
If a city’s weather moulds a city’s citizens, then it could be argued that Dubbo’s residents have taken the best lessons from some of the climatic brutality served up to us each year.
Accustomed to long summers and winters, abortive starts to spring and a number of seasons in one day, we have learnt to become patient and accepting, able to smile wryly at the unexpected and just get on with it.
We appreciate a rainy day in a way others, with rain or cooler days on tap, do not.
And we long ago absorbed the Boy Scouts’ “be prepared” motto – we take a jumper or a jacket to an evening function any time from March through to October, because we know nothing can be taken for granted.
So to the newcomers to Dubbo, we say don’t be alarmed. Spring weather – the sort of spring weather you’re used to - may or may not be coming.
But it might be an idea to keep the doona on the bed a while longer.