If you were hoping for a winter wonderland this Christmas, you might just be in luck. One moment it’s light up the barbie, throw on the snags and test run last year’s bathers, hoping against hope that they still fit.
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Then, 12 hours later, grab your brolly and your gumboots and keep an eye on the backyard in case it floods.
And then, as if things couldn’t get any stranger, the first day of summer brought us snowflakes!
Tasmania’s central highlands not just receiving a dusting of snow, but a thick covering worthy of an English Christmas postcard.
Perhaps the most annoying part of this wild weather is that I have just finished packing away all the rain coats, puffer jackets, woollen jumpers and winter pyjamas.
So, it’s out into the shed to get the ladder to climb back up to the top cupboards in the bedroom and retrieve the wet weather gear.
And not just my bedroom, but the kids’ bedrooms as well!
Thongs head to the back of the shoe rack and the winter boots move forward again.
The only thing this crazy weather hasn’t changed is the need for sunscreen.
Rain, snow and sunshine has not changed the exceptional strength of the UV rays over Tasmania.
This week, my kids could not help but question if I was going completely mad.
We had just finished packing their raincoats into the bottom of their school bags so we wouldn’t get caught out, when I grabbed the bottle of sunscreen and began our usual ritual of plastering exposed skin.
At the best of times, they hate the way I apply the cream.
I am one of those awful mothers that gets a massive dollop in the palm of the hand and just goes for it.
Faces, necks, ears and chest. Arms and hands and below their shorts line.
With four kids, there has never been time for delicate dabbing of noses. It’s more along the lines of soaking each child as quickly as possible to just get out the door.
They have no choice but to stand there, squeezing their eyes together as I turn into a sun protection machine.
But on this morning, they looked at their raincoats, the miserable cold and cloudy day looming outside the window then at me, sunscreen at the ready.
It is perhaps the biggest misconceptions we have when it comes to keeping ourselves safe from dangerous UV rays that can wreak havoc on our skin and our health.
Just because the sun’s heat is not pounding down on us, doesn’t mean its effects are minimised.
Who knows what the rest of summer will bring. But it does seem like raincoats and sunscreen are going to be two of the necessities.
