How New Zealand lost its brief summer

The South Pacific nation rues fleeting warm months as the region braces for autumn

he summer holidays stretched before us, hot and tempting. After the Kaikoura Earthquake and the surprise of losing our prime minister before his term was out, we lusted for the Kiwi summer. The year had felt long, turbulent and tiring. We needed summer, because everyone felt bruised and battered by 2016. We needed her warm temperatures to soften our bones and untwist the knots in our spine. We needed to feel coal-hot bitumen burn our bare feet, and taste bland sausages charred on the barbecue.

The Pacific Ocean called too, wondering when I’d visit for a swim, opening my mouth wide in her depths to let the salt and bubbles scour my throat. But summer, in the south especially, never showed. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research has called it one of the worst New Zealand summers on record. Cloudy and windy in the capital Wellington, and unusually cold in the South Island, with 50cm of snow falling in January. Weather patterns are to blame. Climate change is to blame. It doesn’t matter — she didn’t show. There were two severe weather bombs, cutting off west coast farming towns and peppering Dunedin streets with handfuls of hail.

From my cottage, I stared out at the manic weather hurling itself against my sash windows, making them shake and squeal. Running out of wood, I burnt the rotten fence palings under my house, and then used all my back-issues of the Guardian Weekly for kindling. My new summer dress, silky and slippery, stayed unworn.

“I have heard it is coming, just late,” said a taxi driver in February, inching slowly through flooded Dunedin streets, garbage clogging up the sewage grates. “I’ve heard it isn’t coming at all,” said another, morosely. “We’ve just lost it this year.”

In the southern hemisphere, summer marks the transition of old year to new. Winter skin is sloughed off to tan and freckle beneath the hole in our ozone layer, and kilos disappear on the light summer fare of salads, stone fruit and seafood. Active antipodean summers give Kiwis the vigour to start the new year afresh; a rebirth through sand, sea and nubile limbs; playing cricket, climbing trees and tramping. Summer’s charged with restoring our worn spirits, giving us long days for play and idleness, at the beach, at the park or even in the urban backyard, with a chilly bin full of Speights at hand.

Disappointment

But this year, we were deprived. The light touch of summer passed us by. Work began without enviable holiday stories to share, golden shoulders to show-off, or sandy romances to remember. There was no romance this summer — there was just rain. “I feel really angry,” said my friend, on the last day of summer. “I’ve been in a bad mood for weeks,” she moaned, pulling her woollen jacket tight around her hunched shoulders. “I just want to lie in the grass with a novel. I need that.”

A disappointment, a sourness, is perceptible. Politicians have discussed moving the summer holidays back a month so Kiwis don’t miss out again. The idea was met with equal parts horror and support. Move the summer holidays? Is that how bad it’s become?

Wednesday was the first day of autumn. Summer is officially over. Soon, the poplar trees of Central Otago will turn flaming shades of red, orange and yellow, and the evenings will begin to bite and chill. Stores of larch and blue gum need to be laid in to prepare for the winter, and fires will be lit at six o’clock.

Restaurant menus are now filling with venison pies and kumara soups. Summer is over in the Southern Hemisphere. She turned her back on us, giving us few scorched memories to sustain us through the winter gloom. Which is her job, her purpose, her role in our lives. We didn’t stay outside till dark and play endless games of volleyball. We didn’t feel our chests heave as the ocean swallowed us up.

Summer didn’t lick us with her heat, bleach our hair golden, or ripen the pears hanging shrivelled on our trees. We missed you, summer. Kiwis missed you. You’ve come, sort of, now it’s Autumn. But you’re late, and insipid, and we don’t trust you anymore.

Eleanor Ainge Roy is a journalist and writer based in Dunedin, New Zealand. She freelances for the Guardian and various New Zealand magazines and newspapers.

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