We awoke to a dew spangled morning and a golden sheen of a day. It was one of those brilliant winter days when the world gleamed like something new-made. The sky was pale blue, clean and bright. Our breath puffed great silver clouds in the cold air.

Later in the day as the evening mist rose and the failing sunlight turned into dusk, a cracking fire kept away the night chill with its bright gold, glowing red embers. As the birds winged their way to their nests swooping and diving through the still dusk the sun touched the sea pooling like molten brass on the far horizon. The night breeze whispered through the gum leaves. I listened to the night sounds of the chirruping sparrows, thrushes and blackbirds and the scream of a departing cockatoo and the shifting of the leaves and the tick and creak of swaying branches as a possum rustles furtively in the gum leaves above my head.

On Sunday we awoke to a dense grey fog which wrapped the land in a clotted mass as thick as wool which never quite lifted. Later in the morning it rained from a pewter filled sky.

The days are slowly getting cooler and the winter wind occasionally places its cold fingers upon my face. We have had some cold grey days of little light and bone biting winds this year. But slowly our days begin to grow lighter and longer. The mountains in the high places wear a thick winter mantle of white. The snow this season has been plentiful.

But the dullness of winter will soon pass as the seasons continue to move through their inexorable cycle of birth and rebirth and the rhythm of life. Soon the spring rain will soak the soil, the summer sun will bake and blister the land and the autumn mists will once again chill the heart.