Summer was hellish, with a raging bushfire, savage heat, no rain and days of wind, which just burnt off anything left on the dry-country paddocks (that the fires hadn’t got to first).

Last week we were drowning under nine (I kid you not) yes, NINE inches of rain, and we weren’t sure whether we were living on farmland or a lake. The flippers floated away after day three, the snorkel gave way to breathing tanks on about day six.

This morning the sun is shining. YIPPEE! But we are freezing ourselves to death with minus three. My right hand is so frozen into a rigor mortis shape it will not co-operate and jab the keyboard. (C’mon fingers, you can do it.) My Jack Russell X, Lucy, has barely shown the tip of her nose out of her kennel let alone the rest of her fluffy little body, and the cattle and sheep are hunkered down in the bottom corners of their paddocks where, I do believe, it must be warmest. Maybe I should join them.  My office currently feels like Antarctica jammed into three metres by four.

I know. I know. I’m one of those whinging farmers. And no, I shouldn’t complain.  The rain was desperately needed, albeit a bit much (okay, a whole lot too much). The sunshine will eventually dry things out (once the ice thaws) but holy Toledo, do we really have to lurch from one extreme to the other? This is supposed to be Gippsland, a temperate climate, and the place known as Australia’s Riviera. 

I’ll have to say I can’t see the similarities at the minute.

I seriously think God needs to have a good hard look at his weather map. I mean it’s supposed to be fair isn’t it? Remember what you tell your kids? SHARE. (siteadmin... yes please - share some of it with us over here in Western Vic )

Why can’t we have some of that delicious heat from up north and give some of the rain we got submerged under back to them in return? We need it, they need it.  What’s the big problem? A bit of pushing and shoving of a few clouds, a run up or down of the barometric pressure …  that’d be all it would take, surely?

For the good of all the people?

We’re expecting another ‘significant’ rain event next week, so let’s see if he’s been listening.

Or at least if we freeze into icicles and float away, can you come find us in Antarctica? We’ll be the ones sitting on the iceberg, frantically paddling, trying to get back to our all-weather farm. 

But whilst it's raining and freezing, nothing like something really exciting and nice for an author to make you feel so much better about things.

So excited to find out that A Bush Christmas has made the inaugural finalists list for the ELLA Awards from the Romance Writers Association... stoked, so very, very stoked!