[Host, Elena Brand]:

What if I told you that winter doesn’t have to be a struggle? That seasonal sadness can become a thing of the past? In fact, winter can be one of the best parts of your year.

Welcome to The Great Green Escape by Aristaios. Over the coming episodes, we’ll show you the wonders of the natural world and how they connect to us for a blend of ecopsychology, science and wonder.

Today we're stepping into the still, crisp world of winter in Australia.

For some, winter is a season to endure: the cold mornings, grey skies and early sunsets turn them off the entire season. And for others, winter is a relief: it’s a time to enjoy the quiet, to slow down our hectic schedules, and to really enjoy a cup of tea in our pyjamas.

So what if you’re in the first camp? What if you spend months dreading the cold, and finding that your mood dips when the season changes?

Well, today we’re going to explore how you might come to not just cope with winter... but maybe even love it. You could say that there’s “SNOW” much to love.

But first, here in Noongar Boodjar, where I live, it’s important to note that winter isn’t a single season. It’s part of a six-season cycle that’s been known for tens of thousands of years by Aboriginal peoples.

Right now, where I am, it’s Makuru, the season of fertility. The weather cools, rains fill rivers, and animals pair up.

Makuru reminds us that what we call winter is fertile, even when we can’t see the shoots, or the young, just yet.

Let’s begin with a bit of unconventional "weather report" - one that also covers the stars, tides, sea, fungus and forest during an Australian winter. Let’s zoom all the way out so we can see just how amazing a seasonal change really is.

We’ll start with the weather.

In this huge country, temperatures change dramatically depending on where you are. In the southern states like Tasmania, Victoria, and parts of New South Wales, it's typically 5 to 15°C during the day, with colder nights often becoming freezing. In some spots, you'll get frost, fog, and even snow. Meanwhile, in northern Australia, there's cool but comfortable weather with clear skies, and parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory feel more like a mild spring than a traditional winter. And in Western Australia, winter brings rain to the often dry Perth and its southwest, feeding wildflower seeds that bloom in the months ahead.

And then there's the tides.

During winter and summer, we get king tides, which is when the tides come way in. Winter's king tides happen at night, so unlike Summer when they come during the day, we usually don't know that they're happening. Areas like Derby in WA, or the Greater Barrier Reef, have particularly dramatic king tides. And beneath the waves? Around 75,000 whales — mostly humpbacks, but also southern right whales and occasionally orcas — are migrating along Australia's coastlines, making their way to warmer waters to breed and give birth. This seasonal journey, peaking in winter, is one of the largest whale migrations on Earth and a stunning reminder of how attuned animals are to the seasons.

Meanwhile, on land, things are both slowing down and picking up pace.

Out in the forest and bush, some of the plants hibernate... but not the understory. The understory is the layer of vegetation beneath the canopy, made up of smaller trees, shrubs, ferns, and groundcover plants. The understory is where wildflowers and fungi grow. During winter, you'll see Saffron Milkcap, Turkey Tail, and even the rare blue-capped Pixie’s Parasol. And some funghi, like the Ghost Mushroom, will glow in the dark during winter - what science call bioluminescence.

And lastly, we look to the sky.

Up in the sky, you might spot Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, sitting low in the west just after sunset. Sirius, known as the Dog Star, is part of the Canis Major constellation and has been revered across cultures for centuries. Ancient Egyptians associated its rising with the flooding of the Nile, while Polynesian navigators used it to cross the Pacific. Its brilliance comes from its proximity, just 8.6 light-years away. Meanwhile, winter constellations like Orion, Taurus, Gemini and the Southern Cross cast a steady glow. And, impressively, the Southern Lights begin to flicker in Tasmania.

Even when things seem quiet, winter is very much alive.

We live in a world of constant climate control. For at least a century, and especially in the past 50 years, we've increasingly shut out the natural elements; heating and cooling our homes, insulating cars, offices, and even public spaces from seasonal shifts. When you think about it, it's only been two generations, but it feels like forever.

And it's pointing to something new: our bodies are made to feel the cold, and if we have heating, they aren't getting it.

Ageing and longevity research suggests that experiencing the full range of seasons; real heat and real cold, but not necessarily their extremes, may help to regulate our metabolism and immunity. In fact, short bursts of cold can stimulate brown fat, a special kind of fat stored in small pockets in our neck and upper back. Unlike regular fat, brown fat burns calories to generate heat and keep us warm. It’s most active when we’re cold, which means short exposure to winter temperatures can actually help fire up our metabolism.

In Scandinavia, cold exposure is part of a daily rhythm: saunas, ice swims, walks in snowy woods. It keeps people robust, alert, and sometimes ... happier.

One fascinating study from Tromsø (TRUM-SUH), Norway — where winter brings over two months of continuous darkness — found that people who chose to view winter as a time of beauty and opportunity reported greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions. Conducted by Dr Kari Leibowitz (Karri LEE-Bo-WITZ) during her research at the Arctic University of Norway, the study revealed that this 'positive winter mindset' helped people in Tromsø maintain high wellbeing despite the lack of sunlight. What’s remarkable is that Tromsø, sitting 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, experiences this harsh winter every year — and yet its residents showed no significant seasonal decline in mental health. The researchers suggest that this mindset has likely evolved over centuries as a cultural adaptation, allowing people to thrive in a landscape most would find bleak. Interestingly, Leibowitz also found that locals engage deeply in outdoor activities, celebrate winter traditions, and talk often about the beauty of snow and light, even in the dark. How we think about winter might matter more than how much sun we get.

So if you’re feeling sluggish this winter, on a night that's not too cold, try stepping outside without rushing to bundle up. Let your body remember what it means to be a little bit chilly.

I've invited back our storyteller and musician, Lachlan, to tell you a story or two.

[Guest, Lachlan McCallum]:

Here's a story from back home in New South Wales.

There was a time, not too long ago, when dairy farmers across Australia would synchronise their herds so that that their cows would all be pregnant at the same time and calving happened in Spring. This meant that during winter, there was no milking. They called it the "dry season," and it gave farming families a much-needed break during the coldest months. For some, this may of been a chance for a holiday.

But in the 1980s and 1990s, things began to change. Dairy processors introduced winter milk incentives — extra payments to farmers who could supply milk during the colder months, when production typically dipped but demand stayed steady. It was meant to fill a gap in the supply chain.

The incentives worked. Farmers adjusted the breeding cycles and began milking year-round. Over time, the bonus payments faded away, and so did their time off.

What was once a season of rest became an endless stretch of labour for farmers and cows.

It's been forty years since the dry season stopped; some of the older generation would remember it fondly.

And cows, by the way, are strange and loveable creatures.

Some enjoy being milked while others don't. A few would eagerly line up for the stalls, while others would hang back. The introduction of robot milking machines improved things since cows could choose when to milk themselves. To use them, cows walk into a milking stall on their own, and a robot connects its milking machine to the cow, sensing its size and shape. It then gently washes their udders to greatly minimise the risk of mastitis. The cows then head on back to their herd.

Each cow also has a different personality. Some prefer to be alone, while others are more playful, headbutting and leaning in for ear scratches.

My favourite cows were Jada, Scuff, and Diana, who were all Friesians with characteristic black and white markings. The kind of cows you see on Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

Jada, Scuff and Diana were always the most confident of the herd, and full of a bit of cheek.

[Host, Elena Brand]:

In her book Wintering, author Katherine May says we must learn to winter. To see them as a golden opportunity to slow down.

Wintering means doing things like rising later and sleeping earlier… Saying no to constant productivity, and saying yes to doing less.

And let’s be honest, many of us need to slow down.

There’s a famous saying: are we human BEINGS, or human DOINGS? You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the latter.

We live in a time of overstimulation: cities are louder, schedules are tighter, and growing research is showing the impact it can have on us.

Years ago, I read a study that I keep repeating like a broken record, because it just amazes me. It showed that - wait for it - people walk on average 10% faster than we did in the 90s. The pace of life has physically sped up.

This finding came from an international experiment. A study carried out in 1994, led by Robert Levine and Ara Norenzayan, secretly measured how long it took for strangers to walk from one distance to another. They compiled thousands of data points in 32 cities across the world. Together, they demonstrated that pedestrians’ speed of walking provides a reliable measure of the pace of life in a city. Cities with slower walking speeds had a quieter pace in general, and those who walked quickly had furiously paced environments. In a surprise finding, it also showed that the people in fast-moving cities were less likely to help others. Perhaps too wrapped up in the speed of their lives.

In 2007, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire wanted to see what had changed. With support from the British Council, he revisited the same cities using identical methods. The results were, well, dramatic! People were walking 10% faster on average than we did thirty years ago. Singapore showed the most dramatic increase, 30% faster, making it the study's fastest walking city. At the other end of the spectrum was Malawi, which is right between Tanzania and Zambia. In Malawi, people took over 30 seconds to walk 18 metres. Singaporeans covered the same distance in just 11 seconds.

So things are faster, sure. That chance to take things more slowly in winter is starting to look more appealing.

But is it possible that they are noisier, too?

That might just be the case.

Studies from Australia, Europe, and the United States have all reported a rise in noise exposure in urban places.

And though it may not bother us consciously, noise does something interesting to our cells…

A recent study in Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience found that our cells can sense and respond to low-frequency sound waves — even if we can't consciously hear them. These sounds trigger subtle changes inside our bodies through vibrations that activate our cells’ communication systems, shift how minerals moves about within the cells, and may even change which genes are turned on or off.

It’s not necessarily bad news; it’s just something most of us haven’t really thought about.

So, in short, your body deserves some peace and quiet.

Winter offers a natural opportunity to do just that; to slow down. To rest more.

So maybe, in a world that rarely stops, we can stop for a while. To do less. And, in doing so, start to feel more like our sovereign selves again.

[Guest, Lachlan McCallum]:

Some places do wintering well.

One of them is Tasmania.

Winter in Tasmania has become a cult event. First, there's the Dark Mofo festival, a much-loved winter event that celebrates darkness through large-scale public art, music, fireside feasts, and eerie installations. Since its launch in 2013 by the Museum of Old and New Art (or MONA), it's become a cultural icon during the colder months, drawing locals and visitors to experience the strangeness. It’s a cultural shift that’s been evolving over the past two decades.

Every winter solstice - which is the shortest night of the year - a crowd gathers by the sea in Tasmania. Some wear robes, and others in nothing at all. And they run into the cold, dark, arctic water together. Then they have a quiet hot chocolate afterwards. You get the sense that winter is celebrated here, not a season to be endured.

I started doing the mid-winter dip three years ago with Elena.

We started attending a local mid-winter festival where we observed a small group of people plunge into the Swan River from a jetty and swim back to shore—something we thought we could never do. Then another year came around and we asked ourselves, "Should we take the plunge?" Sure enough, we talked each other into it and anticipated the moment the whole evening. It was... well, thrilling to say the least. The immediate cold was followed by a rush of warmth and an alertness that no shot of caffeine could compare to, and we’ve done it ever since now taking the time to do it on our own at our favourite beach in Coogee.

[Host, Elena Brand]:

One of my favourite stories that captures Wintering is from Ancient Greece: it’s Persephone’s story.

Persephone was a young goddess. They say she was picking wildflowers when the earth suddenly cracked open. Hades, the god of the Underworld and the unseen one, emerged in a chariot of obsidian and flame, and took her down below to live as his wife.

But there’s another version of this story.

In the second version, Persephone wasn’t taken; she chose to go.

In both stories, her mother Demeter wept, and the world withered in her grief. No crops grew. The world became sparse.

But in the underworld, Persephone lived on.

She moved through shadowed world and passed silent rivers. She met the dead. And when she ate pomegranate seeds (six in total), she bound herself to the underworld for half the year. Not as its prisoner, but as its Queen.

She emerged changed. Not the innocent girl who picked flowers, but someone who had crossed a threshold and returned. Someone who was comfortable in both the light and dark, Summer and Winter.

This is the invitation of winter: not to push through, but to quieten down and see what it has to offer. To let busy plans fall away. To rest for a while, and wake up to a new season afterwards.

Before we sign off, here are some other reasons to fall in love with winter in Australia:

• You can go for a mid-winter swim in Tasmania (or wherever you are).
• You can swim with dwarf minke whales in Queensland, or spot southern right whales and their calves off the coast of Warrnambool.
• You can catch the Southern Lights in Tasmania.
• You can go digging for truffles, which only come out in winter.

And speaking of truffles... Lachlan is going to tell you one last story. This one is my favourite.

[Guest, Lachlan McCallum]:

I didn't know this story til recently - and it's a good one. Only thirty years ago, people widely believed truffles could not be grown in the Southern Hemisphere. Just couldn’t be done.

But in the early 1990s, a Tasmanian man named Tim Terry thought otherwise. A dairy farmer turned food visionary, he began importing oak and hazelnut seedlings containing  Tuber melanosporum, the French black truffle, from Europe. Everyone told him he was dreaming. The French, especially, insisted it would never work. Truffles, they said, were built for Europe.

Terry planted his first trees in Deloraine, northern Tasmania, where there are cool climates and rich soils. And then he waited. For nearly a decade, nothing surfaced. Just trees.

Then, in 1999, a trained truffle dog paused beneath one of the trees and began to dig. The dog’s nose had found what people believed shouldn't exist: a ripe black truffle, born in Australia.

That moment changed the map. Since then, Australia has become the fourth largest truffle producer in the world, with over 200 growers, from Tasmania to Western Australia’s South-west.

And the irony? France now buys Australian truffles.

[Host, Elena Brand]:

Thanks for joining us for The Great Green Escape, a podcast by Aristaios. I hope you’re ready to winter well this season!

Aristiaos’ purpose is to bring people back to nature, and nature back to people, through places like this podcast, ecopsychology talks, and collaborations. Work supports re-wilding projects, which this year, includes the Gondwana Link project to re-wild the Southern corridor of Western Australia.

If this spoke to you, and you want to explore more, subscribe and join us next time.

See you then.