The Lord Mayor of a major Australian city proposes adopting a six-season Indigenous calendar, arguing it provides a more precise representation of local weather compared to the traditional four-season model.
Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece believes incorporating two additional seasons will better reflect the city’s climatic patterns than the Northern European system currently in use.
‘In the Wurundjeri calendar, there were six seasons in the year. It was a wet summer and a dry summer,’ Mr Reece told 3AW.
‘A wet winter and a dry winter. And when you think about it, it makes sense.
‘But we have gone and superimposed the four seasons essentially from Northern Europe here in Melbourne.
‘They don’t really match up with the weather patterns that we experience over the 12 months.’
The idea was brought up at the Melbourne 2050 Summit, hosted in May, where around 1,000 people discussed the city’s future.
Mr Reece, who was only elected Lord Mayor in 2024, said it was logical to have a system created by Indigenous people.
Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece thinks we should add two extra seasons to the calendar
‘This is one of those things where a bit of First Nations knowledge appears to make a bit more sense,’ he said.
“When wattle season begins, Melbourne lights up as wattle trees transform into vibrant hues of fluorescent yellow,” he explained.
“For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people in this region recognized six seasons, and upon examining their calendar, you’ll find it aligns accurately with our environment,” Mayor Reece added.
Many Aussies poked fun at the Lord Mayor’s proposal.
Online, someone commented, “We should have the freedom to embrace multiple seasons, months, and days as we choose, similar to how we use pronouns.”
‘Melbourne has really lost the plot. This is complete nonsense,’ another said.
The idea of changing the number of seasons in Australia isn’t new.
In 2013, Dr Tim Entwisle, at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, told National Geographic Magazine that ‘four seasons just don’t make sense’.
The idea to switch calendars was brought up at the Melbourne 2050 Summit, hosted in May, where around 1,000 people discussed the city’s future
The Mayor noted, “The arrival of Europeans brought with them cultural customs, including a seasonal model from the cooler Northern Hemisphere.”
Australia’s weather is very different to Northern Europe’s, with some regions experiencing high rainfall for several months of the year, followed by long, dry periods.
Dr Entwisle developed his own five-season model for Australia’s central east.
He said spring should begin a month early when native plants flower and last just two months instead of the usual three.
It would then be followed by two-month-long ‘sprummer’, a four-month-long summer starting in December, before autumn sets in.
He also agreed that indigenous calendars did a much better job at reflecting Australia’s climate than the inherited European model.
Daily Mail contacted Mr Reece for further comment.
