Nothing occupies our collective consciousness like summer. We dream of it all year, desperate to replicate its singular feeling.

In the depths of winter we blow grocery budgets on imported tropical fruit, plan holiday escapes and lie to ourselves that our favourite cotton dresses look as cute with a turtleneck underneath. From across the globe we pay close attention as the Northern Hemisphere enjoys their warm bounty while we freeze. Taking notes under blankets and coats of what will soon be our unanimously chosen summer book, drink, ingredient, movie and song.

I used to spend spring daydreaming about laying by the local pool, cutting the taste of salty sweat with ice cream. Now I prepare my home and family for what’s to come.

For all that planning, it’s hard to really specify when summer actually starts in Australia. The first of December doesn’t crack open the season. Summer begins with a feeling.

As a kid, it was the unfocused excitement I felt when kicking off my shoes after the last day of school. In my teens, it was the bottomless leisure of sleeping in on the first day of holidays. Getting older I felt summer approaching when I realised I’d left for dinner without a jacket. Or unconsciously switched my standing drink order from red wine to white.

Sometimes the summer feeling was even less perceptible than that. I’d kind of feel the air lift, buoyed with a rising humidity or wafting scent of jasmine.

Even now, summer still starts with an indescribable feeling. But it’s less romantic. Rather than celebrating the first barbeque invite, I notice a hot day arriving too soon or my garden blooming out of season. The news will begin predicting extreme temperatures while my family’s raincoats hang by the front door, and I’ll feel something inside me seize. Now the feeling of summer is anxiety.

Like all anxieties, it can be hard to pin down what this abstract fear is specifically directed towards. Obviously, we’re all scarred by recent memories of catastrophic fires and the looming foreboding of knowing these “once in a century” disasters are becoming more frequent and intense.

Even in areas where summers don’t burn, they bake. I used to spend spring daydreaming about laying by the local pool, cutting the taste of salty sweat with ice cream. Now I spend those final mild days preparing my home and family for what’s to come. Will our ancient evaporative cooling system stand up to 40 degree temperatures? Is it worth trying to save my garden, or better to accept that it will fry and start again in March? How hot can a child’s bedroom get before you wake them from a nap?