March strikes me as a celebratory month. Events include the wedding anniversary of my mum and stepdad, for instance, which tends to slip my mind without fail every year. Likewise, Mother’s Day, which may or may not happen at some point in certain countries. With similar vagueness, Easter might eventuate in March, but this is contingent on some advanced algebraic calculation based on a factor of the day when Jesus rose up to make pancakes on the moon or something. Elsewhere, at the start of the month in Wales, people get all excited about leeks on cheese on toast, drink Brains, and break out in hearty song about Saint Dafydd. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of Australia (and thus of course the world), the natives of its capital gather to commemorate the city’s founding by promptly and unapologetically fleeing to the coast. There is clearly much to celebrate.

The biggest cause for chirpiness however – specifically in the northern hemisphere – is the symbolic termination of winter. Sure, it may still rain curtains of icy drizzle from time to time, but it can do so safe in the knowledge that the worse is behind us. Evenings suddenly seem to stretch for longer; the sun, when it can be persuaded to appear, resonates a faint whiff of warmth; daffodils – that most blessed portent of a new season – glow as proudly as a Welshman once did at Cardiff Arms Park. Promise pervades the air.

There is a particular day in March – let’s say the 19^th – in which seasonality gets a little carried away with itself. The temperature might reach something freakish like 18°C. The wind temporarily vanishes, leaving the rays of the sun untempered to shower upon beaming faces. A national mood change is palpable as families picnic in parks, people spill out of London pubs short-sleeved, and the first whimpers of charcoal smoke rise from over the neighbour’s fence, ruining the washing on the line that can finally dry properly for the first time since September.

There is ,of course, a wickedness to this day. It is as though a dose of paradise has been granted that will not appear again until at least May, if not July. The irresistible inclemency of an Atlantic front is never too far away and the return to what passes for normalcy leaves you wondering whether yesterday was a dream. Instead, the season builds more subtly, like a light’s dimmer switch being incrementally dialled up as opposed to the classical on and off again manner. But at least March represents a time when someone’s hand is on that dimmer switch, and anticipation about whether the bulb will eventually glow at sixty or a hundred watts is almost as overwhelming as a confused metaphor about electrical illumination.

I would struggle without seasonality. I may be in a minority, given the population growth of the Gold Coast and the increase in beachside Pilates taking place during southern Spanish winters. Here, a quite remarkable assortment of fossils can be spotted, bedecked in sun visors, creaking and contorting in slow motion like a troupe of jaded CP3Os, as if worn down from another hackneyed yet money-spinning outing. Leathery limbs reach tentatively to the skies, embracing the sun that seems forever warm and almost always present. The people here may never wear trousers, or coats, or enclosed shoes ever again. And while it may seem like some fanciful paradise to wake up to blue skies every day, to never feel cold, would it not also eventually feel remorsefully dull, remarkably uneventful, entirely, tediously predictable?

This, I believe, is one of the more common complaints from UK migrants to certain parts of Australia. I’ve seen it on those daytime TV shows – Get a Life Down Under, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, Escape to the Country (Just Don’t Come by Boat or You Will End Up in a Concentration Camp on an Impoverished, Mosquito-Infested Island), etc, etc. To some of the locals, such comments just seem to reinforce a lovingly-embraced stereotype related to whinging. But I get it, even though I would try to make the most of endless days of fair weather myself. There is glumness in Britishness – fostered over millennia, permeated by the weather, resolute in the character – that cannot easily be discarded. It is not a bad thing, predominantly because we are skilled at making light of it (indeed, this is something to be celebrated). And, I think, it nurtures appreciation and satisfaction in the simplest of things, such as the emergence of a snowdrop from the earth in early spring [i].

I guess what I am saying, what I am typing, is that March can be so exhilarating in Britain because of what you have been through to get there. Yes, much like the proverbial rollercoaster or, more aptly, the Northern Line, dawdling through what seems an endless toxic darkness to finally emerge into the light and airy park-side setting of East Finchley. Spring and summer, or Woodside Park and High Barnet, lay ahead. And while these will often end up being more disappointing than hoped-for, in March the anticipation is still there, yet to be dashed by John Ketley.

Australia is in many ways a different proposition. The sheer size and variability in the weather means that March could herald heatwaves, cyclones, snowfalls, floods, dust storms, mist patches, and cascades of quokkas and numbats. In small pockets – such as the south east corner with which I am most familiar – there is a parallel cooling and drawing in of nights, and the first vestiges of a prolonged autumn appear. Though there may be some sombreness that summer is on the wane, there is little of the dread associated with a forthcoming northern winter. Partly that’s a result of days that can still exceed thirty degrees but mostly milder, more amiable conditions as a whole. This is the start of a golden period, when pleasant, blue-sky days and refreshing nights stack up one after the other and seem to stretch on into May.

Of course, I write this safe in the knowledge (or 97% confident) that climate change could totally wreck everything I am going on about. Stormy Marches and hot Marches and cyclonic Marches or even snowy Marches could become the new norm. Do I have evidence for this? Well, no, but that doesn’t stop climate sceptics receiving a sycophantic front page diatribe in certain national media, so no harm in including a few words on an obscure blog. While we may (only part) jokingly embrace climate change if it means we can wear union jack shorts in Southend in March, it would be a shame to lose that which is special about the seasonality it offers. Otherwise we’ll just be as bad as the Gold Coast.

I can accept hot days in early March, but it was nearing month’s end in 2013 when myself and a friend decided to persevere with the preparation of bangers and mash during a 38 degree northerly on the southern extremity of the Australian mainland. It is probably one of the biggest collective regrets we have from a three month trip across Australia. Just what were we thinking?! I guess in the joy of food planning and supermarket shopping a few days in advance we didn’t anticipate such furnace-like conditions. Plus we had packed a potato masher as something of a luxury item, so were eager to use it on any possible occasion.

The setting was Tidal River, a sprawling campground complex within Wilsons Promontory National Park. It’s popular with Melburnians and wombats, both of whom were in profusion. The wombats were engaged in a faux cultural conversation about the ethics of rainforest regurgitated coffee beans, while the Melburnians contentedly chomped away on the grass and shitted square bricks. The day had passed with the sight and smell of smoke from the lower Strzelecki Ranges, and a coming-close-to-mild-dehydration tramp up to Vereker Outlook. Relief of a kind came from the beautiful white bays and clear waters of the coastline, though even here the brilliance of the sand glared with a resonant heat. General fatigue was high, and the struggle to boil potatoes on a portable gas stove in a strong northerly beside the sea was only made more pleasurable by the numerous flies clearly determined to explore the nasal cavity. This was not quite the idyllic March that I had come to know and love.

Needless to say, a week later I was freezing my butt off in another Victorian national park, desperately lighting a pile of twigs to ward off the chance of hypothermia. In the golden goldfields around Castlemaine and Bendigo, Creswick and Ballarat, the effect of March was bearing fruit. Planted to gentrify the antiquated avenues and make Englanders feel partly at home, the oaks and elms, beech and poplars, were busy transitioning into autumn shades. The spa town of Daylesford was made for this time of year, its lake happily reflective and the Victorian Victorian streets lined with large-leaved trees that seem to be excited by the end of summer. A refuge for Masterchef cast-offs, there was no doubting that the pork roasted to succulence in a charming old pub was several hundred times better, and a thousand more fitting, than the bangers and mash of past.

Thus, climate change pending, there is much to celebrate about March whether north or south. I am pleased to say that as I write this in Canberra, the sun is shining, it is a predictable 25 degrees and the forecast is set fair. Spring may be yet to truly spring in the UK, but there is an inevitability that it will come. Soon. Two weeks and there may be a freak warm day coming up, so stock up on charcoal before the supermarkets sell out, and beware of white van man with his top inexplicably off. Above all, cherish this most pivotal of months which signifies the start of something new. Love the seasons, and all the incremental change that they deliver. Otherwise, head to the Gold Coast or Lanzarote and dwell in temperate predictability, never to wear long pants ever, ever again.

[i] In making a sweeping generalisation about national character I should caveat: there will still inevitably be a handful of tiresome, grouchy narks who hate the sound of children’s laughter and lament the daffodils emerging on the median strip because they might provide a place for immigrant burglars to hide and spread Ebola. The good thing is everyone else will take the piss out of them. Apart from desperate politicians who seem to focus endlessly on wooing their vote.