My mother promised me a wet season when I go home to Queensland for Christmas this year. I am very, very happy about this. Weird, huh, for the girl who's bitching about Melbourne's propensity to rain? But you can't possibly understand unless you've experienced a wet season just how different it is.

For starters, it's at least twenty degrees warmer. For a little tropical hothouse flower like me, this is important.

My mother confirmed me vague memories - that the last time we really had a wet season was back in about 1990. Which places it in primary school for me, and I remember vividly the walk home from school. Having been hot and sunny all day, it would cloud over after second break ("Big Lunch") and by 2:30, it'd start raining. When school let out at 3, the world would be drenched.

I'd take off my shoes and socks, shove the socks into the shoes, and tie the laces together and sling them round my neck. Then I'd walk home in the pouring rain, paddling in the gutters with my bare feet (hardened to this sort of treatment by the tomboyishness of my childhood). It was warm, it was glorious.

I miss Queensland.