While spring announces itself on the east coast of Australia with a purple tide of Jacaranda trees, nothing is more autumnal than the patchy hues of yellow, orange and brown that appear across London at this time of year. “All change”. All change.

Autumn is transition time. It’s an advisory by Mother Nature: “Brace yourself, winter is coming: It’ll be cold, damp and grey”. Although winters here do offer some glorious days; where frosty mornings sparkle in the sunshine, beneath a crisp blue sky; where the sun warms your face, frost bites at your nose, and fingers ache beneath mittens. These are the good-to-be-alive days.

Growing up in S.E. Queensland, you get two seasons only: hot (stinking hot), and warm (cold at night for about six weeks). Experiencing four seasons is still a novelty to me; I grew up surrounded by evergreen gum trees, with day lengths that shift only a few hours between winter and summer. London’s mid-summer gifts you sunshine for 16 hours – and that’s not counting the twilight of dawn and dusk, which extends the day by hours. In winter, you’ll be teased with just over seven hours of very weak sunlight. Ugh.

But a prelude to winter in the UK are the coloured gowns of gold, burnt orange and rusty red that grace parks and gardens, forests and woods before sharp winds wipe them clean from the trees. I left behind my leafy suburb of Putney (and quiet walks across Wimbledon Common) and headed out to the Shropshire Hills for a writing course. My home for the week was “The Hurst”, built around the 1830s and once home to English playwright John Osborne. Located within the Clun Valley, it overlooks farms and pastures, and is surrounded by forest. It’s a beautiful location, and even days of damp skies couldn’t muffle the colours that decorate the many forest trails. Even the mushrooms shouted in bright reds.

When I tire of London and its grey, busy streets, when even walks through Putney Heath and the Common can’t quite lift my mood, the English countryside surprises me, cheers my spirits, nudges me. As I write this, back in London, rain has shifted to a brief flurry of snow. Mother Nature says: “Autumn terminates here, all change.”