We start to savour summer here. We feel the rising warmth - and we bask in the good fortune of an epidemic which hasn't wreaked its worst.
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But keep away from the headlines in the northern hemisphere.
"Bars and shops closed as Europe battles second wave of coronavirus"; "SICK MAN OF EUROPE: UK is first country in Europe to pass grim milestone of 50,000 coronavirus deaths"; "France becomes first country in Europe to reach 2 million coronavirus cases".
And this past week has been even worse on the other side of the Atlantic.
"US reaches 250,000 COVID-19 deaths", said the New York Post on Wednesday.
And the European and North American winter is on the way when viruses tend to thrive in heated homes.
Just compare Adelaide and Berlin over the last few days.
The South Australian capital briefly went into a "hard lockdown", with people confined to homes except in the most exceptional circumstances. Weddings and funerals were banned.
"We know that these restrictions are going to be very punishing on the people of South Australia," Premier Steven Marshall said.
But in Adelaide, the citizens complied. In Berlin, angry citizens were dispersed by police using water cannon.
So, at the risk of smugness, we bask in our southern good fortune. Or is it good policy?
Top of the list of pride is that scientists do seem to have been listened to.
In Australia, the chief medical officers of various governments have been prominent. They have answered questions in detail and endlessly, sometimes with the politicians in the background.
But other countries have also followed the science. There is no leader on this planet more driven by science than Angela Merkel, who has a doctorate in quantum chemistry. Her press conferences on the coronavirus sound like lessons on the science of infection rates.
But little good has her know-how done Germany, where there have been 161 deaths per million people compared with 36 deaths per million Australians.
There's clearly more to Australian success than clear-headed, apolitical science.
We live on an island which is not a whirring revolving door for tourists. In Europe, countless budget airlines flit between capitals for weekend breaks. Borders might as well not exist.
In 2019, a mere 9 million tourists visited Australia. In Britain, it was 40 million. In France, 90 million.
This meant that it was easier to shut Australian borders on March 20. The economic hit was not so hard.
And we obeyed the rules. It may be that Australians saw the pictures of Italy's chaotic hospitals, with doctors weeping and relatives unable to be with their loved ones as they died.
It may also be that social distancing is easier here where the car is king, in contrast to dense European cities where millions commute on crowded trains.
On top of that, Australia has one of the world's best health services, in contrast to America's devil-take-the-hindmost attitude to the poor.
A ranking of healthcare systems in 2017 put Australia as second-best in the world behind the National Health Service in Britain (though some British people might disagree).
But the reverence for the NHS hasn't protected the UK from its current second wave and lockdown.
What Australia may have going for it is a coherence - a feeling of all (or most) being in it together.
The countries which are falling apart are the countries which were already fractured. The United States and Britain were both deeply divided way before the epidemic.
In 2018, an academic from the University of Canberra and another from the University of Kent in England wrote about Britain: "'The government' - regardless of the party in power - is perceived to make bad decisions.'"
"It wastes money, supports those whose actions damage society, penalises those who take responsibility for themselves and fails to address real conflicts and needs, putting the services people actually want under severe threat," Peter Taylor-Gooby and Benjamin Leruth found.
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In countries which are not at ease with themselves, governments have found it much harder to get the support of the public for tough measures.
In Britain, a recently departed advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson was spotted driving during a hard lockdown (he said he had been testing his eyes!).
In the United States, the President, no less, scorned the wearing of masks and wondered if injecting bleach might see off the virus (spoiler alert: it won't).
Australia's good fortune is probably due to a combination of factors: science has not become politicised; there was no significant lobby to "keep the economy open"; there is distance between cities; there isn't much travel into Australia, particularly not in March (apart from the first big outbreak which came from a cruise ship, but that is the exception which proves the rule).
But before smugness sets in: some northern-hemisphere countries have done better than Australia.
Sometimes, they have been democracies, like South Korea - but it learnt from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) epidemic in 2015 which taught that isolation, hygiene and contact-tracing could close an epidemic down.
Top of the list, though, is Vietnam, which has an authoritarian government.
The first coronavirus case was confirmed there on January 23 and an emergency plan was immediately enacted (two months before Australia's travel ban). The border with China was closed.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
