The colour of Summer

Over the last few days we visited some friends in country Victoria. The 8 hour drive down happened to coincide with a 40C or so temperatures making the trip seem even longer. Pretty much the entire route was similar in colour to this photo. Brown ground cover with bluey grey gum (eucalyptus) trees.
They live some distance from the nearest town and, like us, use rainwater as their sole water source.
This photo was taken about 7 am with some clouds promising a visit. They did and we had rain of which no-one complained.
One of the first things the children did was ask to play in the creek. We waited until around 4:00pm after the worst heat of the day and they all rushed in.
Luckily some farms downstream had requested water to be released from the dam upstream so there was water in the creek. Although we didn't worry too much about snakes as the ground cover was reasonably thin, Peter wasn't impressed with getting nipped by a Yabbie (also known as a Crawdad in Georgia)
Even so they came out quite muddy and we washed them off with a hose before they were allowed back into the house.
Compare this creek to Coopers Creek (the green photo) we visited when we were in the US (here, here and here). This is at the equivalent time in the Summer.
This is one of the things we found so startling about the seasons we experienced during our stay in the US. The GREEN of Spring and Summer make an astounding difference in one's view of the changing seasons.