There is an almanac for America, one for Britain, and a handful of sky guides for the southern hemisphere. We went looking for a printed almanac made for Australia, one that mixes the Sun and Moon tables, the calendar, the folklore and the odd verse, and could not find one. So we made it. The Fair Dinkum Almanack 2027 is 72 pages of full colour A5, fitted to Canberra, and it will answer for every state and territory.
Get your copy of the Almanack, $19.95 plus postage. It is printed on demand and posted to you.
What is an almanac, and why would you want one
An almanac is a calendar with a lot more in it. The old ones were the one book in every house, hung on a nail by the fireplace, and they told a family when the Sun rose, when the Moon was full, when to sow and when to expect rain. Over time they picked up household hints, jokes, poems, puzzles and facts, and the good ones kept all of it.
Most of the almanacs you can buy today are written for the northern hemisphere. The seasons are the wrong way round, the Moon is lit from the wrong side, and the facts are about somebody else’s country. This one is built the other way up.
Sun and Moon tables, worked out and not guessed
Every day of 2027 has its own line: sunrise, sunset, day length, moonrise, moonset and the Moon’s place in the zodiac. The moon phases for each month sit above the table. All of it is calculated from the NASA JPL DE440 ephemeris, the same kind of data professional astronomers use, and fitted to Canberra. The tables are on the left hand page of each month, as they were in the old books.
If you live somewhere else, there is a page with sunrise and sunset on the 15th of every month for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra side by side. A second page shows how to work out the Moon for your own town. The Moon rises up to about half an hour different elsewhere in the country, and more in the tropical north, so we tell you that too.
The sky page has a few things worth knowing for 2027. There are three faint penumbral eclipses of the Moon (around 20 and 21 February, 18 and 19 July, and 17 August). The total eclipse of the Sun on 2 August crosses Spain and North Africa and misses Australia. The next total eclipse seen from this country is on 22 July 2028, across the Kimberley, the Northern Territory, western Queensland and New South Wales.
A page for every month, with the weather drawn by lot
Each month runs to four pages: the Sun and Moon table, a calendar of days, a verse with its painted scene, and the Farmer’s Calendar, a short piece on the work and the weather of the season in the old style. January’s is about early starts, tank gauges and taking the cricket seriously and the forecast lightly.
The calendar gives every day a weather word: Storms, Showers, Muggy, Scorcher, Hot and dry. We should be plain about those. The words are drawn by lot, like a die thrown, and weighted by the outlook for the month. They are a game and not a forecast, and the book says so on the page. A wetter month gets more wet words, and that is the only skill involved. The old almanacs never admitted it, so we think ours has the advantage in honesty.
Holidays, Easter, the start and end of daylight saving, Anzac Day, the King’s Birthday and Melbourne Cup Day are all dated for 2027, and we note where they vary by state.
The Inigo Jones outlook, and what we found when we tested it
Page 8 sets out a long range outlook for seven zones and four seasons, from Tropical to Cold Highland. It follows the method of Inigo Jones, the Queensland weather watcher who ran the Crohamhurst Observatory from the 1930s and matched each season to the same season in earlier years of a long cycle. Our figures use the seasons 35, 59, 71 and 84 years back.
The book also tells you the result of our own tests: the method did no better than saying “about usual”. We printed that on purpose. Anything made months ahead should be read like a friend’s guess, with interest and no promises, and we would rather you heard it from us than found out in March.
Facts with sources, folklore marked as folklore
Every month carries one fair dinkum fact, and each has a source listed at the back of the book. The Great Barrier Reef is about 2,300 km long and is a chain of roughly 3,000 reefs, not one. Wombats make cube shaped droppings. The Hills Hoist came out of Adelaide in the late 1940s. The Dog Fence is about 5,600 km. Vegemite hit the shelves in 1923. And the Australian Museum has a fact sheet on the drop bear, which tells you something about the Museum.
Where something is folklore, it is marked folklore. “If the cows lie down, rain is coming, or they are tired.” “If the bureau says 10 per cent, assume you are the 10 per cent.” There is a field guide to the animals that are out to get you, a page of household hints (a wooden spoon across the pot, an egg in a bowl of water), and a quiz with the answers over the page.
Then there is the slang. Two pages of Australian translated: arvo, brekkie, chook, dunny, esky, hard yakka, mozzie, ripper. “No worries: anything from ‘you’re welcome’ to ‘I’ll never do it’.” It is the page people read out loud to whoever is nearest.
Four pages for your own notes
The last pages are blank for a reason. Write down the first rain after a dry spell, the day the magpies started swooping, the creature that surprised you this year. A few years of that and you have an almanac of your own place, which is what the old books were really for.
Who it is for
It is for anyone who likes to know when the Moon rises, and for anyone who knows a person who does. It suits a farmer’s kitchen table, a caravan shelf, a school staffroom or a flat in the city. It makes a good gift for someone who has everything, and indeed for an Australian living overseas who misses the sayings. For the same reason it works as a Christmas stocking filler that is not a gardening book.
It is not a gardening book, and we have said so on the back cover. For the growing side there are the seven GardenBuddy.au Garden Year 2027 planners, one for each growing zone, and this one sits next to them. Those are for the work. This is for the evenings.
Quick answers
Is there an Australian almanac for 2027? The Fair Dinkum Almanack 2027 is the one we know of that is made for Australia in the old manner, with Sun and Moon tables, monthly calendars, folklore and facts. The other 2027 almanacs and sky guides we found were American, British or sky only.
Which city are the tables for? Canberra, which answers for the southern states and the ACT. The sunrise and sunset page also covers Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Darwin.
Can I plan a trip or a barbecue by the weather in it? No. The weather words are drawn by lot and the outlooks are experimental. Use the Bureau for that, and the book for the evening.
What do I get, and how does it arrive? A 72 page A5 paperback, perfect bound, printed in full colour on demand and posted to you. Printing means allow about two weeks to your door.
The Sun will rise tomorrow, and we have the time. Order The Fair Dinkum Almanack 2027 here and we will start waiting on the postie with you.
The GardenBuddy.au team
