when you say 'the middle of winter' and 'the middle of summer', are you talking about the solstices, or the middle of each defined by the start being the solstice?

I always think of mid-January as being the middle of winter. Summer is more confusing, I admit, since Midsummer's Day is officially 24th June, which is only 3 days after the solstice, and I wouldn't regard that as being the middle of summer in terms of the experience of the season. Mid-July seems more appropriate a time to consider the middle of summer, as it generally feels more like the middle of summer then.

Historically, the timing of the equinoxes and solstices has always been to do with helping farmers to know when to plant crops. Tying them to astronomical events that can be observed, rather than to subjective things like 'it feels like summer now' is a much more reliable way of ensuring that those who need to know, know with certainty. That's not pedantry, it's pure pragmatism. But then, in the modern world, we've become so certain that we can control the elements, even when it's obvious that we can't, that we've largely cast aside many of our ties to the original meaning of seasons etc.

Winter begins in June in Australia & that's a fact...

They also grow rice - a crop that requires several inches of standing water - in Australia, the driest continent on Earth. That's how closely the people there live to Mother Nature.

Alex