Yes, I was thinking about the contrast as I was inching my car through the wild rain and wind today. The words of Dorothea Mackellar in her well known poem about Australia - "My Country" - came to mind. She certainly had it right:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!