The climate of Siberia varies dramatically. On the north coast, north of the Arctic Circle, there is a very short (about one-month-long) summer.

Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate here is subarctic (Koppen Dfc or Dwc), with the annual average temperature about 0 °C (32 °F) and roughly ?15 °C (5 °F) average in January and +20 °C (68 °F) in July. With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, Southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early twentieth century.

The southwesterly winds of Southern Siberia bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, Novosibirsk) is several degrees warmer than in theIn August 1959, a group of seven Australian artists and one art historian gathered to create an exhibition and manifesto in support of the figurative image in painting. Calling themselves The Antipodeans, their activities instigated a turbulent time of argument and counter argument to such a degree that the sheer quality of the artworks exhibited tends to get obscured. One of the show-stoppers was Clifton Pugh’s Europa and the Bull, 1959 a powerful tour de force that neatly underpins a key passage within Bernard Smith’s manifesto which references ‘the great black bull of Lascaux … an old beast and a powerful one, who has watched over the arts and many mythologies.’1 The idea of artists articulating Australia’s own mythologies as a route to national self-identity was of great