Farm1 wrote:

South Eastern NSW and it gets cold from late April to about the
beginning of October..

here
in mid-michigan it gets down to maybe -5 - -20F and
that might last a few weeks or a month some years. the
past few seasons have been quite mild.

Here it can gets down to about -9C and that will freeze the pipes. It
regulalry gets downt o -4C over winter. Not cold by your standards,
but cold by Oz standards.

It sounds like you are up a hill. How far from Cooma?

D