In New Zealand, most people would not consider May and October to be winter months. This year, however, they were noticeably colder than usual. NIWA remarked upon this in their Climate Summaries for May and October 2009. To quote very selectively from these summaries:

On 21 August in 1861, Dr. Charles Knight was appointed the first Director of Meteorological Stations in New Zealand.

His appointment marked the founding of the New Zealand Meteorological Service – this country’s oldest continuous scientific institution. Early missionaries and settlers quickly realised our coasts were subject to rapid changes of weather, with frequent violent storms. In the 1840s and 1850s weather studies were made by military officers, but in 1859 the government put weather stations on a more formal footing.