Most Formula 1 folk are now either in sunny Melbourne, or on their way to sunny Melbourne, or about to leave chilly Europe (or, more specifically, shady Monaco) for sunny Melbourne.
Most of the drivers themselves are already Down Under, their early arrival a strategy designed to enable them to acclimatise to the body-clock-enfeebling time difference between here and there.
For Sergio 'Checo' Perez, it will be a quite extraordinary trip. Okay, the Formula 1 calendar is nowadays so much more intense than it used to be in that he's already started 37 Grands Prix in his two years as a Sauber driver - that's five more than Alberto Ascari, who was World Champion in both 1952 and 1953, if you please - but he still has the eager and excited mien of a boy in a man's world.
And why not? He's the proud owner of what's arguably one of the dozen most coveted jobs in global sport, and from what I've seen he's determined to make the most of it.
He's already a big star in his native Mexico - but, if he achieves the level of success that most McLaren drivers achieve, he'll soon become truly gigantic in his native land.
That, in turn, will be important in switching on interest in Formula 1 in a country whose population numbers more than 112 million, making it the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.
After all, so far, there have only ever been six Mexican Formula 1 drivers: Checo himself; Esteban Gutierrez, who'll make his Formula 1 debut next weekend in the Sauber that Checo would have been driving had McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh not snapped him up last autumn; the Rodriguez brothers, Pedro and Ricardo; Hector Rebaque; and Moises Solana.
Of that sextet, only one, Pedro Rodriguez, ever won a Grand Prix, and even he won only two: the 1967 South African Grand Prix and the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix. Pedro was very quick - not only in Formula 1 but also, and perhaps even more so, in sports car racing. His track record in those two all-conquering classics, the Ferrari 250 GTO and the Porsche 917, is arguably second to none.
Some say that Pedro's younger bro, Ricardo, was quicker still. We'll never know, because he was killed at just 20 years of age, in a Rob Walker Lotus 24, whose suspension failed during practice for the non-championship 1962 Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City. Truly, young Ricardo will therefore always be one of the archetypal 'what if?' drivers whom cruel fate prevented from showing us just what they could do.
Pedro survived Ricardo for nine more years, but was himself killed in a Ferrari 512M in an Interserie sports car race at the Norisring near Nuremberg, Germany, in 1971.
Rebaque was something of a journeyman, but well funded, and persuaded Bernie Ecclestone to take him on as Nelson Piquet's team-mate at Brabham for the 1980 and 1981 seasons.
During that time Piquet won six Grands Prix and one Drivers' World Championship. Meanwhile, in an identical car, Rebaque's best results were a trio of fourth places. But, as I say, he was well funded, and Mr E has always been rather partial to the folding stuff.
Which leaves Solana, whom Checo's ultimate boss Ron Dennis tends to refer to as 'Moses'. But why, you're probably asking, does Ron speak about such a little-known wheelman at all? The reason is that Ron's very first working Grand Prix was the 1966 Mexican Grand Prix, to which he was flown at the last minute by the Cooper team, for which he was then working as an apprentice mechanic, to tend a fourth Cooper T81 that the local hero, the afore-mentioned 'Moses', had scraped a few pesos together to pay for.
Solana remains the only Formula 1 driver to have started a Grand Prix bearing the number 13 - on a BRM P57 in the 1963 Mexican Grand Prix - and sadly he's one of the very few drivers to have been killed in a McLaren, in 1969, in a hillclimb event in the beautiful Valle de Bravo-Bosencheve, Mexico.
By contrast, for many years McLaren has been a team into which new drivers tend to be recruited on the crest of a huge wave of optimism. Perhaps the most remarkable of such debut outings came in the 1977 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, courtesy of Gilles Villeneuve, at the wheel of a McLaren M23.
Although Gilles failed to finish the race, his sheer bravura and evident pace marked him down without question as one of the most dazzlingly gifted newcomers of his generation. At one time he ran as high as third, easily outpacing the experienced Jochen Mass in the other M23, even if he couldn't ever quite keep pace with James Hunt, who won the race in an M26. But let's put that into a bit of perspective: James was the reigning World Champion, a man who had by that time driven many hundreds of Silverstone laps; by contrast, Gilles was a Quebecois rookie who didn't know Woodcote from Becketts before that balmy July weekend.
Jody Scheckter was another brilliant McLaren protégé - and one whom that tough New Zealander, Denny Hulme, Bruce McLaren's old mate, took under his wing after Jody had delivered a dynamic performance on his first Formula 1 outing at the wheel of a McLaren M19A in the 1972 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
Jody contested just six of his career total of 112 Grands Prix driving in McLarens - yet, even though he eventually won the World Championship for Ferrari in 1979, to this day he's perhaps more closely identified with McLaren than with Ferrari in the minds of many of the sport’s real aficionados. Perhaps that's because of the enormous shunt he caused in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1973, which has etched for ever in our retinal memories the images of his white-with-gold-flashes Yardley McLaren M23 gyrating about and thereby creating one of the most spectacular shunts that this particular reporter has ever seen. Type 'Formula One 1973 British Grand Prix start' into YouTube and you'll see what I mean.
To be fair to Jody, though, he won Grands Prix for Tyrrell and Wolf as well as for Ferrari, and has to be categorised as one of the greats.
So what does all of that teach us about Melbourne 2013? Not a lot, I hope. Certainly, Checo will be keeping his fingers crossed that his McLaren debut, and his first few Grands Prix thereafter, will be diametrically opposed in character to the series of accident-dominated tales I've told above.
Checo didn't score as many World Championship points in the last third of the 2012 season as he'd have liked to, but my spies tell me that he's been working harder than anyone over the winter, and that he's fit, focused and ready to deliver for Ron and Martin and the other Woking stalwarts who have put their faith in him.
Go Checo!
