Tag: Sydney

Tides, Trees and Time

I have lived away from Sydney longer than I ever lived in that city, yet it keeps pulling me back like the tide along its shores. After living elsewhere for twenty five years, I can still find my way around the inner suburbs. I know the backstreets and shortcuts and have even kept up with the new motorways. In contrast, I often get lost in Melbourne, where I grew up. But it isn’t the streets, or their familiarity, that draw me back to Sydney.

This Christmas, I was greeted by flowering frangipanis in a friend’s garden. Their heady, tropical fragrance carried me back to past summers, to easy, carefree days spent on the beach at Nielsen Park or Bronte, inhabiting what seemed like endless summers. We would lie under the generous shade of Morton Bay fig trees, admiring the large, eel like buttress roots that extend several metres from the trunk. These trees are gigantic, with canopies that can reach up to fifty metres. They offer the best escape from summer heat in Sydney, and their large, often gnarled branches allow for endless adventures for children.

Blooming jacarandas are another Sydney hallmark. Every student at Sydney University knew that when the jacaranda bloomed in the Quadrangle, exam time had arrived. It was a favourite place for graduation photos, and I have one of my husband standing beneath the old tree. That tree collapsed in 2016, but it has since been replaced by new jacarandas to continue the tradition.

Southern Sydney suburbs are known for their jacaranda plantings. In the 1950s, Sister Irene Haxton, who worked at the Jacaranda Hospital in Woolooware, gave jacaranda seedlings to new mothers, who planted them in their gardens. Now there are suburbs where almost every garden hosts a magnificent jacaranda blooming in November. The purple flowers form thick carpets along driveways, a stunning sight, even if not always so welcome to the people who live there.

One of my all-time favourite flowers, which grows easily in Sydney, is the gardenia. Like the frangipani, its heavy, sweet perfume is intoxicating. I bury my nose into one of its creamy flowers and swoon, giddy with the pure pleasure of its scent. Unfortunately, gardenias do not cope well with frost, which precludes them from gracing my small garden in Canberra.

I used to return regularly to Sydney for cultural events, concerts and exhibitions, fleeting overnight visits that rarely allowed time to notice the flora I once took for granted. Now I tend to return to see friends, people who have been there through life’s highs and lows. Sydney is where I met my husband, where my daughter was born, and where many loyal friendships were formed.

I have no desire to move back to Sydney, with its stop start traffic and planes roaring overhead. I am much more at home in the slower pace of Canberra. I love its distinct seasons, with vibrant autumns and bracing winters that sharpen my senses. So, it isn’t that I miss Sydney as much as the memories that come alive whenever I visit. Each street, each smell, each tree reminds me of the path I have trodden, the life I have lived, and the friends who have shaped me. Sydney will always be those heady, fecund years of my thirties, when I sowed seeds of love and friendship. Now, in my sixties, I can return and enjoy its full florescence.

Missing the Date, Catching the Moment

My mind is scattered. The other day, I drove to Sydney for an appointment on the wrong day. That’s a six hour round trip I could have avoided. I have a bad habit of skimming emails and assuming details. It has got me into trouble before. But I decided against self-flagellation and make the most of a day in the city.

Although there were many options to get into town, I chose to take the light rail from Dulwich Hill. Not the quickest way but I wanted to see what it was like. Having grown up with trams in Melbourne, I have always had a soft spot for them. I much prefer them to trains and buses. I like that I can see the driver, that they are smaller and more intimate than trains, and travel at a slower speed. There’s a human scale to them, almost a little quaint now, yet efficient at moving people from one suburb to the next.

The track goes along a narrow goods train corridor which hasn’t been used for years. For most of the journey, there’s vegetation on both sides of the track, making it a pleasant ride through a green corridor. On this particular day, the leaves of the trees we were dappled in sunlight, giving the effect of passing through an arbour. I was captivated by the changing light and shadow on the various shades of green. Yet when I looked at my fellow passengers, hardly anyone noticed. Familiarity breeds contempt.

As I began to observe the commuters, I noticed two women reading a book, maybe three people sitting quietly and the rest were either scrolling on their phones or wearing earbuds. In the past, commuters may have been reading a newspaper or book, knitting or striking up a conversation with someone nearby. People would have made eye contact with each other or even given a slight nod. I remembered a TV show aired on SBS called ‘Going Home’. We used to watch it regularly after the news. Filmed in 2000-2001, it followed the lives of a fictional group of commuters on their homeward train journey. The characters shared aspects of their lives with one another, noticed if someone was missing and discussed current affairs. This series could not be made now. Who would watch a group of commuters staring at their phones for 20 minutes a day?

Once more, I focused my gaze outwards as we passed Jubilee Park, Wentworth Park and then made our way into the city. It had been a pleasant trip, musing about the nature of change and the joys of travelling along a green corridor. Did it matter that I arrived on the wrong day? Not really. I spent the day doing a bit of shopping and surprised a dear friend, turning up unannounced. A perfect, unscripted day.

Weather Whiplash

I must have blinked and missed it. A week ago, night-time temperatures were in the single digits but today spring has arrived and daytime temps are in the twenties. Trees that seemed dormant a few days back are suddenly blooming. Not just one or two trees, but rows of trees along streets that appeared bare the last time I looked.

Officially, spring is at least another week away, yet Sydney basked in 27 degrees today. This past year has been the second warmest on record, but fortunately rainfall has been average, at the very least in the Eastern states. Luckily, because bushfire season is starting earlier each year and dry vegetation acts like kindling.

For the 16 years that we lived in the Blue Mountains, every spring brought with it that heart-in mouth feeling as fire trucks raced by. My daughter developed a keen sense of bushfires. She can smell one miles away. This is the inadvertent training young children get who live in fire prone areas. We saw the destruction around us with alarming regularity and knew several people who lost their homes. I never knew the full extent of the effect it had on me until I left.

Unfortunately, it is expected that we will have to endure more heatwaves, extreme conditions in summer and increasingly hazardous weather conditions earlier than ever before and not just in Australia. We will all have to learn mitigation tactics and put an end to being complacent about our impact on the planet. It is high time we stop talking about the weather and work together to actively improve the climate.