Smells

With the exception of Smell-O-Vision (OK, not excepting Smell-O-Vision), modern communications have never been very good at conveying odours. So writing about the smells of Sydney in a blog seems futile, but it is the most evocative sense and I'm trying to capture a feel of what it's like living here, so here goes.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Sydney would smell so much more intense if I had one of these"][/caption]

Smells were, oddly enough, one of the things that Kate missed most about Australia. Londoners will no doubt complain that their city smells of old fried chicken boxes and exhaust fumes, but for the most part it is a strikingly inodorous city - I can't remember many occasions when I was forcefully struck with a strong smell, least of all a strong pleasant smell. The scent of barbecuing meat will always remind me of summer afternoons and a few times in summer you'll walk past some flowers smelling potent in bloom, but for the most part the city smells of paper and metal, ie nothing.

I think it must be something about the cleansing effect of the sea air and the ranker quality of vegetation in a warmer climate, but Sydney seems full of smells to me - Brisbane, closer to the tropics, even more so. Walking back from Bondi Beach last night the salty, seaweedy smell of the ocean swept over us in slow waves, and in between there were fragments of other, unconnected odours: the sweet smokiness of fish grilling in someone's garden, an astringent dose of eucalyptus sap, a tang of basil in a school vegetable patch, the rich dressing-table scent of frangipani blossoms. At night, you first sense the presence of the ubiquitous American cockroach (who seem to be the main element of pavement-traffic after humans once the sun goes down) through their not unpleasant pheromonal smell; jasmines glow a dull white in the warm summer dark, surrounded by heavy clouds of perfume.