After weeks – months! – of torrential rain, Easter rolls into town with a long weekend of sunny, warm days. A final weekend of summer appearing well into autumn.
Many people I know leave the city – exploring the coast and countryside and making the most of the two April long weekends in Australia, one after the other.
The city comes to life for the Sydneysiders who stay and for the tourists that visit. Circular Quay is heaving with people in a way I haven’t seen since pre-pandemic days: street performers drawing crowds, ferry wharves bustling with people, gelato queues snaking around the block. Around the curve of the harbour in The Rocks, tables are overflowing onto streets as people drink beers and soak up the sun.
In many ways, it feels a lot like London in April. The change in weather, the return of brighter, sunnier days with the sky bearing some warmth at last. It feels like the rejoicing of spring after a long and rain-filled winter.
And yet – it’s autumn.
Last April the London evenings were beginning to shift into something akin to hope. There was still a chill to the air – would be for a while yet – but the sun was bolder and brighter. New possibilities felt alive in the air.
One evening I made the most of the clear skies and set off for a walk after work. I started the same way as many of my lockdown walks had begun – walking through the backstreets to Burgess Park. But, this time, instead of doing a lap around the lake and returning home, I continued. I made my way through neighbourhood parks, down terrace-lined streets with the glowing evening gables, past pubs with dedicated locals sitting outside. I made my way south – as Walworth turned into North Peckham turned into Camberwell. I thought as I walked of what should come next – a new part of London? A new part of the world?
I was no closer to an answer when the light began to sink. I made my way back home. I walked up a hill as the amber flare of sunset was beginning to stretch out its arms in a city-wide embrace. It was a moment shared with the many others – some, like me, out for a walk but others huddled together in groups on the small patch of grass, passing around cigarettes and a bottle of wine.
I think of that sunset – that moment, that park, that hill – often.
Soon after – in the early weeks of May, almost exactly a year ago now – I made my decision as to what my next step would be. But the me that stood there, watching the sunset, deeply smitten with London, didn’t know it yet.
I wonder what she’d make of me in the here and now on the other side of the world as the evenings begin to sink lower into the days.
‘All the same, it was encouraging to stare out at the sky and know that everything is always changing, that a dark sky lifts into another mood.’
– Deborah Levy, Real Estate
I’ve been reminiscing about this time last year more and more in recent weeks as today marks six months in Sydney. Friends in London have said they can’t comprehend it and I reply that for the most part, nor can I.
It’s been six months of settling in and seeing friends I hadn’t seen in years and years and now see on the regular. It’s been six months of starting a new job and forming new routines. Six months in which I’ve moved into a new flat and have begun getting to know a new area.
Yet at so many points I’ve wished my London friends were here, that we were walking and talking through Sydney streets. If they were here, I’d likely lead them on a rambling tour, pointing out buildings with sentimental value and all the views towards the harbour. Only last week I noticed the way the harbour bridge can be seen curving above the sweep of The Domain. Look, I wanted to say, look there.
The torrential rain returns. As does the full force of furious winds. Rain batters my windows – too modernist to have the protection of eaves – as wind whips and whirls through the avenue of trees outside. Together it forms an intense soundscape.
The communities that were struck by floods at the beginning of March, are struck again at the end of it. Discussion soon turns to legislative changes and floodplain development. For many the talk is too little, too late; their mud-streaked properties were still drying out when they were inundated again.
I arrive at the airport, excited to spend a weekend in Melbourne where the weather is meant to be better. As I pass from the train station to the terminals, fifteen State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers walk in the other direction, decked out in the distinctive orange and navy. I can only presume that they’ve been helping the flooded or are on their way to assist. Suddenly a weekend in Melbourne and the hope for better weather feels frivolously self-indulgent.
Yet with joyful traipsing around Fitzroy and Collingwood, there’s a relishing in the act of flânerie. Filled with brunches in café courtyards, moussaka in retro bars, and Japanese breakfasts eaten in former garages, the weekend is filled with thinking ‘this is very Melbourne’ over and over.
I realise how much of a bubble I’ve been living in back in Sydney. With the rain cancelling plans and removing the desire to venture further afield, I’ve largely kept within the limits of the inner city and inner east, rarely venturing beyond the path from office to home, home to office, often meeting friends at various mid-points between the two.
‘The sun was lowering. The shadows lengthened. The temperatures surrendered shallowly to the breeze.’
– Sarah Winman, Still Life
Clocks change and I return to Sydney. There’s an eleven-degree difference between Melbourne and Sydney temperatures so that after an autumnal weekend there, with the buttoning of a coat around me, I enjoy lingering summer days. Yet there’s an autumnal quality to the light. Honeycomb drawls of lingering afternoon sun as I walk home at the beginning of April, swooning blooms of purple and pink reflecting in office windows as I walk home at the end of it.
By the seventh of April, Sydney’s received its annual rainfall. Streets are flooded yet again, the beyond-saturated ground copping yet more torrential rain, as established trees succumb to the heavy winds.
This. Here. Again.
The severity of it jars against the monotony of it. The wind hurls itself through trees so fast it sounds like the roar of the ocean.
When there’s a glimpse of blue sky – no matter how small, no matter how weak – it feels on the verge of miraculous.
‘That feeling of being young in a city, letting it do things to you, wanting to become something different in it.’
– Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation
I’ve had a few people ask me recently if I’m beginning to feel a bit more settled.
‘Yes’, I instinctively reply, then ‘no’ then ‘well, I guess.’
There’s something in the answer that feels like an admission of guilt and there’s a dragging out of the answer because to admit to feeling more settled here makes me feel more distant from there. I wonder how long this will last for, or if it will always be like this – a longing, a wondering, a settled-unsettled life lived between two halves.
More rain. More looking out the window waiting for the deluge to pass. More cancelled and altered plans.
More working from home with a morning spent at a slower pace. More mugs of chai. More bowls of dhal.
More lamps instead of lights. More yoga inside as the rain pours outside.
Walking through the city, I notice old architecture in new ways. The curve of bricks, the glimpses of the bridge between office blocks, the Opera House in the reflections of hotel windows.
There’s still so much of this city to reacquaint myself with. So much of this city has changed and now feels new to me. So much of it has layers and layers of old memories attached to it – some I wish to keep, some I wish to discard. Maybe that only comes with the laying of new memories on top of old.
There’s a moment every day – usually around half three – when the sun has descended enough for a subtle chill to creep into the air. That’s when you remember that despite the warmth of the day, it is now autumn.
Friends come over for meals and wine. Long lunches where conversation melts into the late afternoon. There’s a luxurious languor to it, knowing there’s nowhere else you need to be but here, nothing else you need to do but be in this delicious, exquisite moment.
A similar feeling happens when I go to a friend’s house one afternoon. The profound sense of nourishment that comes from spending time with dear friends – watching art documentaries and being cooked for and eating lemon cake fresh and warm from the oven.
Easter brings with it a change of pace: four days with long, slow, quiet mornings; gentle stretches and the watering of plants, the reading of books; the brewing of chai, the roasting of dinners; and the luxurious leisure of afternoon swims.
After months spent in a reading rut, it feels good to escape into a new book, to have hours stretch ahead of me which I can while away through reading if I so choose.
Pottering around in a domestic space, the sanctity of it – the freedom and joy found in the peace and the quiet. Curling up on the sofa with a glass of wine and a new show.
Friday evening calls with friends as I walk around the harbour, and they walk along the Thames. The swapping of stormy sunsets and blossoms blooming like magenta popcorn in the cemeteries of Kew. The grocer’s stop to get an essential tub of gelato.
The connection found walking and talking with friends, distance and time zones fading away as we laugh so hard our smiles begin to ache.
In many ways, six months is but a blink of the eye.
Maybe I should be focusing on what the next six months entails: more holidays, more long-held hugs with dear friends, more languorous meals – of cooking for others, and of being cooked for.
There’s much to look forward to.