What a difference sunshine makes
On a rain-soaked city, evening swims, and being where you need to be
‘The streets and sky are the colour of thunder.’
– Jessica Andrews, Saltwater
One sunny Sunday, I go for a bushwalk with a friend. It’s technically in a southern suburb of Sydney but feels further away thanks to the heady scent of eucalyptus, the squawk of cockatoos, and the glimpses of kookaburras half-hidden in trees.
We slip and slide along muddy paths as the ground squelches around our shoes. Following weeks of rain, the paths have not had time to dry, and we step into small puddles to avoid bigger ones, silky mud splattering against our legs.
We walk an expansive lap of the reserve, surrounded by a fern-filled undergrowth. Blue skies above; only rocks and trees as far as we can see. Magical.
Sydney’s inner city feels alive with nature: ferns grow between the cracks of sandstone terraces; giant monstera climb over concrete structures, fighting for territorial control; Hill’s Weeping Figs tower over us in cathedral-like structures. Wind blows debris across footpaths so that to walk through the city is to feel the wet slide of gum leaves underfoot, and the slight crunch of the seeds of Sydney figs. The natural and built environments blur into one – a rain-soaked city struggling to stay afloat.
‘The thousand-year storms no longer happen every thousand years. They seemed to occur yearly now, maybe more, along with the heat, the fire and the floods.’
– Madeleine Watts, The Inland Sea
After an already damp summer, the equivalent of London’s yearly rainfall is dumped on Brisbane in the space of three days. The biblical deluge is followed by a similar drenching of Lismore, in Northern NSW. There, the flood waters rise to 14.5 metres (47.6 ft) – a town under water. It’s common for houses to be raised in a Queenslander style but the waters rise and rise so that a house raised on top of 13 metre high (42.7 ft) stilts is still left coated in a thick layer of mud and grime, slicks of oil against the picture frames positioned halfway up the walls – yet another place rendered uninhabitable. Parts of Sydney are flooded one week only to be flooded again the next. The monotony of it jarring against the scale of devastation.
The humidity is dense. At ninety percent, you can feel the thick weight of it in the air. Afternoon thunderstorms wait in the wings, building and building and biding their time until the right moment before erupting over the city with an unrepentant fury. If you happen to be commuting when the heavens open, you get drenched; there’s no way to avoid the clothes-stuck-to-skin and shoes-filled-with-rain physicality of the weather.
As the month takes shape, a chill begins to seep into the shallow start of mornings, and into the quiet recline of evenings. It crawls through the windows, sneaking through the wooden blinds, and gathers around you. The change of season making its presence known.
The rain lingers. The rain drenches. Days after days of charcoal skies and torrential downpours.
‘How to remove mould’ becomes a discussion in the office, between friends, and online. Some buy enormous tubs of damp remover and place it in every cupboard of every room. Others fork out for a dehumidifier – ‘it’s an investment, but seemingly essential to live in Sydney.’ We manage to escape the worst of it but coat a mould-flecked window in vinegar and hope it doesn’t return.
The rain briefly subsides, and a vicious bluster of wind fills its place; trees rippling and shaking as it roars up from the harbour.
By the next morning, it’s died down. I walk to work and the sun briefly appears, throwing shadows across the walls of brightly painted terraces. It feels euphoric – SUN! At last!
To make the most of it, we eat lunch outside. We gravitate towards the edges of tables to where the sun falls, enjoying the warmth on our skin. We’re lizard-like, moving as the sun moves, faces towards the sun, arms outstretched, repeating ‘it’s so nice that it’s not raining’ over and over.
‘I have always loved walking and running,’ writes Lena Kozar from Kyiv. ‘Now my route has narrowed down to a small circle around the house as it’s dangerous to go too far away from the shelter. Besides, we have a curfew, and are not allowed to go outside after dark.’
Suddenly, it feels ridiculous to be complaining of rain while bombs are being dropped.
And yet – the climate crisis will create refugees, just as war does. Perhaps the two are more interlinked than first glance suggests.
‘As a child I would stay up watching the fires. … In the morning familiar places would look foreign, as if I’d never seen them.’
– Olivia Sudjic, Asylum Road
I go for a swim after work, breaking through the build-up of humidity. I walk home, chlorine dripping from the ends of my hair onto the footpath below. Despite having been able to swim close to my London flat, there’s something about doing so that feels incredibly Australian. Maybe it’s the number of people sharing the pools that makes it feel that way – adults doing squad training and children learning to swim after school. The water heaving and churning with the force of all the bodies moving.
There are two women in the lane with me, and we pass each other in gentle looping laps back and forth, our heads bobbing up and down, dipping in and out of the water. I think as I swim of the news: of flood clear-ups and basement huddling and cost of living crises extending further and deeper across the globe. There’s so much luck in how we each experience each moment in time; too often it takes a stark contrast for us to even notice.
One Friday, I call a friend in London. My evening – balmy, sun-setting, sandals-wearing, harbour-walk-taking – contrasting against her morning – sun shining, magnolias blooming.
I ask her what the weather’s been like and what she’s doing that weekend. The specificity of her reply reminds me what it means to deeply know another place. ‘You know that week of fake spring,’ she begins, ‘when the daffodils are out and the sky is blue so you’re going to sit in a pub garden, but you need a jacket?’
Yes, I reply, I really do.
‘You’re exactly where you need to be,’ someone tells me one evening. It’s exactly what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it, who I needed to hear it from.
This moment. That’s all there is.
A year ago in London, when lockdown restrictions were beginning to lift, I met up with a friend. We walked around the deserted streets of Soho – a strange site for a Friday afternoon – before making our way down to St James’s Park.
The air was still fresh, but blossoms – white, mostly, and the softest marshmallow pink – were beginning to appear at the ends of branches. Daffodils, nearing the end of their season, were tall and striking amongst the green and the grey.
My friend handed me a novel set in Sydney and said I might recognise parts of it, that she was keen to hear what I thought.
It’s rare to read of my home city and I was struck by how profound it felt to read of areas I knew well: a street I used to live on, a park I used to jog through on quiet Sunday mornings, an office building I’d pass by on weekend walks. The Inland Sea spoke of the heaviness of humidity and the sticky unease of summer: of plants climbing and crawling along Redfern terraces, of bushfire smoke that cloaks the city and chokes throats.
Maybe it was also the timing of it, maybe it was the reading of it while deep in thought as to whether I’d spend the next few years in London or in Sydney.
Now, a year later, the dark weather and the monotonous rain has largely kept us inside, waiting for the weather to pass. I’ve been reading novels and have found myself in a similar position. A year on: reading of Sydney, instead of wholly experiencing it.
‘Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent’s Park, was enough.’
– Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
On the evening of the autumn equinox, I take a walk around the harbour and call another friend in London. It’s a warm evening and the sky is dipped in orange, then sinks to lilac and, by the end of the call, hums with a rich indigo hue. Boats bob in the water. Frogs croak loudly from hedges, carrying the sound across the seas to London.
There’s a palpable sense among those that share the path, of making the most of the summer-like skies and the break in the rain. But also a sense of not being ready to slink into autumn. A sense of wanting a few more balmy evenings like this and a few more weekends with sun, clear skies, no rain.
I go for another evening swim. The sun sets over the hill, filling the pool with dancing shadows as we swim lap after lap after lap – methodical strokes washing away another day and easing us into night.
I walk home, meandering through back streets. At Taylor Square, bats glide across the sky, their black forms stark against the final light lingering in the sky. I walk on, up Oxford Street, as another colony passes overhead, flying over the courthouse and on towards the botanic gardens, the harbour beyond.
I turn and look behind me: Sydney Tower standing tall, striking within the skyline, as strips of pink stretch across Darlinghurst.
Home, for now.