Of course it starts with spring. Sunlight slides in a sheet under the back door. In the bush there’s wattle, waratah and a milky way of flannel flowers. In the garden there are blossoms: plum, apple, cherry and dogwood. The air feels softer. Sometimes, it snaps back to cold and snows, and people rush up from Sydney to take photos. Then the blossoms fall and we’re on our way.
We moved to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains in the late 90s, economic escapees from Sydney. I found the first few winters hard but the summers glorious. At 100km from the coast – and 1000m higher – we don’t get the southerly buster, but our summer storms are spectacular and bring the same radical drop in temperature. I kept a record in the first year: 35C to 16C, 30C to 12C. After a day of summer heat, the house is warm but you can open the windows to a river of cool air, a shriek of cockatoos, the smell of eucalyptus.
