Cool (January)

Forget about Facebook. Bliss of the expected cool change arrives unexpectedly around five o’clock. The cats claw inside doors to be let out. Us too. Bird baths are dropping temperature in shady parts of the garden. The streets enjoy the second half of 4 January, getting some bearings.  Shadecloth is lifted off the tender plants, ready for soft showers. Blinds pulled up and shadecloth unhitched at all the windows, to reveal the trees reveling in a change of air. Mirka Mora is given a rest. Old cumquat cordial glasses and empty Turkish coffee cups pile up at the kitchen bench.

Cool (March)

The city turns it on: test matches, tennis opens, white nights, grand prix. But the main event is beyond management. It happens without warning sometime in March. On no particular date turning trees, bay salt, breathing soil, old bricks, and a slight shower combine in a cool breeze across Melbourne. It strikes the neurons with one word, from the Old French, autumn. It’s a smell: most must mist. Not the same as the cool change that crosses town through any of the warm months. It’s the fall of summer. Some days I ask what was the Kulin for that ‘cool’?