I haven't written about The Gardens in their own right before, mainly because they need a space all of their own... "The Gardens", of course, are the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, which grace the land curving about the cove to the east of the Sydney Opera House.
If one thinks of the business district as the heart of Sydney, keeping its lifeblood pulsing steadily on, the Gardens are its soul. While other spots about the city are sophisticated or fun or interesting or quirky, the Gardens manage, despite their endlessly-changing seasonality, to be quite timeless.
They are, I think, are always appropriate. Whether for a long lingering lie on the grass looking up to the sky through the sun-yellow leaves of a tree, whether walking off the exuberant energy of a new promotion or the frustration of an idiot boss, whether for grieving or playing or falling in love, the Gardens are always just right. While less intrepid souls may prefer them only in the comfortable, easy temperatures of spring and autumn, for those of hardier stock they do well in all seasons, including the dry heat of mid summer (take hat and sunscreen) when you'll hear the cicadas singing, reminding you that the world goes on despite the hours of the day you spend in a battery-hen existence in a fluoroescently-lit office, and the cold raininess of winter (provided, for the latter, you are properly equipped with a heavy coat, a scarf (in a luminous red, for choice) and a large and sturdy umbrella).
I walked through them today in the rain. They are always particularly beautiful then, with impromptu pools and rills that make you rather wish you were five years old and had a bicycle to hand so you could rush through them, competing with your 30-seconds-ago-self in an attempt to create the biggest wake, or that at least you had had the foresight to change out of your good shoes and your grown-up dignity so you could jump in the deepest of the puddles and create a satisfying splash.
In the rain, I am always much more aware of the scents and perfumes of the world, particularly when in The Gardens – then, you see, they are something that they never are in any other weather. It’s as though the scents and perfumes of all the plants (which must usually, I think, hide away in blossoms and creep softly under leaves, only to be found by those curious and patient enough to seek them out) lose all their self control and come out to play boldly together among the soothing drumming of the raindrops. Together, playing, then, they seem to carry on a merry jubilee about you if you are only courageous enough to risk wet feet and ruined shoes – scents from the inimitable freshness of the gum trees to the sweet perfumes of the rose garden, the product of a thousand roses lying on bushes which have prostrated themselves to the rain.
Most days I walk up the Stairs-O-Death (not, I believe, their formal name) and see how quickly I can make it to the top before losing my breath while beside me executives race up them, walk down, race up them again, breathing heavily, weighed down by tans and muscles. I walk then past a great stand of tiny toadstools (in reality only a few centimetres high and wide, but if you were an ant, say, or a gnome and in a book written by Enid Blyton, a city). Past the cactus that looks as though it is but a toy, sewn together by a woman with a passion for frills or with a new sewing machine as the edges are all wavy, rather as though they were overlocked with the setting not set quite right for the fabric. Past the pretty annual garden which lies to the east of Rathborne House, and the occasional bark-strewn paths which appear to have escaped the political correctness of the other paths, which are all built to regulation widths and gradients, until you remember that those bark-strewn paths used to have benches set into them which have now been removed to more public places where the drunks and homeless and lustfully inclined who used to take advantage of them are now discouraged from doing so.
And back, at last, eventually, refreshed to the deeps by the exercise and the brief but satisfying communion with nature, to the concrete-and-glass, suited city and to work, giving thanks along the way to the blessed folk who had the vision to build The Gardens and to those who have continued to keep them, in all their glad beauty, ever since.