is torrential downpours and flooded gutters that build to flowing creeks under waterlogged cars in minutes. Sydney is sea-green and gun-metal-grey skies clashing into each other in sheets of shockingly white lightning. Sydney is kurrawongs and magpies and flocks of green winged lorrikeets every morning. Sydney is busy. Sydney is thong-wearingly* hot with bare-skinned babes wandering about in sunglasses so big their reflections cause car accidents. Sydney is everything in walking distance. Sydney is traffic lights and traffic gnarls with buses not stopping and trucks careening down every road. Sydney is friends. Sydney is humid, humid, humid. Sydney is full of hand-filling voluptuous white magnolia flowers and velevety soft gardenia petals. Sydney is late night parties and impromputu calls. Sydney is summer. 

Sydney feels new but is familiar: the same but different. Although that hotel has gone, and that garage is now apartments, and no they don’t live there anymore. Sydney is my past but it is also my future. Sydney is now, and again, my home. 

*thong in both senses of the word