The valley walls of the Georges River have puffy cream clouds interspersed with their usual dark green. After each windy day the surface of the pool is covered with thousands of filaments, the stamens that make up the flower of a eucalyptus.

I don’t recall a season where the flowering is as prominent as this. Throughout the bush and suburbia that makes up the local area, this one species of gum tree is in flower. The air is scented sickly sweet, almost like the smell of a rubbish bin.

I think the season is coming to an end, the stamens turning brown and stripping away, the night air infused with the pleasant scent of flowering gardenias as the days turn as hot as summer in the turbulence of late spring.