Swimming to the Moon by Robert Drewe

Author:Robert Drewe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2014-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

FRIDAY BORONIA

I used to take out a pretty girl who always smelled of boronia. At first I thought its perfume was her personal female fragrance, but it turned out she bought a bunch of brown boronia in Hay Street at the end of the working week, clutched it to her chest all the way home on the crowded bus, and its scent lingered on her.

She bought it from the old codgers who called out ‘Sweet-smelling boronia!’ on the city corners on Friday afternoons in early spring. I only saw her on Fridays, so I’m guessing she didn’t smell of boronia on the other days of the week. Anyway, by the end of the program at the Lakeway drive-in, squashed up together in my ancient Ford Prefect, I smelled of boronia too.

Unfortunately, I only smelled of boronia for three consecutive Fridays, and then an up-and-coming league footballer with a better car began smelling of boronia instead.

Although I then disagreeably associated boronia’s heady scent with the Claremont Football Club, I drew solace from the fact that the footballer’s Friday-night boronia episodes soon played havoc with his Saturday games, he was dropped, and my favourite team, East Fremantle, coincidentally prevailed. Boronia recovered its nostalgic corner of my mind as synonymous with Western Australia.

I have a special place in my heart for distinctive West Australian flora: boronia, kangaroo paw, Geraldton wax, grass trees (then insensitively called ‘blackboys’), flowering banksias and red flowering gums. And ones with funny names, like cockie’s tongue, cow kicks and bacon-and-eggs.

At primary school we were grimly warned that picking the rare black kangaroo paw and blue leschenaultia was a heinous crime, akin to firing your ging at a twenty-eight parrot. We were told there were wildflower detectives roaming the bush, on the alert for offenders. Heaven forbid that our native plants should fall into Eastern Staters’ devious hands.

Even picking ordinary red and green kangaroo paws was a misdemeanour along the lines of disorderly conduct. Although picking wildflowers of any description had never even vaguely occurred to us eight-year-old boys, the fact that prison presumably awaited those who did so, gave these flowers a mysterious celebrity and value. I imagined gangs of elderly blue-rinsed Melbourne tourists, their secateurs seized, being rounded up in police wagons.

So imagine my amazement years later to notice many varieties of rare West Australian plants growing in profusion in Victoria and NSW. What had happened to the state’s strict flora embargo? Had the wildflower disciplinarians given up? Perhaps their investigative resources had been diverted to the elite Sparrow Squad?

Anyway, how dare slick Sydneysiders and pompous Victorians freely gaze upon our unique and wondrous blooms that were growing, even thriving, in their suburban gardens! Black kangaroo paws began appearing in South Yarra florists’ windows, and no North Sydney insurance company or Woollahra architect’s office was complete without several transplanted, fully grown grass trees looming sombrely over their entrances.

My last two residences in NSW had firmly established garden beds of kangaroo paws when I moved in. I was pleased, but also rather disturbed to see them doing well.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.