December in Sydney is summertime.
Some of my greatest joys this time of year: My animal patients, the creativity of winter decorations in Sahara-like heat, the sound of cellos and the taste of chocolate.
It’s a privilege being a veterinarian, and my patients come in two varieties – domesticated and wild. The sadness of their short lives, being there to see them sicken, staying stoic while they succumb to age or injury, as you shepherd them through their decline, are all balanced by the beauty, the brilliance, the miracle, that we get to share our time on the earth with them.
So there’s two varieties of joy that come along with that. The joy of an animal whose greatest contentment is to be with their human family – a poodle puppy whose million-mile-an-hour tail wagging never falters, a guinea pig desperately stretching her tiny hands out to get back to a schoolgirl’s pocket, a cat with a blue mane and a lion’s orange glare whose enthusiastic purr won’t let up long enough for you to listen to his heart – is completely different to the joy of seeing a rehabilitated possum, or parrot, or kangaroo returned to the wild.
Both are giddy-making kinds of happiness, though.
Since most of white Australia’s holiday traditions are imported from the UK and, more recently, the USA, it can be pretty incongruous seeing pine trees and fake icicles in shop windows while outside it’s 45 degrees Celsius – 113 degrees Fahrenheit – in the shade.
My feeling is they work best at night, when you can see the lights forming the shapes of snowflakes but can’t feel the sun burning the back of your neck!
We also do New Year’s Eve spectacularly well. A sense of a new beginning is important. Hope for the future. You can’t have joy without hope. Fire in the sky, and the salt water of Sydney Harbour lapping at your bare feet.
Then again, a crowd of millions isn’t for everyone. You can find joy in a handful of strangers eating and listening to music together.
The Blue Mountains lie west of Sydney. This craggy old plateau is part of east coast Australia’s 3,700-kilometer/2,300-mile long Great Dividing Range.
A thousand metres above sea level, in the lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra, villages perch on exposed sandstone cliffs. It’s here you’ll get a whiff of snow as late as October, hear snatches of lyrebird song, find valleys full of summer fire and winter waterfalls spilling hundreds of metres directly down.
Imagine an old church converted into a European fairytale-themed cafe. Sandstone foundations, arched exposed beam wood panel ceiling, and stained glass surround you.
A Christmas tree by the fireplace is decorated with candy canes all year round. Gingerbread smell is everywhere. Hansel and Gretel are silhouetted on the walls.
It’s night. No candles burn in the iron chandeliers. Outside, there’s a muffling fog. No cars disturb the silence.
Just two cellos.
Because for the past five years, a pair of musicians who have mentored some of Australia’s rising stars have slipped into the Gingerbread House after normal business hours to make magic together – and match the cellos with chocolate.
Dessert. Strings. Heaven.
You sit with your mother. You don’t see her as much as you’d like, but she’s warm, and wise; snap-happy with laughing green eyes. In the selfie she takes with you and the musicians, they look bemused. When the music moves you, you grip her arm tightly.
You never learned to read music or play an instrument.
Your singing voice is the envy of sea lions.
When other kids your age were first being forced to practice piano or violin, your working-class parents were sending you to such cost-effective activities as soccer and brownie guides.
But your mother played the flute before she had four children, and your grade one self stroked its cool, tarnished surface, until you heard adult footsteps and snapped shut the forbidden felt case at the bottom of her wardrobe.
The two dozen chairs are pushed close to the stage. Cosy. Like a gathering of gentlefolk in a Jane Austen novel, only it’s not eligible maids getting up to play, but Georg Mertens and Trish McMeekin, two wizened, smiling masters.
Tonight, the painted pied piper is silent as they play, and it’s the scent of chocolate that draws the audience, at intermission, away.
Thoraiya Dyer is an Aurealis and Ditmar award-winning, Sydney-based writer and veterinarian. Her short science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Cosmos, Nature, the anthology “Bridging Infinity” and boutique collection “Asymmetry.” Thoraiya’s novels “Crossroads of Canopy,” “Echoes of Understorey,” and “Tides of the Titans” are published by Tor books. Find her online at thoraiyadyer.com or on Twitter @ThoraiyaDyer.
