In a series of short essays, writers consider what happiness means to them now, after the reckoning of the past few years
The North Head of Sydney Harbour, named Car-rang-gel according to the Sydney Northern Beaches clan, happens to be my book of daily delights. My wife and compadre, Judy, loves this great block of fissured sandstone and heath above the Pacific too. She’s angry at me when I write about it because she fears the place may become too popular for its good. Its coastal heath went up in prodigious flames above the sea two years back, in a fire of such latter-day intensity many thought there would be no regeneration on this plateau of vistas. But it’s all come back, a little differently.
The flannel flowers, the glorious punks that eschew polite gardens and only grow on depleted sandy headlands and in the face of salt gales, have asserted themselves and are now visually dominant. Their lovely green-tipped white petals feel just like flannel, a trick that fascinates children, and me for that matter. Then the banksia serrata, are back with their gloried big candles, the ones that shine with nectar and attract rainbow lorikeets before degenerating into furry Daleks.
