Interesting smells, attractive smells, romantic smells…..or,

LED BY THE NOSE!  A nosey, nostril-nuanced narrative.

Have you ever had that ephemeral whiff, just caught in passing, that reminds you of something from long ago, perhaps from childhood? But a whiff that won’t stick around long enough for you to latch on to, and jog your memory? What was that? I KNOW that smell! But what?

Since I moved from city to bush there has been a remarkable nasal improvement: the I-suppose still looks ornery, but its internal equipment now fires on all cylinders, and startles me sometimes. I find myself in sudden pauses, head tilted up, rapid light sniffs……mmm, what IS that? Ah! Rare flower-smell from childhood, coming from, coming from………no. It’s gone. What flower was that? Yes, foxglove! But where? I see no foxgloves.

But somewhere near, behind a house, will be foxgloves. Unseen, but beckoning, and reminding. Children with foxglove fingers. Did you ever do that? My fingers probably too fat now, but I’d like a close-up sniff, get my nose into that memory of old gardens half a planet away.

Every time I cut a small cabbage in half, I have to immediately get my nose into the exposed green convolutions and breathe deeply: a strangely heady feeling of essential cabbage, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just hypnotic, for an instant.

Roses too, of course. Some varieties positively concussive in their spellbinding head-rush. I am the weird bloke leaning over your fence with his face buried in the flora. No ulterior motive, just drawn irresistibly to the great, soft, luminous petals.

Smoking, alcohol, chemicals, artificial cosmetics,  traffic toxins, industrial waste drifting airbourne through city neighbourhoods; dragging our nostrils through the de-gassing detritus, and the horrendous ubiquitous scenting of everything from toilet-cleaners to toothpaste. No surprise that our sniff-organs have rotted in-situ, barely able to acknowledge the perfume-soaked effluvia of the woman, or man, on the bus.

But lo! A couple of years in the bush and those city-trashed nasal receptors have shed the shield of shite and are once again receiving loud and clear. Who’d have thought!

There’s an experience only motor-cycle riders get to enjoy. At night there are many blossoms exploding with nectar-of-the-dark; moth attractors, bat-tempters. Those in air-conditioned cars would have no idea of the nasal treasures passing by unsmelled, but on a bike, every kilometre is filled with floral delight. At night, other smells seem to be enhanced too; mown grass, hay bale-ready in the paddock, their aromas descriptive, somehow: the first moist and greeny, the second mellow yellowing and foody. No wonder cows love it.

At night, on the bike, a rural road is healthily tar-scented, a passing dairy richly brown with liquid wonderful waste that is not wasted. A bush sawmill of resin and sap and steaming scented stacks of sawdust, and fresh-milled boards releasing their years of xylem and phloem to the still night air. It’s that silent dark that enables smells somehow.

When I was a young innocent hoon in a distant land of field and hedge, on a moonlit night we would ride our motorbikes helmetless and headlightless, at horse-gallop, on winding leaf-hung lanes, through solid cloud-walls of aroma changing with each bend. The true and only motorcycle experience, our exhausts quiet with full-baffled muffles, our hair free, our noses at the ready for pleasure, the moonlight our guide. On today’s city freeways, at a hundred and ten kilometres per hour; where’s the pleasure?

Now, in rural Queensland, we have our horrendous troubles, but at this moment there is a soft rain falling on the cracked dirt that was once a lawn, and the stressed trees are redolent with long-awaited wet.

In Witta, the marvellous, much-missed moisture is right now full of roasting coffee! An unknown neighbour roasts and packs the beans: one day I must call in, say hello, and nose about, truly. For though the smell is moreish and entrancing, (don’t the coffee-shops know it!), I am unfortunately too sensitive to the liquor to drink. It makes my heart beat madly and eyesight flicker and lurch: I must not drive a car.

Beer, though. A love-hate affair. There’s so much atrocious brew out there, and meddling amateurs of no lore or wisdom, or obviously nasal acumen. I will not drink, no, not until I’ve tested. Nose in glass first! Euggh! Stray wild stinking yeast in the brew! Can’t they tell? Don’t they know? Millions of dollars spent on equipment, and no sense of smell………and consequently taste. The nose leads, and success or failure follows. Those wine-buffs understand, but a buff is often mostly bluff. (Double-blind testing always reveals their laughable short-comings; but that’s another story.)

There are so many marvellous smells out there to be enjoyed, and a few to turn your nose up at! Girl with a turned-up nose no insult, ha! We are, sadly, as a race of mostly city-dwellers, losing our sense of smell to the effects of pollution; chemical-overpowering of delicate membranes. A whole sense, one of our only five, is being stifled, obliterated, and most of us can not afford to escape the pollution towards clean air.

My sympathy goes out to those who have lost their nose-power. It’s not a minor affliction. It is a sad loss, and every rose is a reminder. We who retain that sense are lucky. There’s a small loss in language too; have you noticed? The subtle difference between ‘Can you smell?’ and ‘You do smell!’ Enough, already, who knows where the nose goes?

Ah, this too-little rain. Enhancing all scents.  Almost endearing us to the wasteland-creating eucalypts and their released kino; the sharp but pleasant antiseptic oil most noticeable in rain. All too brief, ineffectual, this rain. Too little, totally tantalising; a tease when we need serious soaking. But the smell of the wet bush!