Early one morning after it had rained overnight, I went for my usual walk. I used the ‘cut through’, a small Town Council tended area that also contains the grave of one of the earliest Afghan cameleers to settle in Alice Springs. It is a leafy, shady common area used by some families as a small park for their children, and possibly the most useful easement for a gas line in the country. This particular damp morning the scent of earth and Eucalyptus, amplified by the humidity, was heavy in the air.

Joining the alchemy of nature came whiffs of coffee mingling, taunting. This was new. Not having had my morning cuppa yet, I slowed my pace to breathe deeply…eyes shut…memory emerging . I remembered a few camping trips when an experienced camper made coffee, throwing the grounds into boiling water, along with a eucalyptus leaf. That flavour did not appeal as much as the scent I was smelling. Drawn farther back to 60 years ago I could hear the percolator bubbling on Mom’s stove…and Grandma asking if I wanted a milky cup of ‘rat poison’, as she called instant coffee when I was a child. She would sweeten the milky coffee swirl and from those days on I was hooked. Coffee became my morning tradition. My poison and my elixir. Even now when I am sensitive to caffein and grind my own beans—a 50/50 mix of decaf and regular, the ritual of making it is almost as soothing as the consumption. I know how much coffee to measure and grind for my little glass pour-over jug and how much milk to heat for the perfect brew. It is one of few predictable things of daily life. These rituals anchor us.

Did you know our sense of smell has a stronger link to memory and emotion than any of the other senses? 

A few months later, the memory still vivid, we were having lunch in Adelaide at the home of good friends. I was telling the story of the smell from that morning. Their gardener friend and our hostess piped up almost simultaneously “petrichor” Me: Please repeat?? “Petrichor” they said. I had never heard the word, but then and there grabbed that wonder filled pocket computer known as a smart phone and typed in the word–not to be forgotten.

Petrichor: “A smell that frequently follows the first rain after a long spell of dry, warm weather.”

That would describe it to the letter. It was like discovering buried treasure to learn the exact word for what I had experienced. I wondered what other precise words have escaped my notice all these decades. I’m running out of time to learn them.

Often since the walk that day, I have followed the passage through from the golf course to the adjacent street. The light is nice and the signs of children and families using the area is oddly hopeful. On a morning after rain, little that we have, the Eucalyptus scent is always the foremost character of the petrichor. But the aroma of coffee is missing. Other mornings I smell the coffee that evokes a lifetime of memory for me, but the air and ground are dry so the petrichor is quiet.

If I could smell that magic combination regularly I wonder if it would seem so special? Possibly not. But every time I walk into the local bakery the thrilling scents of pastries and sourdough mingling with coffee give me a little ‘high’. I remain hopeful of experiencing aromatic magic again one day.