Searching for a happiness solution in these dark times? Just look up

How far would you travel for a moment of joy?

Come for a walk with me down McDougall Street in harbourside Kirribilli. You’ll be joined by people from all over greater Sydney. Not exaggerating. Our best street for jacarandas draws people from all around the harbour city, and beyond.

The morning sun hits the jacaranda trees at McDougall Street in Kirribilli.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

I’ve been going for years now. It began as a way to cheer myself after regular visits to my adored mother-in-law in her dying days. She lived not far from there. We would walk down, surround ourselves in those lavender petals. Now it’s my happiness solution and I pass the street where she once lived and remember only the good bits. She died in the middle of that first COVID year and there were no good bits then.

This year was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it. We were all coming to get brief respite from war and more war, inflation and death on every doorstep. And jacarandas, well, they really do make us feel better, even if just for a moment. Naturally, being a roaring busybody, I started asking questions. “What suburb do you live in?”

Campbelltown. Pymble. Punchbowl. Bankstown. Coogee. Blacktown. Woollahra. London – but I won’t count her because she was there with local relatives. “I live here,” one woman smiled, gesturing towards the mauve tunnel.

Another question, do you have jacarandas in your own suburb? Yes, but not like this. Come Sunday (heaven forfend wind, hail and pelting rain), the jacaranda flowers will form a lilac arch over our heads, branches and blooms reaching each other. Life-affirming. There will be more people cheerfully posing in purple frocks and suits. More kids lying on the road, smiling awkwardly. More people bringing their ladders to get the best possible angle for their photos. And maybe someone else will bring their friends to celebrate graduations, weddings, anything. This is the second year that the road has been closed to traffic and surviving pedestrians salute North Sydney Council.

If the jacarandas were not enough, some actual genius decided to plant a stand of Illawarra flame trees. Should be compulsory companion planting across the region. I reckon this is their best season ever.

Zoe Baker, the mayor of North Sydney who lives just around the corner from McDougall Street, agrees. And she tells me something which makes me cry. (True, I’m prone to tears, especially now.)

Everyone who has ever visited this street knows its mythic birth story. Decades ago, midwives at the Mater Hospital dispensed jacaranda seedlings alongside breastfeeding advice. Baker tells me it’s apocryphal, but I ignore her. I want to believe that origin tale. She tells me one of her own, the idea of North Sydney’s youngest-ever councillor Georgia Lamb. The council now gives new parents a jacaranda. You just tell the council about your newborn and a jacaranda will be delivered. Also, choose a native if you really must.

Here is the thing about McDougall Street’s season of purple passion. So many festivities are accompanied by stress and pushing and grumpiness. It’s one of those communal activities which doesn’t cost a cent (train nearby, that’s how the Campbelltowners got there) and also free street parking if you are lucky.

Here in McDougall Street, everyone is smiling. No. Scratch that. Not smiling, beaming. And everyone is looking up.

This is the era where we don’t look up. Our eyes are constantly cast down. At our feet as we shuffle. At our shadows and our grief. Endlessly at our phones. And yes, there are plenty of phones on display in this street of streets. But they are held up to the light, to catch the lilac and the mauve and the purple. And even those flame trees which blind the weary pedestrian. Thanks to Cold Chisel songwriter Don Walker, who grew up in Grafton, the town with the best jacarandas in all Australia, for recognising the beauty of both but honouring the tree less loved.

One other thing. What’s the colour of a jacaranda? Purple doesn’t cut it. Mauve? Lilac? Lavender. And to the lady from Woollahra who said she thought jacarandas were pink. Absolutely not. Never pink.

It will be over soon. Those flowers will soon descend, purple rain and a pond of purple petals. See you next year.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist.