The great divide of Sydney

In a city that contains more chaos than calm, it is here in the Western Suburbs that we feel most at peace.

February in Sydney is a hot brooding month. The air rises like a sauna’s hot steam, clouding your vision as perspiring men and women walk past you in a heady smell of cheap perfume and deodorant. As the temperature reaches 35 degrees, our small cheap apartment in western Sydney feels like a death chamber, and we resort to sleeping on the kitchen’s floor tiles to cool our baked bodies. Nepalis often joke that the only respite from the summer heat is either the trains or the Westfield, where many visit daily to shop for groceries. Yet the West is like the heat dump of the entire Sydney, where people cannot afford air conditioners and are too concerned about the rise in the electricity bill. The roads lie like a mating pit of shameless mosquitoes and flies as they descend on discarded furniture and soiled mattresses on the side of the roads.