Oil And Grass

• Alex Ngann, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2016

When I arrived in Australia I was thinking about what Australia would smell like. I asked my Mum a question before we had left the airport.
“What Australia smells like?”
She said, “Australia smell like nature and flower”.
I replied, “Maybe what you think”.
A few minutes later, my Mum’s friend came toward us to pick us up. It was eleven o’clock and we were all starving so we went to Hungry Jacks. I ordered French fries, Hamburger and Coke, it was a strange sort of smell.
“Smell? Like…” I repeated quietly, “Oily!” I said to myself. The food was hot and the French fries looked spicy. It tasted salty and a little bit sour. When I finish my food I wiped my finger a little bit with my shirt that I bought during my school holiday in Thailand. It felt smooth and it is was made from cotton. Even after we had left Hungry Jack’s, the smell still remained in my nose all day.
After that day, I realised that Australia smelt like oil.
When I arrived it was summer and the sky was clear blue, there was no cloud and the sun was shining very bright. Lots of gum trees were beside the road on the way through. It was pretty noisy at that time, the baby was crying because she awoke herself and she wanted her Mum to hug her. Then the pop music came out loudly and sounded very cool.
“Where the music came from?” I said to my Mum’s friend.
“Oh! Yeah it’s my phone, thanks for that,” she replied thankfully with a quick answer.
The smells of gum leaf and cut grass are different from the smell in my home country of Cambodia where I used to be. When I played football, I can see a grass in front of me freshly that has been cut. I have this smell in my mind every time I get a football and run. At footy last Saturday afternoon in the third quarter, the ball was flying in the air nearly at the fifty-yard line. I took a couple steps backwards and leapt up high to reach a powerful mark up in the air. A few seconds late, I fell to the ground on the grass that had just been cut and not yet tidy. Before my face went down onto it, I could smell the grass like oil then my face was on top of it and I could taste a little salty from the grass.
To me, the grass of Australia smells like oil.