Anne here. I woke up this morning to the scent of wood fires, which isn't a common thing to smell around here, especially in the mornings. At first I thought I might have dreamt it, because I'd been semi-dreaming about an event and place from my childhood, when we did have a real fire, but no, the woodsmoke was real. 
In truth, the childhood memory was probably sparked by the smoke, smell being the sense that most strongly evokes the past. So that got me thinking about some of the smells of my past and the events and associations they carry.
For instance, the smell of a bakery early in the morning takes me right back to when I was nine or ten, and living near a port in the far west of Victoria. Some big ship was due in — it was a historical event of some kind, and the whole town was talking about it. We had a family friend staying with us, a nineteen year old girl and she, like me, was eager to be the first to catch a glimpse of this ship.
Every day for a week we got up before dawn and walked down to the harbor to see if the ship had arrived. We had to pass the town bakery, and ohhhh that glorious smell of baking bread. Especially since we hadn't yet eaten breakfast. My friend being older and braver — the bakery didn't open for hours yet — knocked on the bakery door and asked to buy some bread.
They gave us hot steaming crusty rolls lavishly buttered, and we walked on down to stare out to sea, nibbling on the gorgeous crusty bread while butter dripped onto our fingers. Ever since, the scent of bread baking in the early morning brings me back to that time and place. We never did see the ship arrive, but did we regret those pre-dawn excursions? Not a bit.
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