My bleary red eyes have picked up the searing natural light creeping under the window flaps. We are on the downhill run now. There is stirring and movement and a frisson of anticipation as breakfast is served and people peer eagerly out of their windows for their first sight of Sydney. I have not seen my home for two whole months.

For this homesick Aussie there is nothing like swooping in over our shimmering harbour city.  Her décolletage of dark craggy coves, speckled with red-roofed houses, leads to a pulsing heart of glass that glitters green under an impossibly bright antipodean sun. She wears the Opera House thrust out on her chest like a corsage; the Harbour Bridge is her tiara. That brash, breezy, superficial strumpet of a city has her arms wide open—and I can’t wait.