I went to a wedding in Sydney when I was 12, arriving from the gloomy and windswept south-west coast of Victoria, and even though it was only two days I never forgot it. First time on a plane, first time eating poached salmon, first time realising people could actually live like this, drenched in sunlight, homes right on the cliffs, goldilocks weather where you could be in the ocean before work and on weekends go sailing.

A few years after graduating, I moved north. I found a six-week sublet at an apartment in Paddington with a stranger and a job in recruiting, and thought I’d give my dream a shot.

Late summer and the air was warm and fragrant. In the dusk it would crackle with electricity and sudden, almost violent storms. The footpaths of Paddington were covered in skin-soft frangipani blossoms, like a wedding procession had just passed through, and the trees were full of strange, loud, colourful birds that we didn’t have down south.

Sydney – particularly in 2001 in its post-Olympics glow – was easy to fall in love with. I adored it all over again.

I presumed the sublet would be some featureless box but it was gorgeous – art deco with dark wood, and charming, strange-shaped rooms, looking out on to an enormous gum tree.

My new housemate was a formal young man in his early 20s. While I was dozing off on my first evening he came home from work, into my room and loomed above me in a dark suit, leaning on the handle of an expensive-looking umbrella, before sticking out a hand and introducing himself. Patrick.

We drank heavily at the Paddington Inn, spent all our money on imported Iranian seedless grapes at an upmarket grocer and made plans to one day make this six-week housemate arrangement more permanent.

I had got lucky. Circles of friends expanded to include me. It didn’t matter that I had a job in recruiting that was hard to explain and boring, or that I went to parties with only the thinnest connection to anyone there. Along with the pleasant climate, an entire experience of ease was beginning to characterise my time in Sydney. It was all my 12-year-old self had dreamed of.

I stayed in Sydney, moving to Redfern. Summer gave way to the mildest of winters. The ease – the luck – continued. I sat an exam and did a range of interviews, and landed a highly sought-after position at Sydney Morning Herald as a trainee journalist. I met people there who would become lifelong friends. I found a vocation that would, in one form or another, stay with me for the rest of my life. And over the years in Sydney I also got lucky with houses (I even moved in with Patrick again, to a place in Potts Point). The homes were mostly by the water, in the east. And they........

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