Another Voice | 8 November 2008

Kookaburras don’t really laugh, but I can see why the old song suggests it: a weird, taunting call, which does have a kind of dark comicality about it. And this is one of the sounds that wake me each morning in Hunters Hill — where I find that The Spectator now has an Australian edition.

I’m staying in a lovely Victorian house in Sydney, built from huge blocks of the warm yellow sandstone that characterises many of the older residences here. This house dates from the 1880s and, apart from its size and generosity and the extent of its garden tumbling down towards the Harbour, it is almost indistinguishable from the grander sort of detached suburban houses that were being built in Britain, in places like Edinburgh, Cheltenham or Leamington Spa, around the same time.

Here the tree-lined street is called Glenview Crescent and houses have names like Glenrock and Glencairn.