Traffic jams on land and water — and no desire to sit in a hole drinking Chardonnay

They are waiting to enter the port of Newcastle, a hundred or more miles away. There they will load up with coal to feed the voracious economies of India and China.

The waiting ships symbolise the Australian predicament. The country is a principal source of raw materials for the emerging giants of Asia but it is struggling to deliver the goods. Cheap coal and various ores lie under the soil in abundance, but the demands are too great for the infrastructure.

Sydney these days is incontestably a great city. In the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge it boasts two of the world’s most iconic structures; it has a sky-scraping downtown profile, intermittent traffic gridlock and 101 ways with coffee. Yet offshore lies that long line of ships waiting to collect coals from Newcastle, a constant reminder of the precariousness of the city’s contemporary affluence.