Travel Special: Australia

When I arrived in Sydney it was raining. Throughout the 23-hour flight from London, where it was also raining, I had fantasised about walking off the plane into a wall of heat and heading for the beach. Just my bloody luck, I reflected, as I stood in the airport carpark and stared sulkily at the grey sky. ‘Where’s the sun?’ I asked the friends who picked me up at the airport. They were not sympathetic. ‘It’s what we need, good droppa rain. Cool things down a bit. Stop the bushfires.’ My disappointment seemed selfish and petulant.

But I wasn’t disappointed for long. Within a couple of days the sun had come out, and the great Pacific Ocean beckoned. I rolled my swimming trunks into a towel and headed for Coogee Beach in shorts and a T-shirt. ‘Where’s your hat, mate?’ asked Stewart, my Australian host. ‘Got ya sunblock?’ I mumbled that I’d be fine.