The Rocks stand as testament to Australia’s colonial heritage, minus the rats and general slumminess of the old days. Today, the suburb on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour is altogether swanky but with a still colonial flavour, preserved in the sandstone, slightly European-feel architecture that’s now thoughtfully potted with local trees.

Famous Aussie author Bryce Courtenay writes of the 18^th and 19^th century Rocks as swimming with rats, disease, hookers and drunkenness (well, that last bit hasn’t changed), and it makes me wonder whether the convicts and scoundrels that reputedly frequented the place had any idea how upscale and ritzy it would become.

Momentarily I give in to my self-destructive side and allow myself a torturous peek into a real estate agent to see how much a shoebox unit goes for in the Rocks these days. No less than $700,000 a pop, it seems.

For those of us not (yet) on this sort of payscale, there are other options. Like going to local restaurants with BYO grog and just ordering an entrée, which I’ll admit I’ve been know to do. Or throwing about a few spirited lines in favour of the fatherland amongst the German bar staff of the traditional Bavarian Löwenbräu, which often brings about a few free pints to chug back.

Alternatively, there’s the 24-hour Pancake Place that, well, operates 24 hours. This fact brings joy to many a late-night (or indeed, early-morning) reveler in the Rocks who can’t resist a chocolate stack as a sweet and swish alternative to the usual dirty 3am kebab.

During daylight hours, the Rocks is still well worth a visit for its spectacular views of Sydney harbour.

Today, there’s a mammoth cruise liner parked alongside the restaurant row, and the opera house is a stone’s throw (granted, a feat best reserved for someone with a good arm) across the water.

If you walk around the Park Hyatt (swallowing rivets of envy as you skirt a smug-looking pair having their wedding shots down there) there’s a trim little park where travelers sunbake and couples take picnics, and you can all but touch the harbour bridge. If you were freakishly tall. Like, fifty metres tall. Still, it’s beautiful.

Ok, so last post I was on about Darling Harbour. One thing I didn’t mention is that it was also a key location of the APEC summit in late 2007 – yes, that major world economics conference at which George Bush added to his collection of highly embarrassing and internationally televised gaffes, such as calling it the OPEC summit in front of, well, lots and lots of people.

But what you may not have caught on international telly – ok, unless you happen to watch CNN, in which case you would have seen reruns approximately every four minutes for a week – was this very special guest appearance by Osama bin Laden. Amidst “the tightest security this country’s ever seen…”

Darling Harbour is a vast watery precinct west of the city centre, named after Ralph Darling (a colonial Lieutenant-General who can’t have been too pleased about his girly name).

During the Great Depression the eastern promenade was known as the Hungry Mile on account of the dock workers wandering about looking for work on the wharves.

It’s this section that the pollies are now pushing to be called Barangaroo after a state-wide naming competition, in which contestants were evidently competing to come up with the silliest word that can feasibly be passed off as indigenous.

Keeping with the theme of second-rate fame, it’s also the location for MTV’s The Real World: Sydney, which I’m proud to say I’m no longer seventeen-year-old enough to have seen. And the interiors from Home and Away, which I do see constantly but only against my will since Dutch TV reveres it almost as much as McLeod’s Daughters, are done in the nearby Channel Seven studios.

Also, for the astute filmgoers amongst you, Darling Harbour also enjoys a fleeting flyover in the Power Rangers movie.

More importantly, it is a peachy spot to spend a sunny afternoon, as 20 million Aussies and half a billion tourists do day after day, including, naturally, today, and with a vengeance at that.

The eastern promenade is now packed with upmarket restaurants (these days, hungry dock workers would be hurriedly moved along by bouncers if not cops if they dared set foot here) and the western side is home to the oh-so-touristy opal gift stores. If you’re lucky, you can catch the odd open-air concert in the harbourside area to the south: Polish folk music or tambourinists from Burkhina Faso. Perhaps the occasional hungry dock worker in brown paint playing a didgeridoo.

This evening we head to Fox Studios, home of film sets and red carpet movie premieres in Sydney. We’ve booked tickets to the Comedy Club, though we’re not amused by the fact that they don’t do on-the-spot student discounts. Should have indicated so when you booked, they tell us, though their online form was conspicuously lacking in student options. Sneaky, that.

In any event, keeping with the theme of Sydney’s beachside suburbs, the first act is a suntanned blond from Bondi, though he’s quick to point out he’s down from Brisbane. His whole set, in fact, is based around bitching about the Bondi beach folk. He’s had a gutful of eco this and bio that, he tells us – “there’s nothing artifical there except for the people.”

Granted, though, he admits that an event like the race riots that rocked the southern suburb of Cronulla a few years ago could never happen in Bondi. “Can you imagine five guys from Lebanon – sorry, Lakemba – piling into their Skyline to brave the traffic to Bondi? ‘Aw man, what toime this riot start anyway, we gonna be late…Oh moi god, man, parking’s foive bucks an hour, how long’s this riot gonna last anyway?’” They’d have to park in Vaucluse, our comic says, three suburbs over, and by the time they got to the beach they wouldn’t be able to find any Aussies there to beat up anyway, on account of Bondi being the hub of the backpacker trail.

This guy’s a riot, so to speak, but sadly the next act is slightly more ordinary and so on progressively through the night until the aging headliner comes on and bores everyone to tears for 45 minutes with his lame attempts to show us how cool he is by cracking lots of weed jokes.

The Coogee to Bondi walk is well known on the backpacker trail in Sydney for being the sort of stunning landscape experience that even locals will get out of bed for. Granted, not before lunch though. And today, dog-tired form all the recent festivities, we can’t manage the full two hour walk and settle instead for lolling about on the sand collecting sunburn.

We drive out in Kylie’s boyfriend’s car. Kylie, for the record, is currently discovering the joys of dating an older man – namely, material goods. It’s an Alpha Romeo, and, I’m told, not the sort of flashy car that draws the immediate attention of the uneducated masses, but rather genuine car connoisseurs.

He picked it up for a song, apparently, with such minor defects as the coat hooks in the back being upside down. Sure enough, we do get lots of looks, but more likely because people are wondering which clown in his right mind let two girls like us loose in a car like that.

In any event, we manage a stately arrival at Coogee – or try to, but due to the usual eastern suburbs congestion have to park about three suburbs back and stroll down the baking pavement.

I’d forgotten what a stressful experience driving to eastern Sydney is, and, what’s worse, trying to get back to the city in peak hour evening traffic. It’s no wonder people who live there joke that Anzac parade (no more than 2 k’s in from the coast, as the crow flies) is too far west for them to bother.

Down by the water, the sun is scorching, and with my pasty cum-European feet I collect a scalding on the soles and a sunburn on the top. We play a classic bout of spot-the-Aussie – failing, for the most part, since we’re surrounded by eastern European backpackers and French tourists, who you can spot beyond the shadow of doubt on account of their penchant for string bathers. No Aussie with any experience in the matter would invite a sunburnt arse like that.

Getting on the bus out to Sydney’s eastern suburbs today, I realise I’d forgotten just how irritating it is to be able to understand the conversations of all your fellow commuters (something I can easily tune out in the Netherlands).

But in the act of kindness of the day, the bus driver tells me to just give him $1.70 instead of the usual $2.90 adult fare (it’s the first time I’ve not been a student in Sydney) – “It’s new year’s, mate.” (Still!?) An Indian girl getting on behind me asks him “Do you go to Sydney Uni?” “No,” he says. “I drive a bus.”

Out on the street, too, I realize I’m well out of practise in this part of the world. Used to waiting (im)patiently at red pedestrian lights even on streets cars haven’t driven down since the Renaissance for fear of over-diligent German cops, here not crossing against the light is enough to get you committed, or at least badly trampled.

Stop on the curb at a busy intersection on George Street and you’ll find yourself bowled over by the mass of shoppers who hunt in packs and never stop for the small matter of pedestrian lights.

Just as road rules in Italy are more suggestions than anything hard and fast you ought legally to stick to, little red men here are more like gentle reminders to at least pause mid-step to glance about before you charge across six lanes of oncoming traffic.

Arrived alive! On the bus into downtown Sydney on this first day, I have the flicker of an inkling that I could live here again. It’s the bustling vibe in Sydney on a hot, busy day; the place is thriving. Street performers on every corner, tourists taking happy snaps of Martin Place and Circular Quay and Darling Harbour, shops at Chinatown going into overdrive despite the public holiday.

What I quickly realise I don’t miss, though, is bare legs on a vinyl bus seat. But I’m distracted by all the shops and suburbs flying past – secondhand books, antique furniture, Thai takeaway, sushi train, Asian grocers, dodgy looking internet café, Golden Pide kebabs, Charlie Chan bottleshop, Solomon Levi money exchange…now this, I do miss.

And what I love – and Sydneysiders love – about Sydney is that so many corners of it (I won’t say all) are great. There are scores of suburbs that would be tops to live in, each with their own flavour: ‘little Italy’ Leichardt, where I’m staying with Kylz now; bohemian Newtown; backpacker heaven Bondi; swanky Double Bay, colonial Pyrmont; trendy Woollomooloo – and that’s just on the south side of the harbour.

Stopover in Tokyo. We all bundle off and those of us with onward trips wait dutifully at the connecting flight counter. No-ones there. We wait. No-one comes.

The Kiwis start to panic: their connection leaves in an hour. The Aussies start to doze, since we’ve got a leisurely nine hours to kill. Eventually an airport crewman comes by and, almost as an afterthought, tells us we’ve got to get our boarding passes first, from a counter which lies somewhere yonder, beyond the security check.

We all traipse down but are stopped in our tracks by security, who demand to see our boarding passes before they’ll let us through. ‘But…I…we…’ everybody collectively stammers, then crawls back to the first counter for another interminable wait. Eventually they decide to let us through security sans boarding passes, ostensibly because they’ve figured out if they mess about with us any longer it’ll likely cut into their cig breaks, so we’re on the move again.

At the next counter we’re told we can’t check in yet on account of it still being seven hours before departure. We are left in airport limbo, sentenced to snooze on the shuttle bus that rattles back and forth between airport terminals, since without boarding passes we aren’t welcome in the boarding lounges.

Eventually I manage to weasel my way in, though, by virtue of in sidling in behind a woman in the World’s Shortest Skirt who neatly misdirects security’s attention. Once inside, I settle in comfortably at the sushi bar, but haven’t so much as swallowed my first California roll before my sleeve gets caught in the sushi train and drags me forcibly around the bar, taking out the lone customer along the way. Irredeemably, this affords him the opportunity to strike up the World’s Most Boring Conversation. Jesus. Are we there yet?

I’m going home. Not permanently – just swinging by for a short hol. Off to Amsterdam, then Sydney via Tokyo.

En route to Schipol airport, I make a mental checklist of all the things I want to do while back at home. Oddly enough, they all seem to revolve around food. And aside from the obvious desire for cheesecake, it’s all about pie. Meat pie. Steak and onion. Chicken and veg – I’m not fussy. I start to wonder whether I’d get in trouble for bringing pies back into Europe. After all, that potato pie recipe could be a state secret. I could try smuggling them. Just imagine it – body packing pies. Be worth it though.

At the check-in desk – the most loathed of all airport institutions (with the possible exception of the luggage carousel) – no-one seems to know if my suitcase will go straight through to Sydney or just hang about in Tokyo till some punk finds it in three years’ time out the back of a hangar. And by the way – how much of a load of rubbish is self check-in? Haven’t they noticed you’ve still got to queue anyway to check the luggage through?