Bye bye blighty, bye bye Blair. Hello Sydney.

I left England on May 1st 1997.

The vast majority of people in England were completely non-plussed that I was exiting Ol' Blighty and heading Down Under.  On Thursday 1st May 1997 they had far bigger fish to fry.

They were busy voting for Tony Blair.

He'd woo-ed a sizeable chunk of the natives with his 'New Labour' malarky and people were heading off to the voting booths in droves to pop a cross next to 'Labour'. Poor old John Major didn't stand a chance. To be fair, he'd made a bit of hash of things. Most of his Government had been having affairs with all and sundry, the poor old English pound had been withdrawn from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday (1992) and people were pretty much sick of the Conservatives. They'd been in power for 18years by then. They were out of ideas. When politicians are in power and are out of ideas, they tend to do stuff like have affairs with all and sundry.

Labour could have fielded a monkey and it would've beaten John Major.

They chose to field Tony Blair. Popular opinion would say that a monkey would have been far better than Blair in his latter years.

On May 1st 1997 Labour won with a landslide. Landslide doesn't really do it justice. In was more of a trouncing. They swept up 418 seats out of 650. The Conservatives didn't win a single seat in Wales or Scotland. They got just under 10 million votes. Labour got more than 13 million votes.

There were 13,518,167 Labour voters glued to the TV, watching, hoping, for a Blair win. Well, that's not strictly true. Really there were 13,518,166 people-who'd-voted-Labour metaphorically pacing the floors as the results came in. One was in the air somewhere over Russia.

Me.

I'd hopped in a taxi, taken a detour via a polling booth, voted Labour and headed to Heathrow airport to jump on a flight to Sydney. I didn't live a single minute in England under Tony Blair. Not one.

I'd also never been to Sydney. Or to Australia. Or even to the Southern Hemisphere for that matter. The closest I'd come was during the interview for my job in Sydney. The bloke asking the questions turned the web-cam around and showed me ... a field outside the office window. It looked nice. To be totally honest it looked just like any field in the Northern Hemisphere. I didn't say that of course. I really wanted the job. I made out it was the best field I'd ever seen. (I didn't mention that I was slightly disappointed that it wasn't teeming with kangaroos. Being an Australian field and all).

When I landed in Sydney I took a taxi from the airport to Coogee. Coogee is a beach suburb just south of Bondi. It's famous for two things - The Coogee Bay Hotel and the beachside walk that connects Coogee with Bondi. If you're in Sydney there's a few things you have to do and one of them is the beachside walk from Coogee to Bondi. It's right up there as far as beachside walks are concerned.

I walked it on May 2nd 1997 and whilst I was doing it I made a huge decision. I decided I was never going back to England. I was jetlagged. Obviously. I'd just arrived. My head was all over the place. I was walking one of the most beautiful walks I'd ever walked. The sun was shining. The sea was blue and Tony Blair had been elected. I was on Cloud 9.

I was also in the most beautiful place I'd ever been to my life. Honestly, it was stunning. It was Sydney.

Look, over the years - as I've become a proper Aussie - there's things that really piss me off about Sydney and about Australia. That's natural. But one thing has never changed;

Sydney is the most beautiful city I've ever been to.

I'd like to say it's 'the most beautiful city on earth'. But that's a wee bit arrogant. I've never been to Rio de Janeiro or Cape Town or Mumbai or Beijing or Moscow. But I've read about them, or I've met people from those places, and they typically say that Sydney wins hands down.

Sydney.

For me it's three things; light, space and boardshorts. Yeah, I know, boardshorts?! I'll get to those later in the week.

Today it's light and space.

The light in Sydney is special. It's hard to describe 'light' on a blog. In 10 years you'll be able to take a bit of the 'light' in Sydney and teleport it onto a blog, but for now I'll say this; on a typical day in Sydney, if I leave home without my sunglasses and get half-way to work, I'll turn round, drive home and get the buggers. The worst thing that can happen is that I get caught short without my sunnies. And that's in the winter. In the summer, on a bright sunny day, I wear them indoors. It's that bright. There's something about the sun in Sydney. It's blinding. And it means that even on a cloudy the day the light is special. Very special. Sydney is never grey. Even when the sky is grey, Sydney isn't grey. I think you know what I mean. I've never known 'light' like the light in Sydney.

& then there's space.

Australia is the pure definition of space. There's heaps of the stuff. Twenty-odd million people live in a place the size of Western Europe. It's ridiculous. Here's a fact or two; there are 60million kangaroos in Australia. And between 5 and 10 million wild camels. And 200million wild rabbits. I could go on. But I won't. It gets boring, and mind-blowing. But I'll leave you with this; the largest farm in Australia is Anna Creek Station. It's 6-million acres or 24,000sq metres. One farm. The whole of Wales is only 21,000sq metres.

Even in Sydney there's heaps of space. Everyone moans about how there's no room in Sydney. It's rubbish. There's heaps of room. There's National Parks all over the place. Even close to the city centre. It's truly incredible. Sydney is the only city I know where, when you arrive by plane and peek out of the window, the most prominent colour you see is ... green.

And that brings me to this.

Sydney.

It's a special place. I know it. Picky knows it (& she's German), most Sydneysiders know it. And how do we know it? Well, almost everyone I know who lives here, says that when they've been away - on holiday, for work, or for longer periods - they feel something very special and very unique when they come home. Just as the plane comes in to land something happens. It's something quite unique to Sydney. It never happened when I lived in England. You get this funny feeling. It's an 'Ah, I'm home' feeling.

It's a sense of pride. Of comfort. Of happiness. It's impossible to describe.

I'm even thinking now that I haven't done it very well here. But it's all I've got! Hopefully it helps to explain why Sydney became my home.

And why I never fancied moving back to England. Even when Tony Blair was the big boss!

pip pip

Ps ... There's a blog first from me coming your way on Friday. A video! Hell's bells ..