I wanted to have the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and Sydney and have the chance to work there.

I'm the son of an everyman. My father is a teacher. He teaches physics at a boys' school in Sydney.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb and it's that mix of people it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

The moment my doctor told me I went silent. My mum and dad were with me then we all went to pieces. I was saying No I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane.

One afternoon when I was 9 my dad told me I'd be skipping school the next day. Then we drove 12 hours from Melbourne to Sydney for the Centenary Test a once-in-a-lifetime commemorative cricket match. It was great fun - especially for a kid who was a massive sports fan.

Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.

Climate change is a global issue - from the point of view of the Earth's climate a molecule of CO2 emitted in Bejing is the same as a molecule emitted in Sydney.

I had some vague memory of visiting Canberra as a lad when we came up with my father by car. But when I made the long train journey from Sydney to Canberra and arrived at the little stop I did wonder slightly whether this really was the national capital.