Sometimes you need to leave a place to understand how emotionally important it is to you. I don’t mean simply in a ‘Home is where the heart is’ way. Home for me, I’ve come to realise, is just as much about where many of my thoughts and memories continue to dwell.

So many of mine are still in Canberra where I lived on and off for more than 20 years. They’re still there even six years after we moved a few hours up the Hume to this vast metropolis that groans and creaks under its own weight, a place whose light and sparkle belies its perma-state of life-support.