In June of this year I moved back, temporarily, to Sydney. I say moved ‘back’ because I lived in Sydney as a teenager and in my early twenties: 12 of my 38 years, with the remainder spent in regional Victoria and Melbourne. But Sydney marked me formatively. It’s brutal and beautiful. I feel nostalgic for it but I also remember how it felt to struggle here. I remember why I left.

I haven’t moved back to the Sydney I remember. In some ways that would be impossible; more than 15 years have passed and cities, particularly ones you have nostalgia for, change rapidly. I’m also not back in the inner west topography of my adolescence. Rather, I’ll be the last tenant before the demolition of a glamorous but dishevelled apartment above a long closed corner store in Malabar, a beachside suburb I’d never seen before April this year.