It is 5.30am in the morning. I am typing at Changi Airport in Singapore, about to board the next plane to Sydney, where I was born and grew up in a suburb called Bexley North, not far from where Captain Cook landed his ship ‘The Endeavour’ in Botany Bay, Australia, in 1788. That is ironically where the airport is located on the north of the bay.

Bexley North is in the St George region, made up of the cities of Kogarah (where a famous Aussie, Clive James, who also ended up in England, was raised 20 years before me), Hurstville and Rockdale. Further past this region is the final bit of Sydney to the south, the Shire, not Lord of the Rings, but home to Cronulla beach. This is where my brother Shaun learnt to surf.

I can feel my throat tightening as I type. It’s always an emotional trip, this next leg of the journey. I am not really returning home. I don’t live there anymore. I am just visiting. I will have to leave. And yet it is pivotal to my identity – who I am in the guts of me.

Yesterday we had a ‘Singapore Sling’ (cocktail) and sandwich at the Long Bar at the Raffles hotel. You can shell peanuts and chuck the shells on the floor. Little birds fly in and out, feeding on the crumbs. This tradition has been in place for a long time.

The hotel is an old colonial beauty, the matriarch of Singapore. She has watched the city shake off its colonial roots – Asian progress –without herself changing. She is like an elaborate wedding cake with red icing on top. If you don’t see anything else in Singapore, it is worth paying this great lady a visit.

I’ve been home to Sydney many, many times since the birth of my children, Anna and Hugo in 1994 and 1995 respectively.  I wanted them to see my side of the story – show them the greatness of this unique island, which is also classed as a continent.

But before Anna was born I only went home once, once in five years or so. I went walkabout in England and got lost. I forgot my roots. The Kangaroo was trying to camouflage herself as a pheasant.  But the didgeridoo was calling me back to my senses – somewhere there was a corroboree dreaming me home.

So when Anna was a baby we took her back to Oz to show her off to the relos (relatives).

After 18 exhausting hours on the plane, I caught sight of the Australian coastline ahead in the distance from my window seat. It caught me by surprise, knocked me off balance. I could see the surging waves relentlessly pounding the uninhabited section of virgin coast, just west of Darwin, at the top of Australia. There was no sign of civilisation for miles.

As we left the coastline behind and it sunk in that we were in Australia (albeit above it) something broke in me, a tension snapped and I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and loss. I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. We passed over miles and miles of red desert, my sunburnt country, before finally reaching the fertile band hugging Sydney in the east.

As Bill Bryson observed in his book ‘Down Under’ “Australia is, after all, mostly empty and a long way away.” It’s population nudges 23 million. Not much given its area is 2.97 million square miles. China is 3.7 million square miles. China has a population of 1,357 million. You can do the math. Lots more people inhabiting China.

Geoff patiently held Anna and let me get on with it – get the sadness out of my system – from setting foot ‘over’ Australia to touch down.  The staff on the plane looked concerned that there was a nutter on board. I wasn’t insane. It was just that the Kangaroo was coming back. She hadn’t disappeared forever. She’d just disappeared under a wave, holding her breath.

So today I will be up in a tin can in the sky, once again, with Geoff. It takes a day out of your life to reach Sydney from London. It’s worth it as I “Come from the land Down Under, where women glow and men plunder, Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder…” (Men at Work song). I can hear the thunder. It is the great country of Australia calling me and we’ll be there soon.