How far should a man be prepared to go for a free meal? Two weeks ago I came 12,000 miles to attend The Spectator Australia Writer’s Long Lunch. The flight wasn’t free, of course, but because it was with poor old Malaysian Airlines it was a lot cheaper than it would have been a year ago. Not having flown Malaysian for some time I was surprised to see they still welcome passengers aboard with a generous serving of satay. Considering how many young people these days go into anaphylactic shock when you so much as show them a picture of a peanut this strikes me as bordering on corporate recklessness.

I enjoyed the satay, but turned down the complimentary prosecco, having eschewed alcohol on planes since 1992, when Qantas upgraded me and my art director to first class on the return leg of a shoot in California. Seeing the astonishing selection of fine Australian wines on the menu, and knowing that we’d never be in this position again, we determined to have a glass of each of them before landing in Sydney. In the middle of the night, somewhere over Hawaii, I woke up in my window seat horribly dehydrated and desperate for a pee. But I’d lost my glasses so had to follow the floor-lights along the cabin to the bathroom. Getting back to what I thought was my seat I had one leg over what I thought was my snoring companion when he woke up and grabbed me by the lapels. Still a bit drunk and entering into the spirit of things and I wrestled playfully for a couple of seconds before the light came on and I found I had my hands round the throat of Andrew Peacock, the then Leader of the Opposition. If you made the same mistake today you’d certainly be arrested, and possibly even shot by one of the marshals most airlines now put on long-haul flights. I got away with it by promising the poor bloke I’d vote for him.

Thanks to the wit of the post-prandial speakers and also to the largesse of the Pratt Foundation, the Aussie Speccie long lunch exceeded all expectations. That is to say, I haven’t laughed as much since, well, since I was last in Australia. Or drunk as much, either, probably. In the politically correct US, where I’ve spent most of the last decade, the symbiosis of hard drinking and great writing established by people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald has become something of an inconvenient truth. The only great American novelist who didn’t use booze as muse was Mark Twain. But he blotted his PC copybook even more badly by dropping the n-word every few pages.

As a pommie rugby fan with Australian citizenship I couldn’t have timed my return to Sydney better, and now that all the RWC ‘home nations’ have been eliminated I can give the Wallabies my unequivocal support through the closing stages of the competition (I’m confident that by the time this appears they will have trounced the Argies). Things were much tenser in 2003, when I had to carry both passports around for weeks. One of my fondest memories of that time – and one which shows how much the world has changed since then in at least one respect – was a chant heard on the train out to Homebush on the day of the final. ‘One pound sterling,’ sang the English fans, to the tune of ‘Guantanamera’, ‘will buy you three Aussie dollars. Three Aussie dollars, will just buy one pound sterling…’ In the stadium an hour later – and five years after the Republican Referendum – the barmy army twisted the knife by answering Advance Australia Fair with ‘God save your gracious queen, long live your noble queen…’ Their sporting success may be sporadic, the poms, but they will always be world class barrackers.

In light of its rollercoaster currency and tendency to discard prime ministers on a seasonal basis, I was worried Australia might have become a very different country in the ten years I’ve been away. But most of the physical differences I’ve noticed in Sydney, at least, strike me as improvements. The two most conspicuous being the disappearance of that ridiculous monorail and the ongoing transformation of the north end of Darling Harbour. I’ve always had a soft spot for the less touristy side of The Rocks and now it looks set to become a real jewel in the crown of this already gob-smackingly beautiful city.

Mosman, where I am staying with friends, has changed in one very odd way. When I last walked around its many green spaces a bush turkey would have been a very rare sight indeed. But now they are everywhere you look. My host tells me that they are a nuisance (‘and you can’t even eat the buggers’) but I quite like them – and at least they are a native species, which is more than you can say about the dirty, sinister ibises who still disgorge the contents of every trash can.

Ten years is a very long time indeed for a dog. The last time I saw my hosts’ she was a boisterous adolescent. Now, according to her master, she has dogzheimers, and one way this manifests itself is her subversion of the canine sentry role. Instead of barking excitedly when anyone enters the house, as she used to, she now blinks silently at them while trying to remember if she’s ever seen or smelt them before. She does this as much with the family she’s lived with all her life as with visiting tradesmen. But as if to compensate for this, she regularly takes a position at the lounge window and barks authoritatively at nothing for a few minutes. ‘Nobody coming yet!’ seems to be the message. ‘Coast still clear!’