The particular kangaroo I was looking for was special: if you pressed its left foot it played Walzing Matilda. But when I asked for one in a Sydney tourist shop, the assistant looked panic-stricken. She'd no idea what Walzing Matilda was and even when I located a kangaroo that played it, she didn't recognise the tune. But then, why should she? She looked about 17 and had probably never set foot outside the boundaries of Australia's most famous city. And there was another factor: she was Chinese. Sydney's racial mix blows like a blessing through the city. The Greeks, Italians and Irish we already know about, but other immigrants are now making their indelible - and often edible - mark on the city. There are stalls where sushi is made to your own taste, while you wait. For dinner, one evening, we went to an Afghani restaurant. The driver of the taxi came from Laos and the man who finally sold me a singing kangaroo came from Azerbaijan.
Cars kept in check
Sydney is a startlingly green city. Strange and sudden bird- cries in suburbia evoke images of the rainforest. Palm trees along Macquarie Street and bare rockface in the city's underground carparks are reminders of the nature paradise this must have been once. While slender, elegant buildings scrape the sky, land regeneration programmes are restoring the bush to the city and, best of all, the car is being kept in check. Along the clearways leading in and out of Sydney, some lanes are marked T2 and T3. During peak hours, only vehicles with three or more passengers may drive in the Transit 3 lane and those with two passengers in Transit 2. The reward, if you happen to be more than two to a car, is sweet: zipping along the clearway, you arrive at your destination a good 15 minutes earlier than the oneperson cars you have just passed in a bumper-to-bumper queue.
There are also traffic-control schemes which keep cars out of residential areas. A sign bearing the picture of a house gives clear warning that there is nothing to be gained by someone with local knowledge deviating into a neighbourhood area and then nipping out again to rejoin the clearway further along: a system of no-go signs will take you right back to where you first started from. And Sydney police monitor their schemes systematically and efficiently. Nor are they lenient with lawbreaking push-bikers either. When speed-loving cycle couriers took to riding the pavements and short-cutting through pedestrian areas, the police kitted out their own crew of cyclists and went after them. The fine is the equivalent of a week's earnings.
Luscious wine-growing area
Not that there all that many cyclists. The only real ones I saw, with panniers and helmets, were up in the Hunter Valley - a luscious, wine-growing area a few hours' drive north of Sydney where some of the country's best-known wines are produced. Although we are relatively new to the delights of Australian wine, some of the Hunter Valley's 60 wineries have, in fact, been in production since the 1860s. My discovery bore the MacGuigan Bros label.
Coal-mining and vine-growing have brought prosperity to the inhabitants of the valley. It is small-town Australia, with streets of one-storey, clap-board houses bounded by white paling, no two the same yet each conforming to a set pattern: sun-shaded verandas, jasminescented gardens with sprinklers on the lawn. Gentility reigns. Well-kept churches stand in tidy grounds and the court report in the local newspaper tells of the netball canteen being broken into and a small amount of cash stolen. Footpaths in the residential part of town are almost nonexistent: nobody walks anywhere. Cars are polished to sparkling - except those bulletshot by a giant hailstone storm that hit the region a few months ago. The many different varieties of tall eucalyptus trees give shade to both sides of the street. In the local pub - built in the 1800s and the most elegant building in town - Jameson is on the shelf and racing is on the television. But there the similary ends. Banks of onearmed bandits line the walls.
In the Hunter Valley, I visited a man whose friend had just returned from a holiday in England, his first time overseas. What he couldn't get over was the size of the showers and lavatories in the B & Bs: "They were like cupboards," he said. "Here," explained my host modestly, " we're not short of space." Proud of both strands to his origins, his mantlepiece display included those twin icons of the Irish immigrant in Australia: a crucifix and a picture of Ned Kelly.
Oz stereotypes
Whatever Barry Humphries and Paul Hogan may have done for the stereotypical image of Oz, the fact remains that, although a lot of men in Sydney walk around with widebrimmed, outback hats, the only ones that actually have corks hanging from the brim are the ones on sale in the tourist shops. Nor does everyone warn you not to come the raw prawn with them or hurriedly leave the room to strain the potatoes or to shake hands with the wife's best friend.
The Australian accent, around Sydney at least, is pleasant and the only thing to watch out for is pronunciation and vocabulary. A vineyard is a vinyid and Melbourne is Melbun. If you can somehow manage to drop the "l", so much the better. The most-used word at the moment is rort, which, according to my dictionary, is Australian slang for a rowdy party. But in common parlance,it means the practice of politicians fiddling their expenses. Sleaze, to you and me. In Australia at the moment, it seems, there's a lot of rorting going on. Still, the vocabulary is something you can pick up quickly enough. On the way home one evening, I called in to the Sawdust Hotel (no kidding) to buy some champagne; then, wanting to make Buck's Fizz, I stopped off at a service station to buy some orange juice. "Sorry I'm late, I just stopped off to buy some OJ at the servo," I said nonchalantly when I got back. But I was in Australia for all of three days before someone said "G'day" to me.