Early doors we tear ourselves away from our new apartment’s fabulous views and wander along the clifftops to Maroubra Beach. Here the local surf toughs, the ‘Bra boys, are taking to the waves, the fashionable brassieres and lingerie which give them their name shining brightly above their wetsuits in the morning sun. They instantly take a liking to us, and accept us into their thuggish but friendly fraternity.

“‘Bra recognises brah, bro,” notes a Gay Arctic Monkey, rather sagely.

Maroubra, overall, was found a little wanting, so we grabbed a quick breakfast-to-go and wandered back in the direction of home. And who did we meet on the path back to the flat but one Agent Cooper?

Chatham House Rules had, it seemed, invited her down to our new beach-side dominion, but, distracted by our new ‘Bra friends, had forgotten to furnish her with proper directions – hence her aimless wandering and our serendipitous clifftop rendezvous.

Chatham HR, a GAM and Agent Cooper then strolled across to the nearby (and superior) Coogee Beach. The Eagle and I stayed back at the flat for a wee while longer – myself as I had a spot o’ writing to do; The Eagle because he required additional slumber. The poor, glabrous soul had been stuck in a room with Chatham the previous night, and our learned friend had, snoring-wise, composed his latest masterpiece.

However, once rested, written up and – after a lovely walk along the rugged coastline to Coogee – reunited, the six of us all enjoyed fish ‘n’ chips and (contractually obligated) Coopers Pale Ale. Yes indeed, readers, six – we were now a round half dozen, for the Associated Press had returned (albeit briefly) to the fold, having been up seeing old friends in Newcastle (NSW).

This lovely scene of companionable felicity was only slightly dampened, pun very much intended, when The Eagle, idiot bird that he is, decided to pour an entire ice cold schooner of Coopers directly onto my testicles. Such was the sub-Kelvin temperature of the beer and such was the paper thin fabric of my ‘board shorts’, my reaction was far from muted – sending The Eagle flapping away apace.

Eventually, we managed to coax him down from a nearby tree, and we are able to wander back homewards. As nice as it would’ve been to stay and periodically dowse ourselves with freezing Australian beer, Chatham had a Skype talk thingy with yet another group of his followers and fans, and Agent Cooper had to go see a man about a barrel.

Now this august September day happened to be the 30th Anniversary of Frankie Blue Eyes’ birth, so that evening we schlepped on over to the Palisade Hotel in…hee hee hee…’Barangaroo’. The views out over the harbour were magnificent and the company uniformly excellent, and a good few sad goodbyes were exchanged at the evening’s conclusion – including with the World’s Worst Best Man, both the best and worst of blokes, right to the end.

Hangry A was also in attendance, and once last orders had come and gone we went together on an unsuccessful quest for that great Australian delicacy, the ‘meat pie’. Once defeated, we had to content ourselves with a final Opera House ‘selfie’, then a long bus ride back south with empty bellies.

*

The next day was to be a big walking day – much to the chagrin of Chatham House Rules, he being a man who has a.) a dodgy ankle and b.) a tendency to order Uber Deluxes at the drop of a chapeau.

The first leg was back to Coogee, where The Eagle and Chatham HR enjoy a couple of nice breakfasts and where I (finally) source myself a ‘meat pie’. It was, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, middling.

We then strolled along a patch of beauteous coastline to Bronte, where a Gay Arctic Monkey and I very much enjoyed some top rate seafood and chips – suggested to me the previous evening, rather forcibly, by a markedly tipsy Frankie Blue Eyes.

Everyone now fuelled, we mosey along, all the way to the famous Bondi Beach. Here we finally brave the frosty Pacific Ocean, mucking about in the waves for an impressive five minutes, before the cold becomes too much to bear, and our collective manhoods shrivel up into nothingness.

Continuing to go ‘full tourist’, we then purchased a selection of unnecessary Bondi souvenirs for our nearest and dearest, before thinking, ‘bugger it’, and walking all the way back to Coogee Beach, very much enjoying the play of twilight and sunset on this truly lovely part of the world.

At Coogee we ate kangaroo, as you do, at a joint called Barzura – it tastes a little like venison on the turn, but not exclusively in a bad way – and drank plenty of cheap red wine. Hangry A joined us one final time, and together we all adjourned to the beach-side Airbnb for more wine and some of the mountain of cheese we’d purloined from the Wedding of Pane. We could scarcely afford, as they say, ‘a heavy one’, for the taxi was booked for seven in the am the next morning – the taxi to the airport, my friends…our Australian days were very nearly numbered…

*

The driver was talkative…too talkative…but he at least knew the way to the airport and never came close to getting us killed, so he beat his Melbourne counterpart hands down, in my opinion.

Our final Australian hours were pretty melancholy, to be honest, a sleepy slog through check-in and security, and one last Oz coffee stop. It is, it must be said, a pretty fabulous country, and we all had the most sensational time, so it was unsurprising we felt a wee bit down about leaving.

However, our moods were instantly brightened when we bumped into a Puck Bunny, a very old friend of the World’s Worst Groom and a Wedding of Pane MC-extraordinaire. We were, as chance would have it, on the very same flight up to Hong Kong – her en route to distant, numinous Europe, us for a fresh, mini-adventure in the buzzing Cantonese metropolis. It promised to be an exciting, fun-packed, dumpling-filled few days…and who knows, perhaps we might post about it…should anything particularly noteworthy take place…

But all this, my friends, was in the future. It was now time to board the plane, to bid a fond ‘yeah bye mate’ to one heck of a place, and draw a final line under a hell of an Aussie trip. ‘Australians all let us rejoice’ indeed.