Walking along from Coogee Beach to Bondi – as one does – I overheard a couple talking about Australian history. ‘You know, that guy?’ ‘What, Captain Cook?’ ‘Yeah, him. You know, he didn’t die a natural death. He was killed by the Bee Gees.’

Now blow me down with a feather. I knew of their crimes against music – plenty of them. But come on, murder? I so wanted to know more. Like, which one did the deed – or struck, as it is called in the rabbinical legal commentaries, the Final Hammer Blow? Was it the one with the teeth, or maybe the one with the hair? Or maybe the one with neither? And if it wasn’t Robin, Barry or Maurice, maybe it was the young one with the coat of many colours, whose brothers wouldn’t let him play with the big boys – Andy. And which song was it that murdered poor old Captain Cook? Surely not Staying Alive. Maybe Night Fever. Maybe Tragedy. Or New York Mining Disaster 1941…. 

Which of course begs the question. Who murdered Napoleon? Edith Piaf? Inspector Clouseau? Who killed Churchill? The Spencer Davis Group? Queen? And who saw off Vasco de Gamma? Jose Mourinho? 

TC, wrong as usual, thinks they probably said The Fijians, not The Bee Gees. But I haven’t heard of them, unless they were the ones with that hit ‘Walk Like a Fiji-an’. 

Anyway, having a great time. Did I say? It’s a brilliant country, with lovely people, mostly fab weather, and most importantly, they love my songs. Going down very well at Open Mics, despite the rubbish guitar I ended up with. Almost as genius is the most fantastic wine and the most beautiful birds and animals anywhere. 

Which brings us soon to the Hunter Valley. But first, we spent a few days in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Blue because the eucalypts give a blue tinge to the bush. Fabulous walking along vertiginous paths, with overhanging cantilevered outcrops of sandstone making you dizzy. Early morning cloudbanks below you, while the goddamn white cockatoos screech and the more elegant yellow tailed black cockatoos shyly hide away in the trees. And all the parrots like the beautiful Rozella resplendent and showing off. 

Anyway, the Hunter Valley could have been reached in 2 hours from the Blue Mountains if it wasn’t for the worst rainstorm ever, causing us to stop and swap our hire car for an armoured Humvee. We got there. The clouds parted. The Hunter is famous for its Semillon white wines – very dry indeed, all lemon, tang and demanding fish or pasta. We visited a few vineyards, tasted a load of wines, learned lots, forgot it all, bought half a dozen bottles. Someone has to do it, or the poor chaps would go out of business. Which – seriously – they might do anyway, given the rain and humidity has completely ruined the crop this year: split grapes, poor growth, mildew…the talk is of climate change, damp Queensland weather shifting south.  

We stayed away from the main places on a small holding on the edge of the bush, in a wooden cabin of our own, overlooking the trees and the lake – and as we got used to seeing them, these wonderful things they call kangaroos. 

My, they are lovely creatures. Really they are deer, but only with two legs. They look at us inquisitively, warily, from a distance. Ready to run, but not wanting to: perhaps as fascinated by us as we are by them. Coming out at the start and end of day, glimpsed through the dawn or the twilight, the sun wafting through their fur, through the warm breath from their nostrils. Nearby, grasses sway mildly, matching their sense of balance and poise. And then, this sight snapped by TC, barely 5 metres from us, her Joey there poking its little head out. It seems so different, this marsupial thing, but TC tells me it’s very efficient. One grown Joey, one super foetus also in there, one even smaller waiting until the large Joey vacates for good. If I were a male kangaroo, I would be very jealous of this pouch business. They loaf about languidly in family groups, and when they go, man just watch them! Their hind quarters, on which they’ve been squatting, turn into athletic engines, coiled springs as they bound off to watch from a safer distance, then further, then going where the fancy takes them. Only Man could have preferred the wheel.  

Pal Joey is a film starring Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, and Frank Sinatra who is caught between the two women, one who offers love, the other who offers money and the nightclub he craves. I have always had a soft spot for Frankie, and Pal Joey, one an old crooner… the other a kangarooner… 

OK, so once in a while you get a laboured ending…