The Bug's editor Don Gordon-Brown (picture-taking above) has been fortunate enough to have worked off and on in Sydeney and subsequent days as well. He once actually shifted to the Harbour City thinking he could make a name for himself there but he was wrong in that as well. In his first full morning in this mesmerising metropolis, he realised he had stumbled onto somewhere truly special.

Where their word is God .....

Be anywhere in Sydney and you are surrounded by greatness.
It doesn't matter if you're standing on the open deck of the Many ferry Collaroy as it plunges through open waters towards Circular Quay. Or grabbing a quick bowl of breakfast cereal on the balcony of a nondescript Penshurt apartment block. Or trundling along George Street from Town Hall Station on your way to work.
Greatness abounds. It's pervasive and all-conquering. It seeps into your system almost without you knowing it – and it's what makes Sydney great itself.
And then sometimes you can even hear it. This greatness. It hums through hundreds of thousands of ordinary suburban homes and in countless taxis. Especially the taxis.
We are talking, of course, about air waves. But not just any air waves; nor air waves at just any time. They've got to be 2UE airwaves and they've got to be morning air waves – when Australia's two most influential broadcasters are shaping public opinion in large tracts of Terra Australis.
We're talking Alan Jones. And John Laws.
And it speaks volumes for Sydney that these two consummate communicators ply their trade there; perhaps no other part of Australian could have nurtured them so well; embraced their attitudes and their styles with such affection.
I had heard of these two great radio men before; well, at least Laws: sometimes when you're driving out the back of Burke or down the Bruce Highway from Cairns, radio pickings are slim indeed. You are obliged to listen to Mr Laws dispense his judgments on the trials and tribulations of a nation because the 2UE feed to many regional stations borders on monopoly.
And so it was on my first morning after I moved to Sydeney that I refreshed my association with these two great men of Sydeney.
I was staying temporarily with a sweet if rather conservative lady in an inner-south-western suburb of Narwee, famous for nothing more than being the home of a Melbourne Cup winner from the 70s, Eewran, or so I was told.
And the first thing that this lady did to brighten each morning was to turn on her radio, welded as many in Sydeney are, to 2UE.
Over the next hour so so, I realised with a jolt that Sydeney was very, very special indeed.
The first cab off the rank was Alan Jones.
His was a performance to be marvelled at. With carefully chosen words fuelled by what is clearly an enormous intellect, this gifted communicator stripped the news of the day to its bare bones, with a shrewd and tough analysis tinged nevertheless with the most Liberal of mind sets. In the twinkling of an eye, he could see through an issue and find undeniable fault with the Australian Labor Party's policy towards it.
Yet humble as well, or is it only the truly confident who allow their brilliance to be compared to others? For that's what Jones did this morning; graciously sharing his electronic podium with another of the world's great communicators.
I haven't played this inspirational speech for some time, Jones seemed to be saying to me alone. It was a tape, quite a long one, of one of the finest oratories every delivered by former US President Ronald Reagan. You may recall this opus yourself; an emotionally charged plea to ordinary Americans from the great man himself, during his eight years in the White House, his "Think not of what this country will remember about me, but what I will remember about this country" call to armsrace.
When the tape finally finished, there was a lengthy pause – a quiet moment Jones and I shared together as we soaked in the great man's monologue. When the great communicator began talking again – Jones, that is – there was an emotional quaver in his voice and it was then that I fancied we both had tears in our eyes, although Jones's were unlikely to be the result of laughing.
How does one top that? was the obvious thought as I came back from the bathroom after cleaning myself up. A blast of trumpets quickly answered that.
"Hello, world," silked John Laws from the ramparts of his beloved Citadel of Courage.
And then The Golden Tonsils was away, keeping the dream of a long lunch at Catalina's alive. He had just spent the weekend out in the country after returning safe and sound from America courtesy of those wonderful people at Qantas, and he and the princess just could not believe how pleasurable to drive was the new Toyota Turbo-charged Landcruiser Delux XXXLX ......
Sadly, work called and I had to pull myself away from Laws's hypnotic spiel, but not before he got in an almighty spray against the state's agriculture minister.
Well, this moron of a minister, this laughable lunatic on the red leather seat, this captive of the Chardonnay socialists and a fool beholden to the Balmain basket weavers had allowed a noxious weed to grow wild in some Crown waterway somewhere up in provincial NSW, hadn't he? If memory serves, it was some virulent strain of water hyacinth, although Laws kept referring to it by its scientific name, Valvalinus youknowwhatimeanis. Now, Laws had spoken to many farmers about the dangers of letting that happen, and by jove you've got to listen to farmers because it's their land and they treat it right. Have to! It's their living and they'd never do anything to hurt it. They told me, John, the first good rains are going to wash that weed right out of that reserve and into the waterways of the state and beyond and then Australia will never get rid of it. Well, folks, that's just what happened over the weekend.
Sadly, I had to race out of the house so didn't hear whether the minister had done the right thing and resigned that morning.
I spent the next 20 minutes in the train, trying to work out how I felt about these two great radio men of Sydeney. Now that I was a Sydeneysider myself, should I listen to them every morning? For that matter, was I required to? Could you be fined if you didn't? And what if you ever disagreed with them? What if Laws's citadel of courage turned out to be nothing more than a Bastion of Bombastry.
A few minutes later, I was never to doubt them ever again.
Is this normal for this time of day, I thought as I emerged blinking from Town Hall Station to find traffic at the George and Bathurst intersection in absolute gridlock. A white-faced man nodded further up George Street towards Circular Quay and uttered just one word and it chilled my bones: "Hyacinth!"
Yes, absolute tonnes of the stuff had smashed its way through the road surface at the corner of Market and George. By midday, it had clogged the entire inner-harbour and the ferry fleet's propellers had ground to a halt.
Even now, almost four years later and after a multi-million dollar clean-up operation that has only just concluded, Olympic visitors will notice just how green the harbour waters are from when the hyacinth was first poisoned and then shredded, its mass simply too great to consider physical removal.
No, I'm never, ever, going to disagree with Laws – or Jones – ever again.
If either tells me that Rams Home Loans or Qantas or Optus or Westpac or whatever are the way to go, then I'll go that way.
For the world is Sydeney and Sydeney believes their every word.