Never forget your roots

I had a major-league problem with my home city of Wollongong by the time I had finished high school and was starting at university, in Sydney.

I ranted this terrible alliteration back in December 1973. Needless to say, the bitterness has long rubbed off - as has Wollongong's heavy-duty industrial persona . . .

Wollongong's a three-shift steel mill town, a sad string of souless suburbs, staggering down the coastline in search of a city. Where haute cuisine is an Hawaiian pizza on a Friday night - and you can find it after the bars shut, and it isn't cold . . .