CLARE FLYNN

Sometimes when working I get dizzy. Not out of tiredness, though there's plenty of that, but from the distance I travel without leaving my chair. One day I'm walking the blacked-out streets of wartime Sydney, absorbing the anxiety of a city that suddenly finds the war not on the other side of the world but terrifyingly close to home. The next day, I'm on a hillside in Sri Lanka, back when it was called Ceylon, surrounded by a green counterpane of tea bushes stretching in ever

I’m going to take you to some of the places that feature in UNDER A SOUTHERN SKY. Welcome to Sydney in 1942.

My office was just down the road beside Darling Harbour and I used to have the occasional beer after work in the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel –...