One morning last week I made my usual trundle down the stairs, wearing my pyjama substitutes (an old painting top and some oversized joggers), filled the percolator from the boiling…

‘Ding!’ I’d reached the ground floor of the Cairns International Pullman Hotel. It was mid-October and just rolling into summer in Queensland, I stepped over the threshold into the main…

When I reached what looked like the centre of the bridge, I tentatively placed both my hands on the cold metal bar, leaning into it, to peer meekly over the…