In the late 1930s an apprentice potter made a solemn pledge with some of his young work mates to meet up on New Year's Day, in the year 2000, in the famous Long Bar of the Hotel Australia. But the reunion never took place because, while sixty years later the young man in question, the author's father, was still going strong, the venue was no longer standing. The Hotel Australia, Sydney's premier hotel throughout much of the twentieth century, had...