I have added a few days onto a London trip to visit my mum in South Wales, and as I cross the Severn estuary I find myself wondering, as I have on previous visits, what Captain Cook was smoking when he decided to name the first Australian colony after this particular corner of Britain. It is invariably cold, the rain is unrelenting, and even in the eighteenth century the landscape would have been chopped up like a chessboard. From the deck of the Endeavour the untamed, sunburnt hinterland of Botany Bay must have looked much more like North Africa. But perhaps Cook, a Geordie, had never actually been to Old South Wales himself. Or perhaps he had a better sense of humour than he’s usually given credited for. Or perhaps before setting off on his epic voyage he should have gone to SpecSavers.

The Scots have always had a reputation for parsimony, but in my experience Wales is also a country of outstanding natural meanness. To keep her water rates to a minimum one of my aunts once had the handle of the commode in her guest bathroom removed. To flush the toilet you had to use the bucket of dirty bath-water she kept beside it. She wasn’t even poor. For many years she and her husband ran a grocery where my mum worked. One of her duties, she tells me, was to sweep the floor after the last customer had left, then mix the dust in with the loose tea, which was sold by the ounce. The day before we visit my aunt in her care facility she celebrated her 101st birthday, and when I congratulate her on her great age she attributes it to clean living and chapel attendance. My mother tells me she thinks it may have more to do with the rising cost of funerals.

Unlike the Scots, the Welsh don’t have the economic clout or political will to aspire very seriously to secession. But in one respect they impose their ethnicity more forcibly on visitors: all tax-payer funded communication here is delivered first in English and then again in Welsh. This means every road sign is twice as big as it needs to be and every railway station announcement twice as long and incoherent. Welsh is the Lazarus of languages. Fifty years ago it had all but disappeared, but now every child must learn it. There is even an all-Welsh BBC TV channel, but as far as my mother and her generation is concerned the presenters might as well be speaking Somali. In fact, thanks to the Blair government’s immigration policies, a Somalian channel would probably have more viewers in Cardiff. Australia is lucky that it has far too many indigenous languages and dialects to accommodate such ludicrous political correctness.

Caerphilly, the town where my mother lives, is famous for its cheese, and also for being the birthplace of the late lamented comedian Tommy Cooper, a sinister fez-wearing statue of whom stands in the town centre. There is also a castle, but seeing a castle in Wales is about as noteworthy as seeing a sheep in Australia. Pointing to the Welsh flag fluttering above the crumbling battlements, I ask a passing local in my best American accent where I might be able to see a dragon. He looks at me for a moment, and then explains that there aren’t any dragons in Wales. OK, I say, what about a museum where I can see dragon bones? He puts a kindly hand on my shoulder and tells me there never were any dragons; that it’s an entirely mythical creature, like the Loch Ness Monster. I look shattered and confess Loch Ness is my next destination.

I visit some cousins in a town called Ystrad Mynach, the correct pronunciation of which sounds like a coal miner clearing his throat after a long shift. For my male cousins, going down one of the many local pits would have been the only employment option up until the 1970s, when first soaring extraction costs and then later Thatcherism closed most of them down. On my last night I’m taken to a pub where my mother’s family have been regulars for years. Everyone seems to know who I am. ‘You’re Jill’s boy, aren’t you?’ says the barman, when it’s my turn to buy a round. ‘I am,’ I say. ‘And you’ve come all the way from Australia just to see her?’ ‘I have,’ I say. ‘Well, your money’s no good here,’ he says, as I reach for my wallet. ‘Isn’t it?’ I say. ‘No,’ he says. ‘But there’s a bank across the street where you can change it!’