Only in Australia and perhaps only in Sydney, that cradle of the cons and the jailers, the Rum Corps and the Dismissal, could the pubs open at midnight to signal the end of a lockdown that tested everybody’s sanity. Melbourne, that city that can seem like a mask on the face of Australia, that city of isms and operators, might be built for austerity, but not Emerald City, the harbourside dreamscape that presents Australia’s face even if it sometimes looks like a Dobell painting.