The last time I enjoyed this view in this very spot was in late 1972. The sails were already up but the Opera House hadn't officially been opened yet and I wasn't reclining on an expensive sun lounge but on a rickety garden bench which was one of the very few amenities provided by the down-at-heel boarding-house I was living in at the time.
It was one of many grand old mansions around Sydney which had fallen into disrepair and turned into a boarding-house for young people who hadn't made it yet and some old ones who never had. I was one of the young people who occupied a small and threadbarely furnished room at the top of a sweeping staircase straight out of Pride and Prejudice.
Not that my room would've satisfied Mr Darcy's aristocratic tastes: an old chenille bedspread almost worn down to its bare fabric over a lumpy mattress, a narrow wardrobe, and a dresser topped by a fly-blown mirror which covered most of the window which meant that all night long I could hear the shrieking noise from Luna Park's Big Dipper across Lavender Bay but could only see it if I stood on an upturned milk crate.
What made up for the never-changing breakfast of baked beans on toast and the queue outside the only bathroom was its central location, both to the picturesque village of McMahons Point and the ferry ride across to Circular Quay - and, needless to say, the very affordable rent.
Of course, there's nothing affordable about it anymore today: the old roofline is still there, but the boarding-house itself and its lavish garden have been converted into multi-million-dollar townhouses - click here.
For old-time's sake, I took one last walk down the old steps leading from Warung Street to the ferry stop in Henry Lawson Avenue, and past the entrance to what was then the old boarding-house and is now a gated community with closed-circuit TV and speakers on the security gates.
I wonder, do they still serve baked beans on toast behind those gold-tipped wrought-iron gates?
