Australia Day 2015 in Sydney. Low cloud and an all-day drizzle softened the colours and also toned down the red-white-and-blue flag-wagging nationalism that usually happens on the harbour at this time. As the clouds rolled over the houses on the opposite shore and the city buildings and the fibreglass hulls and the bridge and opera house you could almost imagine another January day on Milk Beach in similar weather, a few hundred years ago.