Twenty-five years.

It’s been a long time since that final navy cutter pulled away from Sydney Harbour, and I've just arrived in-country a week before the nation commemorates the quarter-century anniversary of its liberation - a day that proves an on-going cause of both celebration and anger.

It's been too long since I last returned to Australia, several years in fact, and looking down at the beautiful variety of landscapes sweep past during our long descent makes me wish I’d make an effort to do so more often.

Soon the patchwork farmland and olive-green wash of the Blue Mountains gives way to the artificial decay of nature that is urban sprawl, and before long, the impressive skyline of Sydney CBD comes in to view. Suffice to say, Sydney looks a little different now than it did when I still lived in Australia. The country, having struggled through a severe post-occupation era, bounded back after successive governments wisely chose to pursue policies nurturing economic self-reliance.

By far the most striking feature of Sydney’s downtown hub is The Helix. This superscraper, whose spire reaches so high it seemingly threatens to pierce the clouds above, dominates the landscape of new and old, rising in the breath-taking resemblance of a spiralling triple-helix.

For certain The Helix has had its critics; the late master-architect Jesse Trembolo called it "...beautiful to look at, but like an awkward Gulliver, there’s just too much of it to coalesce with the native urban landscape.”

Personally, I find its gorgeous blend of glass, etched-plating and dynamic geometry wholly inspiring, like a signalling beacon of Australia’s progressive future.

One fact not widely known is that The Helix was the brainchild of renowned Sydney-based architect, Zheng Qing Jun, whose much acclaimed design - originally called Unity Tower - was approved some two years before the war in the Esterlands ended. Foundational construction was already well underway when John Cosh stormed out of the Esterlands with his legions, ultimately leading to the project’s lengthy abandonment.

After liberation, Jun - who’d emigrated from Shanghai decades before occupation - was one of many who chose to stay and ride out the inevitable backlash sadly suffered by a great number of Chinese-Australians.

A liberated civilisation seeking an outlet for its anger and shame was always going to lead the nation down a dark path. Throw in a little white-hot ignorance and the result was an ultra-nationalist surge that swept through the wider community. As such, it wasn’t just the Chinese alone who were targeted; Thai and Vietnamese communities nested in almost every city, some of whom had supported various insurgency efforts, were affected terribly during the early post-oc years.

This amplifying nationalism resulted in a nightmare scenario for the newly reformed federal government as it struggled to forge stability across the land and regain the confidence of the people.

Despite Jun’s brave attempt to weather the storm, he found himself ostracised by former friends and associates, his reputation unfairly tarnished and business in ruins. He eventually relocated to the United States, forced not only to abandon his master project, but to later see it raised to completion by the very city which had turned its back on him.

Shaelin Yu, in her own acclaimed biography, Yellowjacket, also wrote of her struggles with the ‘associative prejudice’ faced by a number of young Chinese-Australians, many of whose families had been in the country for generations.

Yellowjacket, a racial epithet taken from a species of aggressive wasp known to colonise homes, was adopted from slang rising out of the Esterlands during the war, soon finding itself in widespread use throughout post-oc Australia.

In her book, Yu speaks of the staggering change in societal attitudes before and after liberation. Classmates she’d known since primary school would make buzzing sounds as she passed by in the halls; strangers would mockingly ask if she'd ‘missed the boat home’, and it became common to find dead wasps in the letterbox, often with notes that read variations of, "the ECR sends its regards".

While local nationalist groups were mostly responsible for this kind of behaviour that prompted many families to relocate, Yu quickly learned that systematic post-oc vilification ran even deeper than just angry mobs of disaffected troublemakers.

After attending a police station near her home in Brisbane to report ongoing threats against her family, she noticed a screensaver image on one of the station computers. It showed a Vietnam War-era soldier wielding a flame-thrower, while beneath, the caption read: The only cure for Yellowjackets.

Yu subsequently left the station without making her report, in tears and armed with the title of her future best-seller.

This wave of intimidation and maliciousness which arose during the post-oc period was responsible for sowing whole new divisions in a country trying desperately to reunite – rifts from which even now it has never truly healed.

When I read Yellowjacket for the first time at university, I still harboured enough resentment to counteract whatever empathy her words might elicit. Not until sometime later, once I re-read her book with a wiser mind did Shaelin Yu’s story – in particular her crushing sense of isolation, fear and conflict of identity in the post-oc age – really land home.

I reached out to Shaelin many years ago. Through each our tale, we’ve since become good friends and I plan to round out my trip with a stop-over visit in Brisbane where she still lives today.

Soon enough, my aircraft is touching down, and through my window as we taxi to the terminal, I try to picture what the scene must have looked like during the final hours of the war, but it’s a difficult image to lay over the general humdrum and routine of a bustling tarmac.

Like all major airports now, the efficiency of modern passenger processing has improved greatly at the simple expense of human interaction, and as we disembark our aircraft, a well-lit sterile white corridor lined with arrays of black-domed cameras and one-way mirrored windows welcomes us.

Soon after the cameras have run their facial and behavioural recognition algorithms to identify fugitives and all-round troublemakers, we're channelled into several single-file rows to stream past banks of scanners that examine us inside, outside and in god-knows how many spectrums for illegal contraband and smuggled in-flight peanuts.

As we steadily forge through the dynamic but invasive system, the guy behind me jokes loudly to a companion that he only comes home once a year for the free tumour check.

Finally, we enter the country officially by swiping our passport cards - an act seeming almost redundant given the scanners have probably just read the serial numbers on my dental work.

Not until after we collect our baggage, survive a customs inspection and finally spill into the bustling arrivals hall are we returned to a world of colour, warmth and the liveliness of human-beings reconnecting with each other. Since I have no one to meet me and time is not an enemy, I grab a coffee to jump start my body clock.

Glancing around the airport, which underwent significant renovation to repair the damage caused during 5-Lgn's ferocious battle to capture it, I again try to imagine the chaos, noise and violence that must have erupted throughout these halls in the last hours of the war - referred to in popular culture here as the 'final forty-eight'.

Until four years ago, there had been information plaques erected around the terminals displaying timeline descriptions of the battle at the airport and the evacuation that followed. As relations with China have slowly begun to thaw however, a campaign was recently launched by Sydney City Council (SCC) to have the plaques removed after they were deemed a potentially distressing reminder of the conflict and one that might inflame old wounds.

Despite heavy criticism against the action, the mayor of Sydney insisted the plaques be taken down. Katy Thanopoulis, Deputy-Secretary for ECR-Relations raised the ire of the city council after accusing SCC and the mayor of 'treading in the footsteps of this country's past mistakes' by deliberately whitewashing the history of occupation for tourism revenue. She then went on to add, ""...let's hope the Turks don't start fussing over ANZAC day, else [Mayor Roe Oliver] will be tearing down the War Memorial stone by stone for a pat on the head and a slice of Baklava."

Her comments sparked a furious back-and-forth row, eventually forcing the president to weigh in. A month out from the Asian Pacific Trade Summit, he publicly backed the SCC despite mounting public disapproval. It underlined the tensions ever simmering between a government trying to open itself back up to the world, and a public still highly distrustful of their elected officials.

Finishing up my coffee, I weave my way through the crowd towards the exit. Cheery tourism commercials play on screens throughout the terminal, doing their utmost to entice me (and my dollars) to the national landmarks, local hotspots and pristine beaches Australia has become primarily known for again.

It took the wider industry a good many years to fully recover after the post-oc struggles, but during this difficult period a booming new opportunity arose and was quickly exploited: war tourism.

Each week during high season, thousands of tourists with money to burn arrive in Sydney looking to join one of packaged expeditions promising the 'full experience' of the Esterlands War - a misnomer given that entry to the ECR is highly restricted and that the tours only take place on the mainland side. Nevertheless, they bring crucial revenue to various bordertowns around the Esterlands, each which played a various role in the conflict.

So lucrative did this new income stream prove to be in the early post-oc years, Australia's floundering tourism industry secured grants with which to heavily develop roads, facilities and infrastructure right the way around the mainland's side of the border it shares with the Esterlands just to cope with the numbers that kept arriving.

In the last half-decade though, these numbers have begun to wane slightly, driven largely by the Esterlands’ unwillingness to open its borders. In the early days, this state of hard-line isolation was a drawcard in the odd way that humans are pulled towards the forbidden and the strange, but that novelty is starting to wear off.

The crowds will keep the industry profitable for some years to come, but unless the ECR decides to open itself to a curious world, I foresee a day when people simply grow tired of being kept at arm’s length and take their time and money elsewhere.

After breaking free of the crowded terminal, I walk out into a pleasantly warm autumn day. I share a four-seater autonomous fast shuttle - a swifty in the local slang - from the terminal platform into downtown Sydney with two fellows also travelling solo. We plunge down a steep ramp to join the airport-city link tunnel.

Since Harburg, I don't generally fare well in situations that require my presence below the earth's surface, though the traffic tunnels beneath Sydney are broad and bright enough to allay the creeping claustrophobia and fear of imminent collapse that usually tightens my chest.

The shuttle pops out onto Elizabeth St near Hyde Park and begins seamlessly threading its way around the inner-city, first delivering my two companions to their destinations before turning towards my hotel near King St Wharf. We slip effortlessly through a busy intersection without slowing for the vehicles coming from either side, trusting our survival to the millisecond accuracy of its onboard sensors and computers all patched in to Sydney's vast intelligent traffic control network.

The Helix, which can be seen from just about anywhere, makes for as much a stunning sight at surface level as it does from the air. Its three entwining ‘strands’ seem to have no straight edge anywhere, all of it serpentine and surreal, each strand embracing the other two in seamless unity - Zheng Qing Jun’s vision come to life.

In his later years, Jun noted in his memoirs that at one particular social event, the JSAC cultural minister drunkenly revealed the government’s mandate to apply the term unity in every circumstance possible - reinforcing the notion among the native population that common social ideals and unified governance were to the benefit of all.

After abandoning the shores of his adopted nation, Jun’s former development partners, Maynard & Heche, were commissioned by the newly elected state premier to take over completion of the superscraper – renamed The Helix.

This choice would itself prove controversial, as it was common knowledge that Maynard & Heche had built their name and fortune through alliances made with JSAC during occupation.

Furthermore, there was fearsome debate regarding the outlay of hundreds of millions to be spent subsidising the cost of The Helix – considered a vanity project by many – while some Esterlands frontier cities, Harburg in particular, lay in desperate need of reconstruction.

With a billion-dollar hole left in the ground, however, the state had little choice but to tender out a contract for The Helix's completion. Critics quickly pointed out that Maynard & Heche’s experience in raising necessary capital and developing large scale national infrastructure - engineered almost exclusively through connections it had developed with Beijing - left them with a near-monopoly stranglehold in a field of less established competitors.

Three months after construction had recommenced, Maynard & Heche saw their past affiliations come back to haunt them after revelations that - during the onset of the war - Gerard Heche had actively lobbied JSAC ministers to serve as civilian architectural consultant for the new SADR base to be raised at Triesto.

It was from this stronghold that nearly all offensive operations against the Esterlands were strategized and launched.

At a time when legion units were known to be aggressively hunting down former political enemies at home and abroad, the government was afraid of straying too close to old lines in the sand. Although both the premier and the company tried to play down accusations of wilful collaborationism, a second scandal soon hit the beleaguered executive.

A video taken some years earlier suddenly surfaced, showing Heche speaking to acquaintances at a state banquet for the visiting Chinese premier. In the recording, he (only) half-jokingly suggests that the company should “offer to build the gallows for Cosh and see if that doesn’t buy us a few city blocks in Shanghai.”

Already facing growing calls for inquiry, the NSW premier made the swift decision to rescind the contract. Heche was eventually forced out of his own company and the Helix was finally taken over by the Florence Group, whose incredible work has quite literally raised Sydney to a whole new level.

Among the fascinating new aspects of Sydney are the weave of skyways that now span high above the streets, linking between – and occasionally through – the city’s modern infrastructure.

As is a common pitfall for metropolises with burgeoning populations and limited real estate, Sydney grew to be a victim of its early architecture. Huge advances in automotive AI and subterranean road networks have done much to reduce the traffic congestion once plaguing the city, but the endless battle for territory forced city planners to implement drastic solutions.

In a feat of engineering worthy of a nation charging into a bold new era, so was born the Skyways project. Its rather banal name is rarely used by locals, mind you, who typically refer to the skyways as ‘the Uppers’.

Often lined with sections of cultivated green-space, viewing platforms, jogging tracks, food vendors and air-taxi hubs, the broad skyway bridges allow Sydney-folk to comfortably navigate, celebrate and enjoy the city from on high.

While there were a few early grumbles from ground-level commercial interests, overall the skyways have been warmly embraced by the public, and I plan to take a stroll along the bridges later in the evening if my stamina holds up.

Only a few minutes later, the shuttle arrives at my hotel. One of many boutique outfits that pepper the lanes around the wharf, it has maybe a dozen rooms and is well known for its impressive lobby, which has been modelled as a exhibition gallery dedicated to occupation-era photography.

Indeed, as I walk in, it’s clear how much effort has been made – not to mention money invested – in creating a beautiful and moving tribute to the country’s recent history. Before checking in, I take several minutes to wander around the central photographic exhibits, all encased in glass panels lit softly from within and extending ceiling to floor in a spiralling pattern that lures the viewer toward its centre.

Many of the works I am already familiar with as they are from the collection of German photojournalist Charlotte Wagner, the only war correspondent to have smuggled herself into Harburg during the second siege. If you are not familiar with her work, I recommend you become so.

I stop briefly at her We, Beneath the Earth - a black and white shot showing a group of eight kids, early teens, squatting in a huddle loading rifle clips while several legion fighters, one who looks wounded, are either cleaning or trying to repair a large machine gun in one of the many underground bunkers below Harburg.

I recognise one of the kids loading the clips; his name was Liam. We served together as ‘rush-rats’, and were running ammunition to the front lines when I got fragged for the first time. To this day, I still don't know if Liam survived the war.

Due to the incessant artillery and mortar barrages that plagued the city, many of Harburg's critical operations and facilities were located in bunkers below ground or tunnelled into the mountains. From our medical stations, munitions and food stores, generators, water sinks and tunnels that let us move unseen, they played a crucial role in the city's survival. Some of them also became tombs when the rock and earth above could no longer withstand the repetetive detonation of high-explosive shells.

Two panels down I find The Price We Pay - a reminder of what the war took from us all in a heart-breaking shot of Miriam Keane with her granddaughter, Lucy, during the aftermath of one such barrage. An hour after this photograph was taken, Keane made her own bloody mark upon the war in spectacular fashion. Her story is one I shall delve into later.

In the centre of the exhibit, at the terminus of the spiral, is doubtless the most renowned image of the war. I’ve lost hours of my life studying this photograph. It's donned the cover of numerous books and been the subject of several films and documentaries, an image commonly ranked as one of the most iconic war photographs in history – Wagner’s Child of the 7th.

Actually the last frame in a series of five images, Child of the 7th shows a young boy preparing to rush to the hell of the Mar during the opening salvo of the August-Dread Offensive. I put his age at maybe eleven, though it’s difficult to estimate. His young face is gaunt, frame slender – a clear sign of the severe malnourishment being suffered throughout the city in the final year of the siege.

The boy is clad in legion armour which has clearly been printed to fit his slight form, indicating that by this stage of the siege, children his age were actively deploying to the front lines.

The first three shots in the set show him in various states of grasping for his rifle and equipment while others dash for cover as shells begin raining down on the city. In the fourth picture he is on one knee, clipping his signature maw-mask across the lower half of his face, appearing almost indifferent to the violence of the bombardment tearing apart his surroundings - just another day in Harburg.

In the iconic fifth and final shot, the boy has risen to his feet, equipped and armed, ready for battle. Whereas the four previous photographs were widely framed, this last one is up-close, raw and defining, with the boy now consuming the whole frame. A moment before the shutter comes down, he steals a glance at Wagner.

Glaring down the lens of her camera, there is no shred of innocence to be found - just hatred, exhaustion and defiance merged into a haunting expression that has no place being borne in the eyes of a child. Most chillingly, the legion's mark is visible, inked into the flesh beneath the corner of his left eye - a notorious badge of honour earned by those blooded on the front lines.

This child has taken lives in combat.

I sometimes find myself wondering who the boy might have been. The night we evacuated from Harburg, he would have been roughly the same age as my cousin Oliver, just five years old at the time. It's frightening to imagine this could have been Ollie had he not escaped the city.

As for the boy in Wagner's unforgettable photograph, I doubt we will ever know his fate. Did he survive, or is he now just a name lost among the many others inscribed upon the Eagle Spire, destined to be forever remembered as a symbol of violent rebellion?

After poking around at a few other exhibits, it’s time to check in. Hanging on the wall behind the small reception desk, I am rather surprised to find Peter Sachin's It Ends Upon the Bridge.

This controversial image - here blown up to a scale that disturbingly amplifies each macabre detail - encapsulates the terrifying campaign of retribution that occurred throughout the early post-oc era. Even now, the cold-blooded mass execution captured in Sachin’s photograph provokes a polarised national reaction.

When he hands over my room card, I ask the clerk if they receive many complaints about the image being on display.

'No complaints,' he tells me matter-of-factly. 'Big seller though.'

After a short nap and a quick shower in the room, I head back into town on foot to grab dinner and take in the vibe of the city. The early autumn air is still warm. High above, the skyways are certainly teeming with life, almost tempting me to find a base station and grab a lift up, but I’m famished so instead head over to The Rocks to a steakhouse I always visit when in town.

With the commemoration so close, it’s not surprising to hear a lot of talk about the war. Sure enough, at a table nearby, a couple about my own age are entertaining a group of four friends visiting from Europe, given the accents I hear. As they enthusiastically down a few bottles of Barossa-Valley red, the husband dramatically recounts his experiences of 7-Lgn's advance into Sydney with an embellished fluency that has been crafted by practice and perfected with time.

At the onset of the final forty-eight, civilians trapped in their houses couldn’t know if the conflict in the streets would rage for days or weeks, and so many who felt compelled to seek out supplies found themselves caught in deadly territory between retreating units of SADR's 206th regiment and the steadily advancing 7-Lgn fighters.

I almost have to smile as my neighbour’s captive audience is regaled by his ordeal of dashing through the streets, caught in the crossfire and dodging bullets and bodies at every turn, for he tells his tale in truths that are clearly whole, half and everything in between. No doubt this city became a battleground during the final forty-eight, but to hear this gentleman describe it you'd swear the siege of Harburg had been a weekend skirmish by comparison.

Although I'd love to sit around a bar washing down a scotch or three and tuning in to the stories being thrown around by Sydney-folk, I'm already being knocked about by jetlag. I also need to call and check in with my sister, Nell, back in London before she heads off to work, but first make a detour on my way back to my hotel.

In what’s become a ritual, I always take an evening walk down to the harbour's edge whenever I arrive in Sydney. It’s a strange thing, considering I wasn’t even in the country when the war ended, but looking into the cool waters lapping gently at the Quay and knowing what happened here sends me back.

Unlike the airport, here I really can envision the choppy swell of the harbour twenty-five years ago, filled with coalition ships hauling thousands off the wharves and out of harm's way as street-to-street combat and the rolling thunder of gunfire pressed in. After all, my escape from Harburg in the opening hours of the second siege occurred in a frighteningly similar fashion.

I soon realise I've been standing there completely lost in my thoughts for a good quarter-hour, deaf to the usual hustle and bustle of inner-city night-life. Nearby, I notice an older gentleman who appears to be gazing out over the harbour in a similar state of reminiscence. He catches my eye and we each nod to the other - some primitive sense of common experience. "Different times," he calls to me with a shrug that could mean anything before wandering off.

The walk back to my hotel lets me mull over recent events that have led me back here to Australia. Truth is, I hadn’t planned to attend the commemoration events here at all. My normal way of going about it is a quiet affair; a few pints with Nell and other former exiles at our local pub. We reminisce about family and friends lost in the war and fill the night with our own stories of humour, tragedy and survival.

Lately however, our discussions have turned to the developing friction between the Esterlands and the Australian government, elements of which have begun pressing the case for full reunification.

While still a largely minority opinion among the population, a recent poll showed that a growing number of Australians - particularly the younger demographics - believe the ECR’s dissolution would be a positive step forward for the country. I personally can’t see the Esterlands ever returning itself to the governance of the mainland. As it is, the two currently maintain a comfortably symbiotic relationship, but the ECR can stand alone if need be.

Thinking about this reminds me of the letter in my coat pocket. It’s been there since it arrived several weeks ago on a drizzly London morning by special courier, and is the reason I am here to begin with.

Suffice to say, it’s rare to receive any communication in paper form these days. Having released my first book eighteen months ago however, it’s not uncommon for people to sometimes make contact in various forms, though traditional mail is forwarded through my publisher.

An autobiographical account of my own experiences, the book details the our family’s relocation to the Esterlands, life in Harburg during the first siege, and my subsequent evacuation at the onset of the second.

While it didn’t top any bestseller lists, it was a commercial success despite being a drop in the bucket of personal accounts released over the years. I’m not a fool though. From the attention my book received, much of it was certainly due to my brother being who he was, and perhaps less so my literary talents.

Nevertheless, it has been a dream for many years to be published, and I’ve been thoroughly swept up in the sense of contentment it brought despite taking two decades to achieve. There was a small book tour, a few morning television appearances, and messages of both praise and anger.

There were also a number of death threats, which rattled me at first. The police assured me, however, that such threats were ‘par for the course’ any time an Esterlands exile published a memoir, and ‘somewhat more numerous’ if that person had fought in Harburg, so when a physical letter with no return address was delivered directly to my door, I was a little wary to say the least.

I opened the letter over a cup of tea and was surprised to find a single, hand-written page inside – a rarity in itself nowadays. After reading it through, I then did so again about nine times straight, completely taken aback by the contents.

After a brief congratulatory message for my recent success, there was an invitation to enter the Esterlands to commemorate war’s-end at a private ceremony in Harburg – a city I have not returned to in over twenty years.

Before the ceremony, the letter stated, I’d be free to travel throughout the entire ECR, welcome to document the history of the war from inside the Esterland’s borders – something very few have ever been able to do. It meant I would also have the chance to visit my brother.

The letter was signed off by John Cosh himself.

A first I thought it was a crank, but a call to the ECR liaison office confirmed that a pre-processed travel permit in my name had been authorised and would be issued at the border. Perhaps it seems strange that a former citizen who fought through the first siege of Harburg would need permission to enter the Esterlands, but the post-oc years were a time of ultimatums and hard choices.

I had legacy right to return to the ECR after the war ended, but that right eventually lapsed when I made the decision to stay in England for reasons I’ll discuss later. As such, I am now bound by the same entry requirements of travel permits, background checks and border inspections as anyone else, although given my family name and history, I am eligible for a legacy permit which is usually expedited.

As pleased as I was to be granted such an opportunity, to my confusion, the letter provided no reason behind the generous offer being made, nor was there any indication that I need formally accept or decline. In the famously detached sense of expectation the ECR is known for, either I will present myself at the Esterlands border, or I will not.

Were I able to better organise the minutes and seconds of my life, I’d have arrived in Sydney several days sooner and taken time to properly enjoy the city. The night is still quite young as I arrive back at the hotel, and for a moment, I consider turning back to fully embrace the festive spirit which seems to be flowing through the streets.

The moment is fleeting though. I need to be up early to make my high-speed rail to Triesto, then onwards to Arlincoe on the Esterlands border. Sydney will have to wait.

Back in my room, I call Nell for a quick chat. I’d pushed for her to arrange a legacy permit and take the trip with me, but like our mother, she has no wish to return to the place which caused such devastation to our lives. After politely turning down my suggestion, she simply asked that I give her love to Eric. Our brother - a man you will come to know here - never left Harburg.

After we say our farewells, I climb into bed. As I feel sleep descend upon me, it's impossible not to think back to the days of the war, when I still called Harburg home. The finer details of many memories may have faded with time, but a few have weathered the years as though carved into stone.

As they’ve done so for a quarter-century now, my thoughts drift to that godforsaken city and what it suffered to survive, those days that shaped me, broke me, and defined a generation. Tonight, my mind turns to Eric.