At the Bar - Shares an al fresco bottle with Roger Overall

Stuart Hetherington, a partner in Withnell Hetherington, Sydney, shares an al fresco bottle with Roger Overall

THE English and the Australians share a common understanding. They don't like each other. Why else would they choose to live on opposite sides of the planet? Having owned the place, the English find it hard to swallow that they failed to make Australia a success while the colonists positively thrived once they were given independence.

Proper folk would have done the decent thing and failed too. Not the Australians. Oh, no. They've made the place work and they feel maligned that they weren't allowed to get on with it to start with, without meddling from London. It was quite clear to them that any endeavour by the English to succeed Down Under was doomed. Just look at the England cricket team.

Stuart Hetherington is the exception to the rule. Raised in Worthing - a bastion of Englishness on the Sussex coast - and educated at Cambridge, he is the archetypical English gentleman. In spite of this considerable handicap, he has managed to build himself a successful career as a Sydney lawyer. So successful even that he has been allowed to adopt Australian nationality. How has he managed to do it? For the price of a bottle of wine, he agrees to reveal his secret.

We sit down on the veranda outside the Park Hyatt hotel, on Sydney's Circular Quay, opposite the Opera House and in the shadow of the city's grand bridge. The replica of The Bounty used in the film starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins rocks on the gentle harbour waves nearby. A very dramatic and glamorous setting for the revelation to come.

"My father was from Glasgow," Stuart says. Aha! He's not English at all! Mystery solved and the waiter hasn't even taken our order yet. "He ended up running TOVALOP," Stuart adds in an offhand manner. TOVALOP? Where's the waiter?

Stuart mulls over the wine list with authority. "You should have a New South Wales wine," he says. Interstate rivalry is strong in this federal country. He selects a Reynolds 1996 Semillon. It's lovely.

"My father did a law degree at Glasgow University, but never practised," Stuart says. "He worked for Shell for a long time and eventually took on the job of running TOVALOP. I did a couple of weeks work for him, which is how I got invited to the fifth anniversary dinner he hosted at the Savoy. I sat next to Brian Brooke-Smith, who was managing director of Bilbroughs." This proved a key meeting for Stuart. Brooke-Smith introduced him to two partners with Sydney-based Ebsworth & Ebsworth, the firm Stuart would eventually spend 21 years with, becoming a partner himself in 1981.

But this is jumping the gun a bit. "When I finished at Cambridge, I had the choice of becoming a solicitor or a barrister. I had interviews with various firms, including Richards Butler, but decided that I didn't want to do articles with a London firm," Stuart says. While he figured out what it was he did want, he did county court work for the chambers of Alan Ward, who was later elevated to the Court of Appeal. The work wasn't glamourous. "It was pretty run - of - the - mill, heart - rending, depressing stuff. Matrimonial work," Stuart remembers.

Faced with such drudgery, there are two courses of action open to you. You either become hugely overweight and ride around in an ancient motorbike and sidecar with another hugely overweight person, promoting the virtues of good old-fashioned fat-rich, sugar-steeped, lard-laced home cooking. This course of action will get you a BBC cookery programme and elevate you to icon status. Or, you can go to Australia and become a lawyer. This course of action will get you an interview in The Maritime Advocate, which is unlikely to elevate you to icon status. Stuart chose the latter. Clarissa Dixon-Wright, one half of Britain's infamous Two Fat Ladies duo and also in the same chambers as Alan Ward at the time, chose the former. "I was quite surprised to see her on television after all those years," Stuart admits.

Upon arrival in Australia - a country he'd fallen in love with during a stint at the public defender's office in Brisbane a few years earlier - Stuart found that there wasn't a job waiting for him at Ebsworth & Ebsworth. That was 1974. After eighteen months, a position did come available and Stuart filled it.

He became active in the firm and outside it, promoting the interests of the Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand in various capacities, including president from 1991 to 1994. He was also on the board of the old Sydney Ports Authority for six years.

With such influence, he couldn't be allowed to remain a pom. So Australian nationality was granted. It was a natural move, according to Stuart, and he remembers the exact moment his loyalties switched. "I was at an England-Australia rugby match with my father. Within ten minutes it was clear to me that I wanted Australia to win. I didn't know any of the England team."

Now firmly ensconced in the Australia camp, Stuart is keen to promote Australian jurisdiction clauses in charter parties. It's an uphill battle, though. "Like Canada, we've tried desperately to develop our own arbitration expertise in shipping. But most of the work is in London. It's a Catch-22. With little expertise here, most of the work goes elsewhere, so we don't get the chance to develop the knowledge we need. There is only a small number of shipping arbitrations here. I'm only aware of one or two in the last five years."

Goodness. Something the English are better at than the Australians? How soon can we arrange a test match? Stuart is quick to dismiss suggestions of English lawyers seeing themselves in a superior light. "UK lawyers have a high opinion of Australian practitioners. And vice versa," he says. "And there's always been a lot of exchange. Many Australian lawyers have spent time with London law firms."

London had better watch out then. If the Asian shipping industry gets wind of Australia's competence, business might start moving south. Not that Stuart is short of work. He's just started up with Rod Withnell in partnership and there's plenty of work. "There's very little time for anything other than work. I play a bit of golf, go to the beach, lunch by the harbour every now and then," he says. And of course the occasional bottle of wine on the shores of one of the world's most beautiful harbours. No wonder the English are jealous.