Sydney is riding the freshest of waves...and now's the time to grab your board and visit

Huge energy courses through Australia these days. America used to be like this in the 1970s and 1980s. It's as if a 240-volt electrical current is constantly buzzing through the place, galvanising its people to do things bigger and better. Take Mark Best. He remembers, in his mid-20s as a mining electrician, eating his lunch out of a tin 5,000ft below the Earth's surface in a crib full of craggy old gold miners. Today he is one of Australia's most celebrated chefs. His Sydney restaurant Marque is haute cuisine central and has been voted one of the world's top 50.

Cultural hub: Sydney Opera House is in need of a multi-million pound refurbishment

Then there's Richard Graham. He is a highly articulate bespoke tour guide who left school at 15 unable to write grammatical English, was running his own successful and lucrative business by 19, and claims to be related to the Queen. Now he runs My Sydney Detour (mysydneydetour.com), whose aim is to turn clients into Sydney locals in a day. So how do British travellers visiting

Australia this winter – which will probably include more than a few on the Ashes tour – plug into this high-energy nouveau Australia? Quite easily, because cosmopolitan urban centres such as Sydney are now particularly cool. The contemporary art galleries, the modern theatrical performances, haute cuisine restaurants like Marque and hip new hotels such as QT all suggest a new-found cultural sensibility that is as refreshing as Aussie cricketers' faltering selfconfidence. There is certainly a sensitivity that was unthinkable in the days of Lillee, Thommo, Warney and Booney.
I spent a week in this new world, witnessing alternative Sydney, then wandering around the world-class galleries, dining at brilliant new restaurants, and generally embracing the city's new metrosexuality. One measure of this is that in a city of four million people, some 1.4 million tickets a year are sold to events at Sydney Opera House.

High rolling: The glitzy Sydney enclave of Double Bay

'The Opera House remains the centrepiece of our cultural and physical infrastructure,' says its executive producer Jonathan Bielski. 'It's a bit like having a theatre company inside the Taj Mahal.'
The only downside to this is that the iconic structure is starting to crumble with age and now needs a £590 million refurbishment. I also visited two of the best modern art galleries I've been to in years – the White Rabbit Gallery (whiterabbitcollection.org) in the suburb of Chippendale, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (mca.com.au) in The Rocks.
The White Rabbit, located in an old Rolls-Royce showroom, is now regarded as the most important home of modern, post-2000 Chinese art in the world. It's the creation of Judith Neilson, a white southern African artist who has long settled in Australia and whose foundation with her billionaire husband is dedicated to showcasing young unknown urban artists. Admission is free and none of the works is for sale.
I've been a fan of Australian theatre since seeing Keating The Musical on my last visit. Despite the insider political references, the satire about former Deputy PM Paul Keating was side-splittingly funny. Sadly on this trip I missed Shane Warne The Musical, which is also apparently extremely, wickedly funny. Instead I took in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of The Maids, starring Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert.

Close to home: Hollywood's A-list Australian contingency including Cate Blanchett keep involved with Sydney's cultural life

Unlike previous generations of international Australian stars who left home and dropped anchor in London, New York or Hollywood, Blanchett and the current crop of famous Aussies seem to base themselves in Sydney and are much more directly involved in the local art scene. High arts apart, staple Sydney fare remains vibrant and fun. A visit to this great outdoor city should be underpinned by the pubs and street life around The Rocks, beach culture in and around Bondi, harbour cruises, the ferry ride to Manly, and of course tethered climbs across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
But one of my most memorable days out was an alternative bespoke tour with Richard Graham in his immaculate 1964 Holden EH – a classic car from an era when Australia was still a forelock-tugging British colony on the other side of the world. We started on the other side of the Sydney tracks, a suburb called Redfern that was like New York's Harlem in the old days – bad and dangerous – and, like Harlem, has since become gentrified. It is now a cool bohemian, arty alternative to downtown Sydney, with galleries, coffee shops, buzzing inexpensive restaurants and music venues. We ended the tour at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, driving around Double Bay – or double pay, as the locals will have it – where multi-million-pound houses look out over the Sydney skyline.
As we looked at this famous view, Richard Graham said, apropos nothing in particular, that his grandfather was in fact a Bowes-Lyon born out of wedlock, thus making him a blood relative of Britain's Royal Family through the Queen Mother. No doubt there are similar claimants in nooks and crannies all over the old Empire, but he delivered this information with such matter-of-fact self-confidence that I simply nodded and carried on asking about alternative Sydney.
Royal-blooded or colourful commoner, Graham's tour is a must. Back in the more conventional centre of the city, I arranged to have dinner at Marque in Surry Hills, another formerly seedy part of town. Mark Best offers an 11-course degustation menu of real food that one can eat and enjoy, rather than El Bulli-like tastings that represent gastronomic theatre.

Ambition: Richard Graham in his Holden EH

The food was delicious – blue swimmer crab with almond gazpacho, smoked eel with parmesan gnocchi, Mandagery Creek venison – and the setting and atmosphere terrific. The room is stark black and white but, after the food, the coup de grace is fantastic music whirring away discreetly in the background – everything from Elvis Costello to Patsy Cline and Lana Del Rey... all selected by the great chef himself. It was at the end of the dinner that Mark tipped me off about another hot, new Australian attraction. 'The Hunter Valley has in many ways succumbed to tourism,' he said. 'So if you are interested in wine country you may want to take a look at Mudgee. It has replaced the Hunter as a real progressive wine-making area, complete with its own set of young, hip bearded wine makers.'
Next day I was off across the Blue Mountains to Mudgee. It's a three-and- a-half-hour drive or a 45-minute flight, and the drive is recommended as you travel through the mountains. Mudgee is Aboriginal for 'nest in the hills' and although it is a region with four natural reserves, the main reason to visit is the wine and food. A new generation of young Australian winemakers are reviving a reputation that for many years was rather discredited.
Now instead of the big jammy wines that had been Mudgee staples, this group, who call themselves Black Tongue, are starting to make small production wines of great quality. So much so that one of them, 29-year-old Jacob Stein, was last year named Australia's Young Winemaker of the Year. For the moment Mudgee is, as Mark says, the new Hunter Valley. But that's Australia for you, constantly reinventing itself. Now watch that cricket team do the same and take back the Ashes.

GRAHAM'S TOP SYDNEY TIPS: HOTELS, RESTAURANTS AND BARS

Sending up Shane and Liz: The Shane Warne Musical has proved a big hit in the city

Best Hotel

QT Sydney (qtsydney.com.au), 49 Market Street. £210 for a king room (two people sharing). Simply the coolest hotel in town with 200 designer suites that successfully combine Gothic, Art Deco and Italianate features. Housed in the historic Gowings and State theatre buildings, the public areas are as dramatic and the restaurant, Gowings Bar and Grill, is a European brasserie with an Antipodean edge. SpaQ, the hotel's theatrical and highly rated spa, is also worth visiting.

Best restaurants

Marque, 355 Crown Street (marquerestaurant.com.au) is Mark Best's restaurant. The 11-course degustation menu (£95pp) changes seasonally, while the three-course Friday lunch menu, at £26, is a real bargain. Other recommended fine dining restaurants are Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar and Grill (rockpool.com.au) at 66 Hunter Street and Peter Gilmore's The Quay (quay.com.au) on Hickson Road in The Rocks. Both have critical acclaim and high reputations. The best bargain is Golden Century (goldencentury.com.au) at 393-399 Sussex Street – a massive 600-seat Cantonese restaurant that is a favourite of Sydney's top chefs. Expect to pay between £14.50 and £16 per head.

Best bars

121 BC in Holt Street, Surry Hills, offers great food and atmosphere. Vasco, in Cleveland Street, also Surry Hills, is the hot place for cocktails. The Australian Hotel on Cumberland Street in The Rocks, serves outstanding pizzas and shows sport on TV.