Library 'sight-seeing'.

From time to time, I dig up old stories from primary and high school to reread. I can see a developing imagination in my careful, young handwriting.

In my early twenties, I left Perth and travelled overseas with my best friend. She was a prolific, passionate letter writer and her enthusiasm rubbed off on me. I caught the writing ‘bug’ and it never left.

It was the early nineties: no internet, emails or mobile phones. I called home from a public phone booth once a fortnight by either feeding in coins or using a calling card. Timed calls were expensive, so conversations were rushed and short.

I filled in the conversational gaps by penning letters home, detailing all the places we traveled to and (almost) everything we did.

Picture two young twenty-somethings, sitting in a McDonalds somewhere in Germany, sipping thickshakes and writing down all our adventures in tiny writing on the back of paper McDonalds place mats to send home to our parents. We filled pages and pages of stationery and aerograms. I didn’t realise at the time - this was me having a ‘writing buddy’.

Fast forward, and after a long stint in London, I returned to Australia. She stayed in London.

Writing has become a big part of my life in recent years, so when she arrived last weekend to stay, I did what any writer would do in the stunning city of Sydney.

I took her to libraries.

We wrote for several hours at the stunning heritage-listed Mitchell Library Reading Room next to the Botanic Gardens. Lost in the silence, immersed in our writing, surrounded by more than 50,000 books lining the shelves in the vast room.

We left to eat lunch at The Grounds of the City and popped into the bookstores, Kinokuniya and Dymocks on George Street. Their cafes were busy, so we headed back up to Macquarie Street and the Library Cafe to sip matcha tea and hot chocolate and continue writing.

The next day I booked a study room at my local library for two hours.

And in case you are wondering about the stunning Sydney beaches, we had drinks at Watson's Bay, dined in Bondi (but sadly arrived at Gertrude & Alice's bookshop cafe after closing time), took a walk along the coast in Clovelly and Gordon's Bay.

When I waved her off at the airport, she had thousands of new words on her laptop. Yes, we've come a long way from McDonald's place mats, but we are still writing buddies!