He's loving Sydney's eastern suburbs, but Mike Catt suspects his British and Irish cohorts won't find life so comfortable when they arrive in Australia.
Twenty-four years after featuring in the touring British and Irish Lions' 2-1 loss to Australia, Catt is preparing for the 2025 showpiece series from a vastly different perspective as NSW Waratahs attack coach.
Watch every game of SMARTECH Super Rugby Pacific live and on-demand via Stan Sport.
"It's a huge experience for my family as well. They're absolutely loving and thriving in it, so it's all good," said the South African-born 53-year-old.
Catt is too savvy and diplomatic to publicly predict how the series will unfold, or who will win.
The 2003 England World Cup winner only expects the Ashes-like rugby battle to be tight.
"It's going to be a great series, whatever it is. It always is," he said.
"It always is. There's never a bad one."
Even after a decade and a half coaching in Europe, including a four-year stint as England's attack coach and another five years with the Irish national team, Catt has been surprised by what he's seen in Australia.
"You think you know a lot until you're in it," he said.
"It's the classical thing, I've always loved watching the Super Rugby all the time. The athletes that they've had, the way they've played the game, has always impressed me.
"So coming out and actually experiencing it and seeing it, you've got some proper athletes out here. Some proper, proper athletes. So now it's just (learning) the nuances of the game.
"Especially coming from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere, there's a massive influence on the detail of how you do things. Whereas here, it's a little bit looser and a little bit more free-flowing.
"So introducing and getting a really good balance between the two for me is what it's about. But we've got some proper X-factor (players) in this (Waratahs) squad and we've got some big men.
"They're big, big kids. For 20, 21-year-olds, they're big kids. You don't get that in the northern hemisphere very often."
Hence why, after noting the "very different" playing styles in the northern and southern hemispheres, Catt is intrigued by how the brawn of the Wallabies will stack up against the cagey Lions this winter.
"If you look at it from Ireland's point of view, because I was there in the past, they are so fit and we were never the biggest team. Ireland was never the biggest team," Catt said.
"So you had to be a skilful team on the back of it.
"So we put a lot of emphasis on the skill and the fitness side of it and these guys then thrived in that, that ability to do that and understood the game.
"(The Irish are) incredibly good students of the game. There are no egos about them or anything like that.
"So it was really amazing how much detail they went into, especially with the likes of (Jonny) Sexton and all these guys who wanted detail all the time.
"They would drive it massively and study it, but they were exceptionally fit."
