Welcome to an experiment in journalism and community — a newsletter that will help shape The New York Times’ expansion in Australia. Follow along by signing up to receive it by email, and tell us what you think at nytaustralia@nytimes.com.

“This is the easiest place to live in the world,” said the dark-haired woman with a nose ring and London accent who was cutting my hair the day I arrived in Sydney two weeks ago. Compared with Morocco, England and a few other places she used to call home, Australia was clearly the most relaxed, she said, and perhaps the hardest to engage.

“It’s so nice here. It’s hard to get people to think about all the terrible things in the world,” she said. Then she laughed: “Or maybe it’s just my friends; maybe you’ll find a different crowd.”

To some degree, we hope to actually bring those crowds together — to get the disengaged and the engaged talking to us, and one another. We’re early on in the process of opening a new bureau in Sydney — I’m the bureau chief — and expanding our coverage of a place that is sometimes called The Lucky Country: for many, because of its blinding beauty and resource-rich fortunes; for others, including the writer who coined the phrase, because of its ongoing effort to define itself beyond the accident of its location and youth as a nation.