Ask any Irish expat what they miss about home: after family and friends, most will pine for a decent pub and a bit of 'craic'. It's hard to explain to foreigners what's so good about pubs in Ireland. It's not the decor, although I do love the old wooden ones with snugs, partitions and the blessed absence of TV, muzak and, most hideously, gaming machines. It's not the service: the staff at some of my preferred locals ranged from surly to psychopathic. It's not (just) the drink, although as a Guinness afficionado, it's hard to beat the anticipated pleasure of watching a good pint settle.

Two other things make a night in an Irish pub special: the dedication and panache with which most of your fellow-drinkers will converse, and the serendipity factor, of not knowing who might walk in at any moment and join you.

A good pub is a haven of democracy, a centre for philosophy and debate, a soother of the soul, a provider of company, friendship, even romance, a source of information, solace and stimulation, a place to vent loneliness and frustration, to forge connections, explore ideas, exchange experiences, sing and dance and be moved by the music, sympathise with bereavements, divorce, redundancy, tell stories, laugh at jokes, argue, fight, kiss and make up and start again. Once you enter the public house, you become part of a community.

Sometimes the conversations will be with friends, by rendezvous. Sometimes you might get talking to someone you've seen around but never really met before. The best exchanges can be with complete strangers whose name you do not know and whom you might never see again. Sure, the odd unwelcome drunk might inflict himself on you. The conversation won't always be scintillating, there are bores everywhere.

In Australia, pub conversations tend to be more succinct, to the point. In Ireland often there IS no point. You just meander from one topic to another, enjoying the journey, the communing. The Aussie pub is a functional place - you drink because you are hot and thirsty, or because it's Friday night, or maybe because you're already semi-alcoholic. You don't so much wander down the pub for a bit of social engagement with whoever happens to have had the same idea. That's what I miss. The unpredictability of who you might meet, which way the talk might go.

I happen to have a good local, the Riverview Hotel in Balmain. Well it's not just luck - as soon as I found it, in 1985, I rented a place 'within staggering distance', as a friend put it. It was only when I got the keys I discovered that Australian flats came unfurnished. Having arrived with a backpack, I didn't possess a thing in the way of a table, chair or bed.

Sensibly, I headed to the Riv to consider the situation. The manager, the irrepressible Philip Gannon from Roscommon, advised me to hand over the keys, have lunch and enjoy the afternoon. I watched as he worked his way round the counter, explaining my situation. Hours passed. Philip had by now given the keys to some bloke with a ute, who had been dispatched on a mysterious errand. I had no choice but to settle in and listen to Dick Hughes play brilliant jazz piano and reminisce between tunes about his schoolday run-ins with The Brothers. As darkness fell, I got my keys back. I tottered home, opened the door - and found the whole place kitted out with donations from the regulars: a green chair, an orange saucepan, a mattress, a rickety table.

In those days, the Riv was owned by Susie Carleton and Murray Syme, who'd bought it off Dawn Fraser, who lived down the road. Susie belonged to a literary, Labor-leaning push, so sometimes you'd find writers like Frank Moorhouse or Ed Campion propping up the bar, or political figures like Diamond Jim McClelland having lunch. Although she was Jewish, Susie belted out all the Irish Catholic songs: 'Faith of Our Fathers' was always a favourite of that generation, who grew up with sectarianism. Every Christmas Eve, she organised carols by candlelight. Songbooks were handed round and everyone would lash into The First Nøel. Even the toughest nuts softened a bit in the glow.

They sold to the ex-football player, Brian Hambely, who maintained the community feeling, if not the intellectual edge. His Christmas contribution was to book the old steam tug, the Waratah, heave a slab or two of beer on board and invite all the regulars to eat, drink and socialise as we steamed up and around the harbour. It was about the only day in the year that the 5pm tradies met the 10pm black-kitted types, and the lunchtime oldies met anyone.

The next owners had a strangely wowserish attitude to drink and the craic in general. In a break with tradition, no special activities were organised for St Patrick's Day ( 'we don't want to encourage the Irish', one regular was told) and in a distinctly unsentimental gesture, the price of Guinness was put up that very day. They later lost the plot altogether, barring a Clareman who erupted into joyous dancing, for 'stamping'. Riverdance eat your heart out!

Worse was to come. The Riv re-opened under new management yet again. Hordes of old faces showed up to scoff free pies and lamb chops and catch up on the latest. But the hardnosed Greek owners had no cultural attachment to pubs; this was to be a slick new era, where the staff wore identikit T-shirts and efficiency, not eccentricity, predominated. Liz, the doughty Scottish barmaid who’d been doling out drinks and dry wit since the eighties, was a rare link to more colourful times.

One Patrick’s Day, I was having dinner with a visiting Irish friend and some Irish-Australian stalwarts, when we developed an overwhelming urge for a ritual Guinness to salute the occasion. It being a Sunday, and only half an hour from 10 o clock closing, I legged it to the Riv to get our order in, while my friends, one an elderly man, followed in more leisurely fashion. At 9.50 we settled down with our pints. The pub was mayhem, hordes of people having been encouraged to celebrate the day there with Paddy’s Day specials and promises of Irish music and craic. My Irish friend, the writer Evelyn Conlon, offered to regale us with a cautionary ballad. In a voice that was almost a whisper, she began a rambling tale of lost love while we listened, rapt, and sipped our half-finished pints. It was almost as good as being back home.

A few verses in, she was rudely interrupted by the manager instructing us to leave, as it was closing time. I crisply informed him that we had finished neither our drinks nor our song and would leave on their conclusion. He refused to afford us that courtesy. He’d been happy to sell us the pints, knowing we could not drink them in civilized fashion before 10 p.m. He’d had no qualms about capitalising all day on the pub’s association with Irish culture – but when the real deal was sitting in the corner, an acclaimed Irish writer singing an authentic Irish song, he dropped all pretence of being in the hospitality industry. The Riv had become a business, pure and simple.

I rarely returned after that. But it’s worthwhile now to reflect on some of the wonderful characters with whom I shared memorable moments. This pub spawned babies and books, saw some self-destruct and others take wing, triggered some marriages and destroyed others. There had been some hilarious moments, but also numerous characters we'd lost - The Prince, who played the accordion and affected a patrician air, in keeping with his claim to be descended from Rory O’Connor, the last High King of Ireland; Nick, the beautiful young barman struck down by a brain tumour; Peter Valamis, the big wharfie joker who died at sea on his fiftieth birthday; Murray Syme, brilliant, loudmouthed and bighearted; Rod Lawless, the jazz clarinettist, cruelly smitten with throat cancer, and his partner Rosemary, always known as Tim; Graham Chase, passionate filmmaker; the McGuiness mob: journalist and arch-provocateur Paddy, ostentatiously reading some intellectual tome when not opining or inflaming; his German wife Brigitte, whose hauteur saw her christened Sauer Kraut, and who succumbed to a Golden Staph infection following routine surgery; and their daughter Parnell, who worked there when a uni student; Gordon McIntyre, the wonderful Scottish musician, taken way before his time; and that charming, mischievous, decent Dubliner, Brendan Lynch, whose ashes were returned to the River Liffey in Dublin by his partner Cora Moore. I was with her in 2001 as she farewelled him with Yeats’ haunting poem, The Stolen Child. ‘Come away, O human child, To the waters and the wild, With a faery, hand in hand - for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.’ Two years later, it was Cora we remembered, with a rollicking wake upstairs at the Riv that included the patrons belting out her party piece, ‘I remember Dublin City in the rare oul’ days.’ That's what the Riv gave us, rare oul’ days and that’s what a real pub is about - a community, for better or worse, in good times and bad.