Colleague in the main expressed sympathies on Sydneysiders leaving (8)
I believe the answer is:
shipmate
'colleague' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'in the main expressed sympathies on sydneysiders leaving' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'in' could be 'hip' (both can mean fashionable) and 'hip' is found in the answer.
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for shipmate that I've seen before include "Fellow sailor" , "Colleague on board" , "Fellow crewman" , "Fellow seaman" , "Fellow crew member" .)