SYDNEY-No worries, mate.

That was the reaction from Luc Longley yesterday to the NBA trade that has all of Australia buzzing, the one that sent him to the Knicks and Chris Dudley to the Phoenix Suns.

And in other news, Patrick Ewing and two others are changing addresses. No worries, mate. The world is upside down here. Nobody cares about a 7-foot mope from Jamaica who played basketball with varying degrees of success in New York City for the past 15 years.

The water swirls down the drain in the opposite direction here. People drive on the wrong side of the road. They are hailing a man who shoots arrows into a target as a national hero.

Down here, when they shout “Oi! Oi! Oi!,” it’s a celebration, not a lament.

And believe it or not, the fortunes of a basketball team, even a team with a $70 million payroll – that’s about $120 million Aussie! – don’t amount to a lump of vegemite in the Land Down Under.

It’s good news for Longley, whose bags are packed anyway. Same for Allan Houston, who can have the airplane back to the States drop him wherever he winds up, which will probably be anywhere but New York now.

And it’s good news for the Knicks, for at least two reasons.

The first is that, if Ewing’s place had to be taken by a foreign-born center, at least now it won’t be Frederic Weis, the French pastry chef.

The second is that Ewing could not play for the Knicks this season anyway.

Face it, as sensitive a soul as Poor Widdle Patrick has always been, how could you expect him to be a happy member of Checkett’s Checkbook Army knowing that the Knicks really didn’t want him around anyway?

A month ago, he was gone, out of here, a Knick no more, for chubby little Vin Baker.

Then, just like that, he was back, and there was Checketts and his puppet, GM Scott Layden, trying to make it appear as if they never really wanted to trade Ewing in the first place.

They even enlisted their favorite little columnist to plant a “Good move, Knicks” column, as if they had pulled the plug on the deal, when in reality, it was Joe Dumars who decided not to allow Checketts and David Falk, unindicted co-conspirators, to run roughshod over him and his Detroit Pistons.

But for all their efforts and for all his petulance, Ewing had to know the truth.

Patrick may be dense, but he’s not stupid.

He knew where he wasn’t wanted, and he knew who didn’t want him.

It would have taken all of Jeff Van Gundy’s considerable skills of manipulation to convince him that really, Patrick, the Knicks still love you.

Probably, Van Gundy would have played his trump card, the Us vs. Them, with he and Ewing the Usses and Checketts and Layden the Thems.

That would have been fun to follow and fun to cover and fun to read, but in truth, the Knicks will be better without Ewing.

For the past couple of years, he has clogged up the offense the way hair stops up a drain.

And now, knowing what he knew about how his bosses really felt about him, he would have fouled up the locker room like a stink bomb.

Ewing’s sour mood would have spread like a fungus through the room, infecting the loyal, like Charlie Ward, and the dissatisfied, like Marcus Camby, and the susceptible, like Latrell Sprewell.

Now, the Knicks are finally free of what had become their 7-foot albatross, the player they had committed their future to in 1985 and now were both eager and frightened to be rid of.

Now, Ewing can take his headphones and his scowl and his grim guarantees to Seattle. He and Baker, another unkept promise, can be teammates. If he can’t win himself a ring, at least he can find himself a good cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, in the land where you can tan on Christmas and throw snowballs in July, nobody cares very much about what you New Yorkers are calling The Patrick Ewing Trade.

Here, it’s known as the Luc Longley deal.