Sydney 1 Melbourne 0

I can’t do it.  I’ve tried and I’ve tried but I’m sorry, I just can’t.  I know I must be in the wrong because everybody – everybody! – keeps telling me so.  But despite everything I just can’t bring myself to like Melbourne.

I can hear those of you in the know gasping.  Has Ged become so shallow that he’s fallen for the fake and easy charms of Sydney?  Is he such a fan of boardshorts, beer and barby (not Barbie) that he prefers the bottle-blond of the nation’s largest city to the sophisticated allure of it’s cultural capital?  Well, yes.

You see, I think Melbourne looks like Birmingham.  And not even Birmingham now, but Birmingham in the 80’s.  It’s dirty and grey and every so often smells of urine.  I know it’s got the laneways and the funky shops and an apparently endless list of seriously cool bars.  But I have a theory about that.  As Big Andrea once pointed out, only countries with really bad climates are good at interior design.  “If you have to create your own environment you tend to do a good job of it”.  Big Andrea’s like that.  She’s always right.

It’s certainly true Melbourne has a bad climate.  It swelters in the summer for weeks on end of 40 degrees plus (those awful bushfires earlier this year were only an hour or so away), and in the winter it freezes (ski fields only three hours away).  Taxi drivers keep telling me Melbourne is in a drought but every time I’ve ever been there it’s been raining under a concrete sky.  Which reminds me of my favourite Birmingham quote.  “Even if you cleared up the dog shit, it’d still be Birmingham”.  That’s how I feel about Melbourne.

Admittedly, the last few times I’ve been there it has been for work and a long-distance commute does few cities any favours.  The only thing worse than airport-taxi-office-airport is airport-taxi-novotel-office-airport.  But this time I spent an extra day there, hung out with my cousin Millie who took me to best tapas bar I’ve seen outside of Spain and to an exhibition by an amazing artist I’d never heard of.

So I’ll give you the bars and the galleries.  And the cafes.  And the funky little boutiques, the seriously cool graffiti and the different little restaurant every time you go.  It costs $10,000 to open a bar in Victoria, $250,000 in New South Wales and that, until recently, explained the different experience of visiting the two cities.  They get off-the-wall holes-in-the-wall, we get mega-sportsbars.  But didn’t legislation change that last year?  Everyone seems to think so but no one’s quite sure.  Certainly there’s nowhere yet serving alcohol in Sydney that could be described as funky or cool.

But so what?  Even if we’d got Wicked! instead of Priscilla, art instead of Andre Rieu, skiing less than six hours away, the Australian Open, the Grand Prix, Kath & Kim, a half-decent casino, I’d still prefer Sydney.  Walk with me for ten minutes by great rolling ocean, swim out with me in crystalline water, sail on our harbour and tell me there’s any city, anywhere in the world* that has anything to compare.   See.  You can’t.

*South Africa doesn’t count, Brazil’s too violent and Marseille lost its allure years ago.  Always read washing instructions.  Your home may be at risk if you do not keep up payments on a loan taken out against it.