After living all over the world, we picked Sydney. We left London because of the winter and after several exploratory trips decided on the eastern suburbs in sydney.

I love Sydney, the beaches, the weather, the people (always friendly to me) and have never suffered on the nightlife (in my 20's) and the restaurants (mid 30's). After moving to Sydney for the second time after living in London, the traffic seemed negligible, but DH walked to work, i worked against rush hour traffic and once we had our DD we met loads more local people so we just walked everywhere. In the week, i could get in my car with DD in Surry Hills and be sitting on the beach at North Bondi in 20 minutes. Bloody paradise.

Going to Melbourne for a city break is great, so you get the best of both worlds. Did laugh when our melbournian friends told us to 'bring our bikinis' so we could go to St Kilda beach, i sat there with a jumper on while they were raving about the heat. It's a fun place to visit for eating, shopping and a wander around but too like europe for me to choose it to live over Glittering Sydney.

Damn good post, almost the reverse way of putting it.... Glitzy Sydney usually gets short shift over the more refined and European Melbourne.

So I can see from a person point of view that has lived in London and done Europe that Sydney would appeal.

I'll also add that Sydneysiders have always been friendly to me as well.... Unlike some places in rural Aus.

I agree. Always thought there were great inner city areas I was missing out on when visiting Sydney (didn't know where to go), whereas in Melbourne the topography and tram system make them far easier to find for the tourist. Brisbane's topography means it suffers from this even more than Sydney in my opinion. Seems to me it would be quite hard to explore inner Brisbane without local knowledge of where to go. Must be many who go to the Queens St Mall, CBD, Southbank and the Valley and think they know Brisbane.

Theres a new player on the park for Melbourne now, The Asian strip in High St Preston is now definitely worth a visit for any visitor. Well Melburnian at least. It could well be the 3rd best Asian strip after China town and Richmond.... (Footscray can be a bit dodgy at night). give it a couple of years and it could overtake Richmond. Makes the very bright and Gaudy Kebab houses of Coburg look tawdry, unfortunately for me, Although they do have the best Kebabs in Melbourne.

Yes, I was actually thinking of Melbourne when it was Australia's capital and largest city.

Sub tropical areas have very stable temperatures compared to temperate.

Brisbane's average winter minimum is 10.2 compared to Melbourne's 6.5. I think Melbourne also has a lot more wind chill than Brisbane.

Brisbane's average winter maximum is 21.1 compared to Melbourne's 14.1.

Even though Melbourne gets those extreme dry hot days on average it's not hotter than Brisbane.

Brisbane's average summer minimum is 20.4 compared to Melbourne's 13.9.

Brisbane's average summer maximum is 29.2 compared to Melbourne's 25.3. Brisbane also has the on and off again humidity to deal with (or this summer always on).

In todays paper....

Sydney's dismal report card for housing affordability, congestion and infrastructure
http://www.news.com.au/national/sydn...-1225879204476


THE NSW Government's failure to deliver on infrastructure has placed Sydney at the bottom of the performance list among Australia's capital cities.

An independent report commissioned by the Property Council of Australia has found Sydney significantly lags behind its counterparts in planning, infrastructure, housing affordability and congestion.

Poor ratings could mean Sydney fails to qualify for the Federal Government's infrastructure funding in 2012.

The report was compiled by auditors KPMG to determine how well Australian capital cities were performing against criteria set out by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

It also examined indicators such as housing affordability, congestion and meeting budget requirements.

When it came to meeting the COAG criteria Sydney ranked 6th, beaten by Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.

Let's face it, where you live is always special - unless you have gripes. I can see a Melbournian and Sydneysider arguing to the cows come home. Having seen both, I prefer Melbourne for many reasons and refused to believe this could be true until I came here.

I wanted Sydney - very much so, other factors said Melbourne. I didn't want Melbourne for cliched reasons.

My wife's family and everyone I knew said Melbourne.

I got here - then within weeks I said Melbourne too!

I think we could have been happy in either Melbourne or Sydney, the difference was for us at the time that we emigrated was that we would have needed considerably more money than we had available to us to attain the same standard of living in Sydney that we have in Melbourne.

Therefore Sydney was simply never an option.

BB

The difference between the two is less now, than its been in all my time in Aus.

Yes, we might have considered Sydney if we were emigrating now.... or somewhere else if we couldn't have afforded either!

BB