THR

I was thinking the other day that as Australia is a country the size of a continent it is perfectly possible to spend your entire life without having ever visited the other part of the country.

Of those people who don't live in NSW but live somewhere else in Australia, I wonder how many of them have never visited Sydney.

Like it or not but Sydney is the window of Australia to the world, therefore the people who don't live in Victoria but live somewhere else in Australia and have never visited Melbourne is certainly higher than that of Sydney.

This leaves us with a question: How many born and bred Australians are there who have never visited either cities? After all, the distance between Perth and Djakarta is shorter than between Perth and Sydney.

Of the 21m people of Australia, there must be quite many who have never visited either city of their home-country but have visited places like London, New York etc.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Well I've met people who have never left NSW so I guess there will be plenty of people who have never visited Australia's major cities.

I've never been to Perth or Adelaide and can't think of one good reason why I ever would.

bcworld

I've met people in Brisbane who have never travelled further than Dubbo...and they're proud of it!

I also have a friend in Brisbane, in her late 30s who's travelled all over the world, extensively, including living in the UK for several years...and yet only recently visited Melbourne for the first time...hated it too!

jad n rich

Partner has a sister like that, OMG, scary, but you know what? happiest family I know, sheer ignorance of what else is on in the world, little family unit, husband, kids and now grandkids, little business, its in Bayside actually. Every year they go to straddie for a week, thats it - the big trip.

ProudVIC

Victoria alone is the size of the UK so yes, most people would not spend much time outside the state where they live. Most people do a fair bit of traveling though, you find a lot more people who have been all over the country and to other countries than those who haven't been anywhere.

Sydney, being the largest city (for now anyway), and with the most famous and instantly recognisable landmarks and more set up for tourists than other cities is certainly the 'face' of Australia for international tourists. For the average Melbourne person though there is little need to be travelling there.

In my opinion it is a place that you only need to visit once to say that you've seen it and behind all the major tourist attractions it is a bit of a soulless city. Just my opinion, but you get a sort of empty feeling from the place that you don't get in Melbourne which has tonnes of character, is more a place to live than a place to visit.

verystormy

When we first came, it was to work for a company in Sydney, so got to see Sydney as home for 5 months, but as most of Australia was never very high on my list of places to see then i very much dought i will bother going to places such as Adelaide. Especially as WA is so big with so much to see and do.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

No bias there then !!

Weebie

Been to Brisbane only once and hardly seen it. Many Australians don't holiday in Australia at all they go overseas. For the Australians who do only stay here and hardly go anywhere well I wouldn't associate with them.

bcworld

I think Sydney has plenty of character...however you have to take yourself out of the main tourist traps to experience it. I know that's a mistake I probably made on my first visits to Sydney...now that I know the place better I appreciate it a lot more. Tourists probably don't make the same mistake with Melbourne as the CBD lacks those 'kodak moments' anyway and I think it's more well known that much of that 'character' is located outside the confines of the CBD in the inner suburbs.

ProudVIC

Maybe a bit, but more personal opinion. Of course personal opinion is different for every individual and many people would prefer Sydney to Melbourne. Sydney is certainly the more spectacular place geographically and that is a major attraction.

Pollyana

Wouldn't bother coming back, most of it isn't worth seeing!!! Personally I like Melbourne, always have - has a cosmopolitan feel, and is more friendly than Sydney - but again thats a very personal view. I also prefer the climate in Melbourne and if I could do my job there I'd have moved yesterday!

moocow

their are cocroaches south of the border? why would we want to visit them?

ozzieeagle

Tell you what, even as a dedicated Melburnian, being on Sydney Harbour for the first time and looking back at the City, with the Bridge and the Opera house and the City Skyline then all the houses around the harbour. That is bloody special. It's got to be the prettiest city in the world. F... knows what visitors coming into Melbourne from Sydney and the North along the Hume make of Melbourne... one of the dreariest entries to a City I know of.. That part around the Ford Factory in Campbellfield reminds me of Slough. Thank Xrist Carlton and the other Inner burbs are such a fantastic contrast.


I like the rest of it as well... one of my favorite parts of Oz to Visit.... Conversely Bondi was one of the biggest let downs of my life. Manly made up for Bondi though... thats more like I expected... bit more buzz.

folic

People often fail to appreciate the size of Australia. Take family members who visited us a few years ago, for example. Sure, they'd watched 'Home and Away' and 'Neighbours' from the comfort of their divans in the UK, but none of it prepared them for the real Australia

They were planning to visit Uluru/Ayre's Rock for example -- and thought it would be a handy coach-trip of a 'couple of days, return'

After spending time with us in Sydney, they then flew to visit family on the Gold Coast. And hour flight, more or less. It was only when they returned by coach, as a way of seeing something of the countryside, that they grasped the true distance. It nearly wrecked them. And it turned them right off driving a hire car from Sydney to the Barrier Reef, as they'd originally planned, when they understood it would take them three or four days solid driving.

They cancelled a trip to Perth purely because of the distance, even if by plane

Even a trip from Sydney to the Hunter Valley exhausted them

By the time they left for the UK, they had a whole new appreciation of the massive size of this land

They will not be returning to Australia, they informed us, because for half the money spent, they could travel to Greece or Italy, etc. Which is true enough

The average Aussie family usually doesn't holiday for more than a couple of weeks a year. To travel from Sydney to Perth is a massive undertaking and quite expensive in fares alone. Same with a Sydney family holidaying in the Barrier Reef area. Travel within Australia is quite expensive. Makes more sense for many Aussies to spend the same money holidaying in South East Asia

Being an island far removed from Europe, Australia can seem quite isolated. For Aussies, there are no quick weekend trips to Paris or Rome

Getting from place to place within Australia -- Sydney to Melbourne or Sydney to South East Queensland -- whether by car, bus or train, is a lengthy trip, is expensive, is tiring. Not everyone likes to fly. For the same money and a fraction of the time and miles-travelled, someone in the UK could get from London to Edinburgh with lots to see in between. Whereas in Australia, there are miles and miles of nothing, interspersed by service stations

We lived on the Gold Coast for decades and had no yearning to see Sydney. Then we came to Sydney and stepped back 20 years. A bridge, some water, lots of overcast and rain and a multiculturalism that was more depressing than anything else. Oh, and lots of dirt and ancient, overcrowded public transport. After the Gold Coast, Sydney was nothing, apart maybe from a big disappointment.

Who could blame Aussies for saving to go overseas ? I don't blame them, that's for double sure. What's the age of the oldest building in Australia ? Whatever it is -- they have paper-clips that are older in London, Paris, Rome, Munich, etc.

The travel industry occasionally exhorts Aussies to ' See Australia'. And they conveniently neglect to say that apart from a handful of widely-separated cities, what you'll see is thousands of miles of emptiness, all requiring hundreds of gallons of fuel.

So whether they remain in their small regional towns or larger cities or make the odd trip outside this great empty landmass --- it's their choice and no-one could blame them

THR

Indeed, there is a limited amount of days in a year which one can holiday and perhaps in a country like Australia people rather holiday overseas. Perth for example has an international airport and it is quicker to get to SE-Asia rather than to eastern-Australia.

Another thing is that even though the world is getting smaller and the economic emphasis is shifting more and more in the Asia-Pacific region, there are still people, especially among the older ones, who have become used to thinking that Australia is a remote country and when they are on holiday they want to see places which are not remote. Perhaps in the future no-one will consider Australia remote any more.