Australia's capital cities - what you like about them

Can we be as parochial, picky & stroppy as we like, gf? :wink:

Can we pick on Sydney? :wink:

Did I say ten minutes?

Okay gloves off - let's hear the good, the bad and the downright expensive

(I knew the Age of Aquarius wouldn't last)

OK, then! I just to start by saying that Melbourne is called Marvellous Melbourne for good reason! It's by far the best city in Oz to live in! All others pale in comparison!



.... Just joshing. Thought I'd start with a bit of parochial passion! :wink:

Seriously, though, it's a pretty good place to call home, if you don't mind a fair bit of rain & endless suburban sprawl. :wink: I'll have to think a bit about what sorts of things I want to say about Melbourne. Don't want to bore all of you silly with the standard travelogue stuff! I shall return!

Melbourne - Interesting - great bars, shops, fascinating little lanes, restaurants, etc. Serious shoe shops! Relatively easy to get about (apart from that funny right turn thing in the city!) Australian Open tennis (currently making plans!)

Against: Weather - overwhelmingly bleaaahh!
Obsession with football? (and that's AFL, not football, as soccer currently wants to be known!) Weather! and weather!

Adelaide - small, even now relatively easy to get about, relatively inexpensive housing and apparently comfortable living. Cultured.

Against - ???don't know enough about it.

Sydney - visually spectacular, cultured and vulgar at the same time, interesting. The harbour, and the beaches. Wide variety of sports. Shopping not so good (this is a positive!)

Against. Bloody expensive to live here.

Don't know enough to comment on the others - I've been to each, but not often and not for long.

Except - Darwin - humidity - yeccch!!!

Go for it, people!

A negative for Adelaide is - parochial and self-absorbed. That sounds mean-spirited but I have to say it. There is a well-interlocked oligarchy that runs our city-state and the power is shared sometimes uneasily between politicians and businesspeople but the little person is always left out of it. Having said that no great ill is done to us underlings.

Darwin is always best experienced in our winter, agreed margo, the humidity got to me when I was there in the build-up once, couldn't wait to get back to drier, cooler climes.

I'd love to go to Melbourne during the footy season but I just know I'd get into a punch-up in a pub over footy

by an American exchange student in Adelaide

This past weekend I went to the Christmas Pageant (parade), which is held in Adelaide every year. The locals say it's the biggest and most glamorous parade held in the world, but I think the Macy's Day Parade is a lot bigger and more glamorous

Some of my inlaws live in Sydney, good reason to avoid the place I reckon.

Melbourne = cultural capital of Australia

And that's where the original idea came from The owner of the original store (it was called John Martin's) who was Sir Edward Heyward, together with Lady Heyward, having see the Macy's parade in NY decided to bring something similar to Adelaide during the Great Depression to cheer everyone up. It probably wouldn't have hurt sales either. :wink:

I like all the capitals I have visited....I haven't been to Perth or Darwin....well, I am not so very taken with Canberra.


Even Brisbane is lots of fun now.

Melbourne is prolly my favourite. It is a good size, lots of great things to do, more cultured than Sydney and way more liveable.


Sydney is fabulous.....if you are rich. Has such a great atmosphere, and is so brash and fun.

Yes, that's exactly how I feel about Sydney, too, Deb. A little like how I felt when totally besotted by the charms of London on my first visit there. Such a wonderful place! So beautiful! So much to see & do! But so expensive if you actually wanted to live there! When I shared my besottedness (sp?) about London to all and sundry that crossed my path, inevitably the response I got was this: Ah, but you're a visitor! (In summer, at that! ) If you actually tried to here, you'd be stuck out in the counties somewhere without the cash to enjoy London properly. You need to be rich to do that! So Sydney's absolutely beautiful, shining away there in her spectacular harbour, but if I actually tried to live there, well, I'd be out in the sticks somewhere.

OK, I'll try to tell you about what I love about Melbourne. That's where I live. I won't go on about touristy things & "must sees & dos" because you can read that sort of stuff anywhere. And really, if you're into the spectacular touristy things, well, the city of Melbourne might not be first on your Oz travel list!

I see Melbourne as a big, sprawling collection of villages, really. There are parts I never go to because it's a helluva trip to go from one side to the other. And you need a good reason to do this, to put up with all that time stuck in your car! So I'll just talk about the bits I know & like & often frequent. I love the city centre, changing all the time & now so often full of visitors, whether for some sports event, tourists & backpackers, or just visitors from the suburbs. I love the trip to & from the city: you always meet interesting people, usually asking for directions, or just wanting a chat. My usual purpose for a city visit is to visit the (wonderful!) art gallery (NGV) to catch up with a new exhibition, to meet friends & eat (great cafes!) to attend a political rally (often! ), or for else some particular appointment.
But my very favourite thing about Melbourne, is our mad passion for politics & ideas. We take this stuff very seriously! We bicker over politics & current "issues" in our daily newspapers, in our workplaces & while shopping! We hit the streets in huge numbers on just about any political issue you can name. We thrive on argument & a good cause!

But the parts of Melbourne I know & love best are where I live & my regular stomping grounds that radiate from there. My bit is the inner north. I just love it here! It's very "melting pot", definitely not "salubrious" or "establishment money" & changing all the time. (Apart from very established suburbs like Carlton, which is now unaffordable & full of doctors, lawyers, architects, etc, etc.) But once you're out of Nth Carlton it's a whole different story: suburbs traditionally full of migrants, students, first home buyers & now the "trendies", too.

To give you some idea of my home turf, let me tell you about where I usually shop. This is all in the next block from my street, a 5 minute walk: My hair is cut by an overly-exuberant young, groovy Greek fellow , at the 2 middle eastern shops I buy my dried lentils & beans, I buy my coffee, fruit vegies & cheeses at the market, generally from Greek stall holders, my bread rolls from the Vietnamese bakeries (both shops run by women), my spices & other cooking bits & pieces from the Indian shop (the young man from Hyderabad could sell anything to anyone, I swear! ), a Chinese herbalist's shop is intriguing with his pills & concoctions for every known ailment, the Turkish kebab shop sometimes tempts me when I'm too tired or too lazy to cook dinner (as do the Egyptian, Indian, Himalayan cafes & the Egyptian felafel shop, the middle eastern cafes, the Asian noodle shops, etc.). I'm expecting that soon we'll also have some African shops. They're the newest wave of migrants & very visible on the streets. Sometimes I sit outside at one of the (usually Italian) coffee shops & just watch the passing parade. Folk from just about every nation in the world pass by. To me it's just fascinating!

Lovely description msolga. I think I know the area. One thing you missed.

The Age.

Just having it in print *sigh*.

Ah yes, the AGE! Delivered with a great, heart stopping thump every morning at 5:30! Guaranteed to wake you up! A Melbourne addiction (for those not addicted to "the HUN" -otherwise known as the Herald Sun. Right wing tabloid. Boo, hiss!)

But I want to know about the nitty gritty of life in other Oz cities, gf. It's a pity this thread is only about our capital cities. I'd also br very interested to hear more about some of our regional cities: Like Bendigo, Newcastle, Geelong, etc, etc ....

Fair point msolga - as a person who holds to the the "you only start a thread, see where it goes...." school, then let's see where it goes.

Ballarat. Antique shops. Yes!

Dadpad?

Bendigo- lived there for 4 years as a young man, more pubs per square metre than any place in the world. Tried to pub crawl (1 beer in each) the main drag once.......... got half way.
Shamrock hotel in the center of Bendigo is beautifull great food great service great period decor, 6 stars, its a good one.

Wangaratta- touch staid and consevative for me but still nice.

Shepparton- progressive city, youth more of a problem than you would expect for a regional city.

Ballarat- only visited Soveriegn Hill so dont really know. Eureka stockade, blood on the southern cross, all that, stirs my blood a bit.

Hamilton- spent 2 weeks in a caravan park, working on a property there, seemed wealthy and nice. Thought about moving there.

Wodonga-living in the shadow of Albury. Sort of little sister that will never live up to the big sisters reputation. Plenty to offer though.

Hmmmm....well, my experience of Adelaide is fairly similar to yours of Melbs, Msolga dear, cos I live almost in the heart.

You guys are simply bigger, so you attract more immigration, but where I live and move is great......Africans, many many Chinese and other Asians, sundry middle eastern cultures....


It's too goddamn bloody hot sometimes in summer.


Fabulous beaches and wonderful, if subtle, countryside.

I only realised via going overseas how cosmopolitan it is for such a tiny city.


Things really ARE in reach.


I like it, but I would also happily live in Melbourne and in Sinney, if I had heaps of money, and my friends were there.

No more time....I will write more later, if you like...

I love the historical "feel" of both Bendigo & Ballarat, dadpad. All those wonderful Victorian (boom time, gold rush) buildings! Wonderful! There must have been so much money around in those days! I visit Ballarat more than Bendigo, mainly to visit their terrific art gallery & introduce students to the wonders of the Heidelberg school painters. AND the Eureka Stockade! It's always a good visit, with the students demanding a lunch stop at Macca's on the way back. (So much for instilling a bit of Oz history & pride in heritage into them! )

Bendigo's record pub record must be very closely followed by Williamstown (Melbourne's original port). A pub on every corner, I reckon! And beautiful, quaint ones, with a wonderful feeling of history to them, too. Those gold speculators from all over the world must have been BIG drinkers! The Shamrock hotel in Bendigo. Yes. Ah, beautiful!

( I have to smile as this foreign A2K spellchecker tries to make sense of strange worlds like "Ballarat, Bendigo & Williamstown" ... "Whaaaaa?", it's saying! )

So, dadpad, which place is closest to you? Wangaratta, I gather. (I can't wait till the spellcheck lays eyes on the name!) Do tell us more!

Peek......