A Tale of Two Cities
Australia has two great cities: Sydney and Melbourne.
As someone not from here—and, more recently, a homebound worker who spends long days behind a screen—I can’t claim to know either city in any comprehensive way. What I have are impressions, gathered from the edges of living.
I. The Quiet Discontent
If I were to begin with an ending, I’d say this: I live in Sydney, but my heart drifts south to Melbourne.
Why, I can’t quite explain. It’s not logic but something closer to texture—a quiet dissonance I can’t ignore.
When I first came to Sydney from Brisbane, a friend how did I like the city. “Wonderful,” I said. “Sydney’s a great place to visit—but not for stay.”
He looked surprised.
“Sydney feels too much like Hong Kong,” I said. “And one of the reasons I came to Australia was to leave the past behind.”
Back in Hong Kong, my days had been consumed by work—endless hours in glass towers that never slept, deadlines stacked like dominoes, and the unspoken rule that to rest was to fall behind. There was no such thing as after work; there was only before exhaustion. The city moved at the speed of ambition, and I moved with it until I could no longer tell whether I was living, or merely functioning.
I had come to Australia for something gentler—a life that allowed space between effort and being. I wanted to spend my evenings reading, or sitting in a small theatre watching strangers perform their truth. Art, to me, was not a luxury; it was proof that time could still be mine.
But when I first arrived in Sydney, that sense of escape faltered. The resemblance was uncanny. Sydney’s skyline, its crowded ferries, the ring of its harbour—all felt like echoes of the city I thought I’d left behind. Even the rhythm of footsteps in the financial district—the suits, the coffee queues, the silent urgency—brought a chill to my spine. It was as if the same metropolis had followed me across the sea, wearing a different accent but the same expression of fatigue.
Later I learned that Sydney’s metro system was built by the same company that built Hong Kong’s. That explained the déjà vu, though not the unease.
Sydney did feel like a city built for workers—or, more precisely, for those who could afford to hire them.
That was my honest impression, but it wasn’t the root of what I felt. The real reason lay deeper, beneath logic or comparison—something quieter, harder to name.
II. The Grass, the Fence, the Mirror
Now, years later, I’m writing these lines from my Sydney apartment. Perhaps what fuels this essay is simple discontent in life. The grass is always greener, they say—and mine, apparently, grows somewhere south.
Moving to Melbourne wouldn't solve all my problems. But the idea itself made me think.
I’ve come to realise, when I’m in Melbourne I’m allowed to express myself; in Sydney, I’m expected to perform.
When I asked my Sydney friends what they thought of Melbourne, their answers came with the precision of a well-rehearsed play.
Max entered first, in the role of the sensible man: “Too many crazies,” he said, lowering his voice as if Melbourne might overhear. “Sydney’s safer.”
William, tanned and impatient, waved his hand like a surf instructor dismissing theory: “No beaches! How am I supposed to live without the ocean?”
Then came Summer, the moral philosopher of the group, clutching her coffee like a manifesto. “All those lefties,” she sighed. “If my kids grew up there, they’d be ruined—forever protesting, never working. Sydney keeps people grounded.”
And Jack—dear, unfiltered Jack—didn’t even pretend to think. “Bloody outsiders,” he muttered, as though the conversation itself were treason.
It was almost comic, how united they were in their disapproval. Each of them a different character, yet all speaking the same line: Why would anyone leave perfection for chaos?
Not one of them wanted to move south. Not one.
III. Two Kinds of Art
To be fair, their complaints were not without merit.
Melbourne rains endlessly. The wind howls. The sky refuses to stay the same colour for an hour. There are men on trams who speak to invisible audiences.
And yet—I prefer it. For one reason: self-expression.
Self-expression gives rise to a kind of artistry that feels uniquely Melbourne. The city hums with small, unguarded acts of creativity: independent bookstores spilling poetry onto the sidewalks, cafés perfumed with espresso and quiet ambition, buskers whose voices echo between tram bells and drizzle. There’s always something happening just around the corner—someone sketching, someone singing, someone talking too loudly about a book that changed their life.
Melbourne dresses like no one is watching—an effortless collision of colours and textures, thrift-store coats paired with confidence. Its people speak with a clarity that feels almost rehearsed, as if every word has been weighed and chosen, polished until it catches the light. Conversations are animated but sincere; they listen as much as they perform.
And there’s a certain social grace here, an openness rare in other cities. Strangers become companions over a single cup of coffee; introductions dissolve into friendships before you realise it. Every time I visit Melbourne, I meet someone new—someone who paints, writes, plays, dreams. This, I think, is the spirit I once naively called “artsy.” Perhaps I still do.
Sydney, of course, has art in abundance—an opera house that gleams like a seashell, galleries and museums of every scale, international orchestras, film festivals, pop stars. If culture is an industry, Sydney is its boardroom. It curates beauty the way corporations curate vision statements: sleek, precise, always ready for a press release. The city celebrates excellence, but it does so with the distant polish of a glass tower—spectacular, professional, and faintly impersonal. You buy your ticket, take your seat, and admire from the correct distance. The art dazzles, but you rarely touch it.
Melbourne, on the other hand, feels like the back room of that same building—messy, alive, a little improvised. Art here isn’t performed for you; it happens around you. In Sydney, art demands a ticket; in Melbourne, it demands attention. Sydney wants to impress you; Melbourne wants to include you.
In Sydney, art is a career. In Melbourne, art is a way of life.
It’s the same distinction one might draw between Los Angeles and New York. Hollywood lives in L.A.; Broadway lives in New York. Both belong to the same constellation of art, yet they burn at different temperatures.
Film, to me, feels like a constellation you can only admire from afar—magnificent, but untouchable. It demands capital, coordination, and an army of professionals. Every frame is polished, every silence edited. You sit in the dark, passive, a spectator to someone else’s dream.
Theatre, by contrast, feels like standing too close to a fire. The actors breathe the same air as you; their sweat and trembling are real, not simulated. A single stumble, a missed line, can alter the night’s chemistry. The play unfolds not on stage alone but between performer and audience—an invisible current that makes everyone complicit. You don’t just watch it; it happens to you.
Film is spectacle; theatre is collision. Film entertains; theatre implicates.
And perhaps that’s why I love it—because theatre breaks the fourth wall not as a trick, but as an invitation. For a few hours, you’re no longer an observer; you’re part of the story.
And perhaps that’s the point: art, at its best, is not display—it’s dialogue.
IV. Art and Capital, Uneasy Allies
If I were a performer, I suspect I’d be happier in New York than Los Angeles. But that, too, might be projection. The cities themselves are not opposites—just different dialects of the same hunger.
For years, I treated those dialects as rivals: the purity of creation versus the practicality of production, expression versus survival. I thought I had to choose between them—to be either the dreamer who refused to compromise, or the pragmatist who played by the rules. It felt like a war fought between my two hands, each trying to prove the other unnecessary.
Then, one day, I realised something quiet but decisive: the hands could work together. The left could shape what the right could build. The art I made didn’t have to be pure to be honest, nor commercial to be seen. Creation and ambition were never enemies; instead, they work together, like two adults.
A small play, if it succeeds, may one day become a film. And that’s not corruption, but a success.
Every artist must negotiate with the world. Some deals work, some don’t. But I’ve come to believe the real trick is not to win the negotiation—it’s to keep your voice breathing inside it.
V. The Twin Engines
And perhaps this is what I’ve been circling all along—the quiet reconciliation between creation and commerce, between freedom and structure, between dream and daylight. The left hand and the right.
Maybe it’s the same with cities. Sydney, with its order and shine, teaches you how to build; Melbourne, with its rain and chaos, reminds you why you began.
Perhaps I was never meant to choose—only to move between them.
I have no wish to become the muttering dreamer on a Melbourne tram, lost in the echo of his own genius; nor the immaculate machine in a Sydney high-rise, efficient, gleaming, and quietly hollow.
I want to build and dream, to argue and reconcile.
Because maybe, just maybe, Sydney and Melbourne were never that far apart.