Melbourne -v- Sydney Melbourne -v- Sydney

As the song says, the beat goes on..
Melbourne is better than Sydney
Sydney is better than Melbourne

Who knows? Who cares?
We do!

Melbourne is better than Sydney

We were delighted to see FACEBOOK's Melbourne is better than Sydney group with over 84,730 members in July 2010.

A few of the top reasons.. Better and cheaper food, nicer people, Arts and Entertainment culture, International Melbourne Comedy Festival, Moomba, CBD easier to navigate, trams not lightrail, Crown Casino kicks Star City's ass and the Melbourne Cup!

Sydney bleats on about being the financial capital of Australia, then why do 7 out of the top 10 Aussie companies have their headquarters in Melbourne.... BHP, Telstra, ANZ Coles Myer, NAB and FOSTERS.

Things To Do in Sydney

Melbourne -v- Sydney Debate

The only thing Melburnians love more than 'living' in the world's most liveable city is... telling someone from Sydney!

Sometime ago we had our own Melbourne versus Sydney debate going, that started out as a simple question to know what was the tallest building in Melbourne, and somehow it turned into a Melbourne -v- Sydney tit-for-tat (thanks Patty) that went for about 2 years.

We closed the debate because it got out of hand, largely through silly posts which we hope does not happen to FACEBOOK!

Melbourne is better than Sydney

That about sums it up.

- Better and cheaper food
- Nicer people. Sydney people can be rude!
- Has an arts and entertainment culture (Sydney doesn't!!!)
- We host the International Melbourne Comedy Festival, Grand Prix, Moomba and various other festivals
- Our CBD is easier to navigate
- We have trams and not lightrail
- We have Australia's SECOND best university - the University of Melbourne, ranked 22 in the world! (NOW BEFORE ANYONE DISPUTES THIS, PLEASE REFER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Melbourne) Link below.
- People come down to Melbourne to shop
- We hosted the World Swimming Championships
- AFL comes from Melbourne - much better than that NRL crap
- Our Lord Mayor is John So. Everyone knows that he rocks!
- Sydney is the most polluted capital city in Australia! (Source: "What's good for you")
- Own experience with people with anger management problems coming from Sydney
- Melbourne has better drivers - Sydney drivers have anger management issues (generally, Sydney people are just angry, see above - people who SLAM audit files in rooms and books on desks in an office environment, isn't that right?)
- Traffic is better in Melbourne
- Melbourne has more markets for getting fresh fruit, produce and other cool stuff. There's Queen Victoria, Preston, Prahran, South Melbourne and many more!
- Melbourne is grid layout, north east south west. Sydney is a nauseating rollercoaster.
- Fashionable, friendly. funky, fun, vibe, bars, parks, basically how ugly is George St? How beautiful is Collins St?Adds to our AWESOME nightlife
- We don't have ugly beach riots like Cronulla!
- We also have the national champion football (Melbourne Victory) club... and the countries greatest high school, aptly named, Melbourne High School (also not forgetting MacRob for the girls)
- Better architecture rather than relying on the Harbour and Opera House for everything!
- We have the biggest shopping complex in the southern hemisphere - Chaddy!
- Crown Casino kicks Star City's ass!
- Cheaper booze
- FASHION!
- We have the Eureka Tower - tallest residential building in the world!
- Oscar winner Cate Blanchett comes from Melbourne! (and MLC)
- Public transport is so much damn cheaper!
- We have the Aus Open and Kooyong Classic, which kicks Adidas international tournament's ass :P
- Worst coffee ever in Sydney
- Melbourne doesn't have a stupid monorail!
- More expensive accommodation in Sydney and property in general
- Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival time, not to mention the Melbourne Cup!
- MCG is a much better stadium than SCG
- Well endowed men - note I am ONLY putting up your suggestions so feel free to argue this one with me
- Really great bars
- Monopoly Board which features Melbourne
- Melbourne also has the tallest office building in australia - depending on who you believe - either 120 Collins, Rialto or 101 Collins - they are all taller than any buildings in Sydney
- 7 out of the top 10 Aussie companies have their HQ in Melbourne....BHP, Telstra, ANZ Coles Myer, NAB, FOSTERS
- Melbourne had the first ever cricket test match
- Bigger agricultural show
- The Melbourne Cup and really awesome Spring Carnival
- Bigger Fashion Festivals (Melbourne International)
- Melbourne hosted the first sitting of parliament, before Canberra was established
- Melbourne also has the best fire-twirlers in Aust
melbourne is the sporting capital, all the best sporting people from around the world come to our city
- We were the capital city of Australia before Canberra... They've never been and never will be!
- We hosted the Olympic Games first... They can never take that away from us hahaha

UPDATED AND LATEST
- People go to Sydney to visit, but to Melbourne to Live
- Sydney was designed by criminals, Melbourne by Engineers and Architects
- Melbourne, along with Vancouver, the world's most livable city.
- We have distinctive seasons in Melbourne and get to wear layers.
- Melbourne didn't produce Lara Bingle - so where the bloody hell is she now?
- Tollgates on freeways

OTHER FACEBOOK GROUPS

Sydney Is better than Melbourne (7,274 members) LOL, we're wetting ourselves!
Sydney is better than Melbourne after a while
AFL; the Anti Football League
AFL is better than Rugby League
Brisbane is better than Melbourne
Brisvegas is better than Melbourne (where is Brisvegas?)
Melbourne People Living in Perth
Canberra is better than Melbourne and Sydney put together (nice reefer!)
MELBOURNE IS BETTER THEN SYDNEY (another group)
Melbourne is better than Monash
Melbourne Jews Dress Better
Melbourne kicks Londons ass

If you are a FACEBOOK member and logged in, you will be able to access and join the group at the link below:

2012 AFL & NRL Grand Finals

Outcome: One All | Sydney won the AFL & Melbourne won the NRL

The Melbourne versus Sydney rivalry is set to hit fever-pitch this coming weekend with the two major sporting codes featuring teams from both Melbourne and Sydney.

Sydney, Melbourne rivalry hits fever pitch

Sydney or Melbourne, Melbourne or Sydney? Usually that debate centres on which city is better. But this week it's about your choice of football teams, and this time, it doesn't matter what your favourite code is.

Both cities will be represented in the NRL and AFL grand finals. Melbourne Storm plays Canterbury in the rugby league, while the Swans battle Hawthorn in the AFL decider.

But just because you live in Sydney, it doesn't mean you want the Swans to win, and it's a similar story with the Storm in Melbourne.

Source: EMMA PARTRIDGE & MICHAEL COWLEY | theage.com.au

Reality Check Catherine Deveny

If you want to read a real shocker, then check out Things that say Melbourne (link below) by Catherine Deveny. Published in The Age, it is clear to this Melburnian, Catherine has absolutely no idea what Melburnian's think about Melbourne.

She clearly has a love hate relationship with Melbourne, erring on the hate side. Maybe she is trying to be the shock jock of writers, but as your mother would say, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

Steve Price: Covid Melbourne & Sydney

The coronavirus border battles only further exposed the bitter Melbourne v Sydney culture wars

Crossing the border from Victoria into NSW seven hours after it opened on Monday this week, I realised I hadn't been in Sydney for eight months.

The COVID-19 virus, plus a move south in March 2020, meant what had been a weekly commute between Australia's two biggest cities had ended.

Arriving back in inner-city Sydney this week I also realised Melbourne doesn't really get Sydney and Sydney certainly doesn't get Melbourne.

The two-city rivalry is now worse than ever and whatever you believe, don't believe Sydney people don't think about which city is the better place to live.

Sydney versus Melbourne and the differences between the two places has only been sharpened by lockdown, isolation, hotel quarantine and the whole virus experience.

Victorians have been locked out, locked down and looked down on by everyone else in Australia, but especially by Sydney people.

After inflicting virus-carrying passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship on the rest of the country by simply letting them disembark to all corners of the nation, Sydney quickly stamped COVID-19 out and got on with living.

Masks were never a thing and forget about being locked up at home - it never happened in Sydney.

Victorians and Melburnians in particular were seen as virus-carrying outcasts and banned from every state in Australia.

As Melbourne suffered 819 tragic deaths and the collapse of Melbourne's vibrant major events and hospitality industry, with everything from the March Formula 1 Grand Prix to an entire AFL season, and a Melbourne Cup with no crowd, Sydney just got on with life.

For me it again raises the question of how two reasonably close Australian cities - geographically - can be so different.

Why is the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry so strong, and at times so bitter?

Having lived and worked in both

- Sydney for two eight-year stints between 2002 and 2009 and again between 2012 and 2019, and Melbourne from 1980 to 2002, and now back again - I reckon I know.

Take talkback radio, an industry I have a fair bit of knowledge about having presented drive and nighttime shows in Melbourne, and breakfast, morning, afternoon, drive and nights in Sydney.

Radio 3AW has been the dominant station in Melbourne since the early nineties. Leading personalities Ross Stevenson and Neil Mitchell are untouchable and seen as the voices of their town.

I am friendly with, and have worked with, both. Neither would work for the Sydney audience and Neil, in particular, has a distaste for anything and anyone north of the Murray River.

He labels Sydney people and Sydney media people in particular as "spivs" .

Ross is a little more forgiving, but often refers to "well known Sydney racing identities" .

In Sydney the two stations I worked for - 2UE and 2GB - featured larger-than-life personalities Alan Jones, now on Sky TV, and John Laws. As successful and talented as both are, they wouldn't and haven't worked on radio in Melbourne.

Melbourne audiences just won't cop the bombastic hectoring from Jones, or the country and westerntinged schtick from Laws.

Politics between the two cities brings an even starker contrast.

Premier Dan versus the Armenian migrant daughter Gladys. Andrews, compared with Berejiklian, is a control freak.

The NSW Premier gets on with the job, picks competent people - like Police Commissioner Mick Fuller who fixed the cruise ship disaster - and lets them run things.

Her Liberal/National administration has been efficiently building infrastructure upgrades for years, including a network of road tunnels, new heavy-rail projects, a light rail system and sports stadium upgrades.

The Andrews Victorian Labor government talks the talk and has started significant projects, but have wasted years talking and planning, but not building.

Despite this Victorians would, according to all published polls, reelect Dan Andrews in a canter. Victoria and especially suburban Melbourne is the national success story for the ALP.

NSW, by contrast, is blue Liberal, delivering Scott Morrison, a Sydney boy from the Sutherland Shire, into the Lodge. As history shows the last four Australian Liberal prime ministers - John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and now Morrison - are from Sydney.

And if you needed any more convincing Melbourne and Sydney people are like black and white, ask Victorians what they thought of Tony Abbott.

The fact Abbott was a volunteer firefighter and lifeguard only brought derision, not respect.

In 2002 when I first went to Sydney to take over from Alan Jones on 2UE's breakfast shift, Sydney was still run by a Labor government. The then premier Bob Carr, who had copped a belting on air from Jones, was keen to make contact.

A few weeks in he rang out of the blue and asked me to join him for lunch in the premier's suite in Macquarie Towers.

Feeling quite important, I turned up on time and had a very pleasant lunch where the most powerful man in NSW wanted me to rate his ministry and the job his ministers were doing.

I must have gone OK because again out of the blue the phone rang, this time a dinner appointment with Bob and his whip-smart wife Helena.

When my ratings at breakfast didn't soar and Alan Jones switched stations very successfully, the invitations from premier Carr dried up - very Sydney.

It was an insight though into how Sydney does business so very differently to Melbourne.

Sydney is a tougher town to work in than Melbourne and Sydney people don't take easily to Victorians taking on jobs normally reserved for Sydneysiders.

Just ask Eddie McGuire, who was a left-field choice to run the Nine Network - a job he would have carried out brilliantly. He was virtually run out of town by hostile media coverage of his efforts.

People ask me which of the cities I would prefer to live in and I always answer that both are great places. I describe Melbourne as a village held together by the glue of AFL.

Sydney in contrast is about six different villages all throwing rocks at one another while never actually visiting. Try getting an Eastern suburbs resident in Sydney to cross the harbour bridge - it doesn't happen.

One would hope the COVID emergency would bring Australia's two great capitals together more, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Just take the Tourism Australia campaign featuring Hamish Blake and his wife Zoe Foster-Blake . Victorians like its quirky take on travel resuming - my Sydney friends reckon it's lame.

Sydney is more your Lara Bingle "where the bloody hell are you" types; a travel advertisement by the way, cooked up by that Sydney bloke Scott Morrison, the current PM.

With the borders between our two great states now open, can I suggest a two-way exchange with Sydney people taking in COVID-19 free Melburnians, and vice versa.

My Wednesday night sail on board a racing yacht tuning up for the Sydney to Hobart made me realise what a spectacular place Sydney is, but I can't wait to get back to my reserved seats at the MCG to watch the Tigers in 2021.

This article by STEVE PRICE is from the November 28, 2020 issue of The Herald Sun Digital Edition. To subscribe, visit https://www.heraldsun.com.au/.

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❊ Web Links ❊

➼ Melbourne -v- Sydney 

➼ FACEBOOK - Melbourne is better than Sydney

➼ wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Melbourne

➼ FACEBOOK - MELBOURNE IS BETTER THEN SYDNEY

➼ Things that say Melbourne - Catherine Deveny

➼ www.theage.com.au






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