Sydney for me is a liminal space. I never visit Sydney to visit Sydney, I happen to find myself in Sydney for some other purpose. A friend’s birthday, a new year’s eve, family engagements, or most frequently, the airport.
The last time that I found myself in Sydney without an immediate purpose for being there being there was during the Black Summer Bushfires, when Canberra had the worst air quality in the world. Sydney was still pretty bad, but Sydney had the sea breeze to clear out the smoke every afternoon, while in Canberra, that same sea breeze just brought more smoke form fires burning on the south coast - so to Sydney to couch surf I went.
This time was no exception - after walking off the Murray’s bus at 9:30PM, I was back in a car to the airport at 6:30AM the next morning. My visit to the Harbour City this time was barely 13 hours long, and I was asleep for most of that.
How to describe the firstborn of the Australian settler cities? I have yet to meet a Sydneysider not filled with the bedrock belief that they had the good fortune to be born into a natural paradise, and it’s hard to disagree.
The habour is stunning, and various elements of Australian culture are in many ways Sydney culture, such as urban beach and swimming culture. There are few urban waterways as vast as Sydney Harbour, and nearly all of it is perfectly fine to swim in. “I went for a trip to CBD and had a swim in the harbour before heading home” is a perfectly normal thing to do in Sydney, but taking a similar dip in Lake Burley Griffin, the Yarra, or Brisbane River is very much not.
Melbourne lays claim to be Australia’s greatest city off the back of its culture. Off the civic ambitions of the gold rush, its plausible claim to be the birthplace of Australian democracy (and also to an extent, modern democracy globally by innovation of key concepts such as the Secret Ballot). Melbourne is the Australia that we built, city of coffee, of sport, of grid patterns and tram networks, of galleries and libraries and universities and good food.
And Sydney has all these things too. But Sydney has never needed to justify its sense of self off some notion of cultural sophistication. It doesn’t need it. Sydney is the Australia that was found - beaches, lifestyle, perfect weather, national parks, that natural paradise that draws british backpackers to Bondi by the thousands. A paradise - if you can afford it.
That of course brings us to the other side of Sydney, which is that not everyone or even most Sydneysiders have a beach within walking distance, harbour views, or temperate coastal climes. Every city has geographies of class, but Sydney takes this to 11 - a city whose politics and culture is shaped by who gets access to Sydney’s incredible natural bounty and who doesn’t.1
But when the future arrives in Australia, it arrives in Sydney first. For a quarter of a millenia, Sydney Harbour has greeted millions of immigrants and visitors to Australia. Many don’t stay2 - it’s a limininal space for many others too, between old lives and new ones.
One day I will have more to say about this glorious, vibrant, self-assured sun soaked hot mess of a city. After a frighteningly rapid progression through check in and immigration however, it was onto Bangkok.
I’m not kidding here, the Bondi Beach and the Northern Beaches doesn’t have a rail line in large part because of a popular campaign based on the argument that it would more easily facilitate beachgoers from western sydney, say nothing of the Cronulla Riots.
Sydney has negative interstate migration and has for many years now.