Sydney is not the capital! Canberra is, and a fine city it is too.

Ironically, given that it is the only city many foreigners could name, Sydney is (arguably) many Australian’s least favourite city. It’s too big, and its geography makes it a nightmare to get around. Less arguably, parts of it are stunning to look at. But as a place to live? No thanks.

Of course I would say that, being from Melbourne. ;-)

It's kind of telling that Melburnians never miss a chance to slag Sydney, while Sydneysiders are too busy surfing at their 200+ beaches to worry about a country town that tries to make up for its lack of attractions or industry with coffee and an inferiority complex... :P

> Sydneysiders are too busy surfing at their 200+ beaches

All of them? All the time? I guess that explains their puzzling lack of cultural output. Thanks! :P

People of Sydney are too busy stuck in traffic all day to write snarky comments on HN while people of Melbourne are free to shitpost away from the comfort of the trams.

so much so that to avoid the controversy, the gov't chose to just build out a city in the middle between sydney and melbourne and use that as a capital city rather than settle once and for all which is better...

In the US state capitals aren’t in the major city in the state, with some exceptions (Indianapolis comes to mind).

Canada is the same. They built Ottawa in the middle of nowhere, halfway between Toronto and Montreal.

  They built Ottawa in the middle of nowhere

And on the fringe of nowhere, they built their hockey rink.

> worry about a country town

Watch out, that country town is about to be Australia's biggest city by population...

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/booming-melbourne-to...

I think that was sarcasm. Or... well, I hope?

I dispute Canberra being a fine city (:P). Though I agree with you that Sydney is my least favourite city, Melbourne and Brisbane being equal top.

I only chose Brisbane because moving from he UK to Australia, it's too far to move to another city and still be wet and miserable 9 months of the year. ;-)

As an Australian, I must say our nation does horrible cities. Sydney has a spectacular natural setting. Brisbane has nice parks. Melbourne's the best at night. But they're all splattered with hideous corporate-starchitect towers, and everything in them is built around car parks. It's virtually illegal not to breathe petrol fumes with an outdoor coffee. The Aussie approach is to carefully survey two centuries of European & N. American urban design, and studiously ignore every lesson learned. Both the major parties are co-owned by real estate & fossil fuel companies, so no great surprise I guess.

If you haven't been to Australia, come to see our magnificent bush & coastline. Forget the cities (and wear blinkers if forced to traverse the 'burbs).

Oh, come on, there are a lot of cities that look worse than this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Eg1OZ.jpg (and this doesn't even show the Opera House!)

I do agree that tearing down many of the old buildings in the CBD was criminal, but there are plenty (OK, some) of neighborhoods that have more or less managed to maintain that ye olde Sydney feel (the Rocks, Glebe, Darlo, etc), and many of the newer developments in Barangaroo and Darling Harbour are positively nice.

Sydney is also (IMHO) more pedestrian-friendly than any city in the US except maybe New York, and it will get even better once the light rail from Circular Quay down a pedestrianized George St is up and running in a few months.

FFS a tourist picture of a pretty (if anodyne) area for the super-rich does not a broadly humane environment make. Sydney is a horror show of inhuman scale corporate concrete erections, car parks, and murderous texting drivers who all hate each other. It's a host for cars and suits, not bipedal mammals. The natural harbour is one of the most spectacular world city settings, with a few pleasant human-made ornaments (Opera House etc), but overall Sydney is an atrocious piece of urban design for people to actually live in.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why Australia's cities are so bad (general cultural skittishness & lack of ambition, deep infestation & corruption of the political class by the real estate industry, etc), but the consequence is a few poor-quality over-large cities and sorry lack of emphasis on (not to mention investment in) human-scale regional towns.

Ok, now I'm genuinely curious: what large cities do you like?

It's a fair question & I don't have a good answer. The city I enjoyed visiting the most was probably New York, but I'd hate to live there. All the large cities I've lived in (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, Glasgow) have been piss poor. Essentially I think truly 'large' cities (over a million or so) are inconducive to human flourishing.

But Australia (1) crushes its small population into a few huge cities (almost uniquely so I think for a non-city state?), and (2) is horrible at all urban scales. Is there anything as ugly as (say) Coffs Harbour (essentially a strip mall with cardboard suburbs) outside of the US?

It was almost certainly sarcasm. I have family over there and have rarely gotten similar questions from people here in the States.

Although, it doesn't surprise me as much as it probably should. I live in New Mexico and have had people in the past ask if it's difficult traveling to the US, or what it's like living in another country...

My mum, who is Australian, once received a compliment from someone at a local store whereupon learning of her origins said she "spoke beautiful English." Without batting an eye, she replied "Thanks, I usually speak Australian."

So, the structure of the OP's comment adding in the additional exasperation of "there are other cities?!" definitely strikes me as sarcasm.

I'm British born and can count on two hands how many times I've been how long ago I moved here (Australia) from Germany.

GERMANY!

It was not sarcasm! When were you last in Canberra? Apparently it's changed a lot in the last 5 years.

I'm also British originally – arrived here '03 – so I never saw it back in the day, but almost everyone I know went on a school trip as a kid and says it was terrible. And in the 90s/00s it probably was terrible. Since then it's become a really cool little city. Emphasis on little – it's tiny. But Braddon is a lovely place to be during the week, and the national galleries and what have you are a wonderful place to be on the weekend.

Give it another chance. I really love it there. (I'm FIFO'ing weekly at the moment.)

Been here 11 years, I was last in Canberra 2 years ago.

My problem is, all the attractions you've mentioned are indeed wonderful. And the War Museum is a national tressure. But I could knock them all over in a long weekend (I did!).

Which was the reason I decided not to apply for a job in Canberra and stay in Brisbane. :P

Can confirm "isn't that the capital?" was sarcasm. The fact people didn't realise shows how believable (and common?) that belief is!

When I submitted this image, I had no idea it would become a spirited forum for Ozzies trashing their cities. Wonderful stuff. I'm reminded of a classic joke from a Johnny Carson monologue: "I was at a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out."

I've been to Perth on a work trip and all the Australians I've met tell me that I've never been to Australia because I went only to Perth :)

that's because australia means “the part of australia i'm from”

  parts of it are stunning to look at. But as a place to live? No thanks.

It's the San Francisco of Australia,then?

I think OP is well aware Sydney is not the capital.

> Many people don't realise just how big the continent actually is, since they've only heard of Sydney

I hosted European guests in Sydney a while back. They inquired about hiring a car for a weekend to go and see Perth/WA.

They were shocked when I told them they'd be lucky to even get there in 2 full days of driving.

Full days, as in 2x 24 hours? because it'd be a lot more than 2 days if we're talking a measly 8-9hrs per day.

It's about 40 hours non-stop in a car.

Did me some hitch-hiking back in the day. Sydney-Perth, Melbourne-Perth (and the corresponding return trips) somehow always neatly approached four days, or 96 hours if you like.

Once got a ride from a trucker who did Adelaide-Perth-Adelaide once a week. Alternating with a colleague, that is, so he had 3½ days exactly to complete the round trip, including on/off loading at both ends. They never really stopped once they got the truck moving, and I do believe a lot of the driving was pill-fueled. Completely bat-shit, of course, but apparently not that uncommon a practice back in the eighties.

Bloody hell that's the most boring drive of the country too

On the topic of "the only one people can name isn't very good": The Sydney Opera House is one of the most famous in the world, thanks to its stunning architecture -- but among musicians it's famous for having unbelievably bad acoustics. Some singers have even had written into their contracts that they will never be required to perform there.

They've been doing a lot of work in the last decade to fix the acoustics in the main wall with acoustic diffusers, reflectors and changes in stage and seating structures

I backpacked it about 20 years ago. I was foolish. I didn't know how long it would take. It took a bloody long time! Even family couldn't relate until I printed the map of Australia on top of Europe (and northern Africa) at scale.

It holds an inconceivably large aquifer beneath it. In some places under enormous positive pressure so geysers shoot up after drilling.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin

People are reasonably protective of that aquifer, but in an imaginary Earth, one with save states you could revert back to, it would be interesting to pump it all up and see what happens.

> completely over the US and part of Canada.

No. Australia is large, but it is slightly less than the area of the continental US.

In area terms that's true, but it does pretty much fit "over the US and part of Canada" as can be seen here:

https://www.aboutaustralia.com/australia-size-compared-to-us...

You conveniently left out the word "completely" from the original statement.

  Area of Australia = 2.97M sq mi
  Area of USA = 3.78M sq mi
  Area of Europe = 3.92M sq mi
  Area of Canada = 3.85M sq mi

Ain't Google grand?

Yeah, the area of Australia is smaller. But in my OP I said "edge to edge" by which I meant (ambiguously, sorry) west to east edges. People don't realise driving from west coast to east coast US is the same distance as Australia.

Area of mainland USA = 2.96M sq mi.

Area of mainland Australia = 2.93M sq mi.

I think this is the apples to apples comparison. Don't include Alaska or Tasmania, or Hawaii, which tend not to be what people are thinking of.

Australia is overlaid on a map of contiguous 48 states and DC, and that area is about 3.12M square miles. Yes, google is grand

Sydney is not really even the biggest city any more, it's in the process of being overtaken by Melbourne, which is actually a lovely city despite jibes down thread.

I like how the Australian Open TV announcers pronounce it "Melbun."

This is the correct pronunciation, that's how the locals say it.