Melbourne, The Best City In The World? How Dare You (Naked City)

Sydney and Melbourne have always enjoyed a strong and at times intense rivalry. We Sydneysiders love to slag off at the ‘bleak city’ of Melbourne, for all manner of reasons. Over the years some very memorable quotes have entered the lexicon of abuse.

Perhaps the most famous is one originally attributed to Ava Gardner, during the filming of the apocalyptic drama On The Beach in Melbourne in 1959. She supposedly quipped:

“On the Beach is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it!”

The haughty Hollywood star bore the brunt of that sarcasm for many decades to follow until it was finally revealed the quote was the invention of cadet journalist Neil Jillet. The story is that he was unable to secure an interview with Ava and as a kind of payback, contrived a headline based on the competition between our two biggest cities.

Nevertheless, Melburnians have had to deal with endless criticism of their beloved Yarra River such as “too thick to drink and too thin to plough” and the old chestnut deriding their lack of a vibrant night life – “they roll up the footpaths at 6pm”. These days it’s too dangerous to enter a tobacconist down there without the entire shop exploding in a massive fireball, and as for their drab shark-free suburban beaches, the only thing that will ever bite you are the exorbitant parking fees.

Melbourne might have the massive MCG but Sydney (aka The Steak & Kidney) has Accor and with a mere $200 million injection we may well have a roof on our biggest stadium. Try putting a roof on the enormous MCG and you could bankrupt the city forever.

Melbourne might host the world’s largest tram network, but we’ve got the light rail and hey, we have just seen the return of those fabulous bendy buses! Oh okay, Melbourne does have similar buses but they refer to them as ‘articulated’ and it just doesn’t ring the same. Bloody snobs!

For Sydneysiders it was bad enough Melbourne being ranked as the fourth most liveable city in the world for 2025, according to the Global Liveability Index. Now we learn, to our horror and disgust, that they have been anointed as TimeOut’s ‘Best City In The World for 2026’.

Yes, it’s an outrage especially when you consider Sydney comes in at a paltry #21, with even drug-ridden Mexico City rating better.

OMG, Clover Moore, what are you going to do about it? Maybe you need to build that ‘Casper The Friendly Ghost’ arch alongside the Sydney Town Hall after all.

Admittedly TimeOut’s ratings are not the definitive accolades, and there are other rated listings for the world’s best cities. Yet those snooty Melbournians are surely thumbing their noses at the Harbour City right now, almost choking down on their lattes and short blacks in the trendy cafes of Lygon Street as they unleash bursts of sneering laughter.

Sydney is often branded brash and vulgar by our southern counterparts with ‘bleak city’ claiming a kind of cultural and intellectual superiority. Maybe Melbourne’s long miserable winters marked by endless rainy days, force their writers, poets, artists and musicians to spend more time indoors – contemplating the meaning of life or agonising over what to rustle up for dinner from their Anthony Bourdain cookbook.

Admittedly it’s Melbourne schools that regularly top the NAPLAN tests, but that does not signal a higher degree of intelligence, just an ability to add up, subtract and divide a darn lot quicker. We like to take our time (and use a calculator) and a bad NAPLAN result does not mean you can’t become another successful businessman like Abe Saffron, Frank Nugan or George Alex.

And when it comes to the criminal milieu, who clearly add colour, glitz and glamour to any city, Sydney is clearly the front runner. Our gangsters like ‘Mr Ten Percent’ Lennie McPherson, Big George Freeman and Christopher ‘Mr Rentakill Flannery ‘ (born in Melbourne but moved to Sydney) all oozed charm and charisma – unlike the sullen, monosyllabic Melbourne dumbos Mark Chopper Read, Mick Gatto and Carl Williams.

Perhaps it’s in the domain of popular and indie music where Sydney clearly asserts its cultural supremacy. It’s our inert sense of worldliness and self-effacing humour that flies right in the face of Melbourne’s introspective almost quasi-religious chi-chi. Sure we have had our load of pretentious over serious art bands, but Melbourne simply reverberates with them.

Sydney rock and experimental bands have a great tradition of taking the piss, whilst many Melbourne bands have it literally running down their legs in a kind of self-imposed purgatory. When was the last time former Melbourne private school boy and high priest of the metaphysical Nick Cave cracked a real smile? We enjoy a happy, joyous and unashamedly boozy night out at the pub or club, not a preachy musical version of Dante’s Inferno.

Much has been written about Sydney/Melbourne rivalry, especially when it comes to securing major sporting and cultural events, and outdoing each other as a tourist destination. When it all boils down it’s a rather friendly contest, and Sydneysiders are by no means jealous – although I can’t help thinking there are still many Melburnians who drink their own bathwater!