For a big rock dumped at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, Australia does have a decent amount going for it.
The locals, for a start – we’re a friendly bunch. G’day mate and all that. Happy to have a yarn between pints or help point you in the right direction if your phone runs out of data.
It should be said, though, that the chipper attitude of our sun-kissed inhabitants has a lot to do with the world-famous weather. It’s tricky to be aloof and grumpy when you’re given blue skies 300 days of the year.
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This sunny disposition also feeds into our cultural output, as we’re a nation that likes to enjoy themselves, often outdoors and almost always with other people. A social rock, this one.
Each of the handful of major cities we have here in Australia are known for their own local personalities, which gives Australia its unique national character. Yet, in spite of all that, there really are just one or two places you can go if you’re in search of the country’s cultural institutions.
@spoonful_of_sarah Couldnt gatekeep any longer 🤣🤣🤣 makes so much sense #melbournevssydney #melbourne #sydney
Perth, for example, plonked at the bottom of WA, does have a little bit of classical music going for it. And there are a few festivals dotted around the year as well. Which is nice, bless them for trying. But you won’t find concerts there with one-third of the frequency of performances in Melbourne or Sydney.
This brings us right to that centuries-spanning rivalry between the two major cultural hubs of Australia, the WWE Smackdown that is Sydney vs. Melbourne.
Sure, there is culture in other parts of the country – there are some cool jazz bars in Adelaide and a decent gay club on the Gold Coast – but the biggest music events and culture conferences take place over east. And only over east.
A fun example of how much this shits the other smaller cities can be found in Troye Sivan’s recent Something to Give Each Other tour, where he gave major side eye to Perth by not dropping any tour dates there. And it’s literally his hometown!
Only Sydney and Melbourne got to see his cargo pants and crop tops, with a few performances at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl being just a short Uber from the multi-million dollar brick factory he occupies in Carlton.
Talk about drama.
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But that’s what we come to expect of Melbourne, with its street art that spans multiple stories of residential buildings and its world record for the highest number of live music venues per capita. Melbourne is the small-town drama kid that wants you to know it can hit the high notes of “Defying Gravity” and how they jumped naked into the pool that one time at KitKat.
Melbourne’s dress code is anything you want it to be, so long as it’s black, second-hand, or 35% denim. Melbourne is the city of the porn star ‘stache and the $100 Docs that you somehow got on sale at Salvos for a tenner.
We want Hawaiian shirts in winter and black trench coats for brunch runs in the middle of February. Melbournians are so actively uncool in their reluctance to follow GQ style guides that they become the accidental ruling monarchs of your Instagram search feeds.
Us lot in Melbourne are usually broke, and the mismatched ‘fits we pull together show what can be done with a light wallet and a bucketload of slapdash creativity and this is what brings so many artists and musicians here, rather than Sydney.
Most of us can’t afford to try our luck in Sydney, for starters. Can you imagine an indie folk artist scraping together $720 a week by pouring pints in between gigs in the Sydney CBD? The rental market in Melbourne is similarly fierce, sure, but an average weekly rate of $550 per week makes it all a little more manageable.
Then there are the notorious Sydney lock-out laws, which, as vibe-kills go, are in a class of their own for cutting a night short. Melbourne has no such nannying to force its nicotine-tinged night prowlers home before 1am.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of venues within walking distance of one another that remain open well into the more disgraceful hours of a Saturday morning. Melbourne is happy for its inhabitants to bar-hop and keep the midnight oil burning, welcoming in every dungaree-clad tomboy and booty-shorted party queen for another round.
Melbourne brings the drama kid energy, and always will.
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