My love affair with Sydney started long before I moved over here. I could trace it back to my first visit aged four: dangling bacon rind off crab lines from the jetty at Pretty Beach (actually a place) and watching barbie birds (often mispronounced “galahs”) paint pink patterns in the sky. Or I could probably trace it back to my first glass of wine: aged 14 at a Thai restaurant on Crown Street. The warm intoxication hit me like a gentle, unbroken wave as I stepped out into the night, and as groups of 20-somethings crowded into busy bars, it became unflinchingly clear to me that this was a place where anything could happen (in vino veritas, etc).
It wasn’t just when I was physically here that Sydney’s call tolled deafeningly through my teenage mind: I remember being 16, baking cupcakes in my best friend’s kitchen and designing the lives that waited for us in a sunny city, as the English rain beat its relentless thrum against the window. My best friend died a few months after her 19th birthday, and when I turned 20 I moved here and chased the dreams we’d pencilled out on the map of our shared future. When grief hits me now, it appears at the most beautiful moments: when life in Sydney is so filled with fun that the injustice that she isn’t here, experiencing it too, is crippling.
Even without her, the years I’ve spent in Sydney have been more magical than I could have possibly imagined. And when I’m faced with the threat of possibly having to leave, the precious beauty of life in this city becomes even more clear.
Over the past seven years, I have been fortunate enough to have my family pour thousands of dollars into visas to keep me here; and during this past week alone, I’ve spent upwards of eight hours applying for what must be the fourth visa I’ve needed to obtain since moving. The fact that 187,000 people a year manage this Herculean task blows my tiny, admin-allergic mind. And the fact that Sydneysiders are moving, by the truckload, to London’s grey, smoke-choked embrace blows my tiny mind, too.
When I lived in London, I walked home with my keys between my knuckles every night. I fell asleep to the sound of sirens, and every morning dragged my under-slept body to a hermetically-sealed gym in a desperate attempt to unlock the latent reserves of serotonin that were surely (surely?!) just waiting to wake up.
Here in Sydney, I don’t lock my front door (I would apologise to my housemates at this point, but they don’t lock it either), and I have honestly giggled myself to sleep more times than I can count. I swim in the ocean every morning, and cherish the low-budget weekend trips I’ve taken up and down the coast far above the expensive European getaways that punctuated my time in London. I cycle to work down a path literally lined with palm trees, and at the end of a bad day (or a particularly good one), I walk for 20 minutes to where the cemetery meets the sea. At the edge of the city, the lights of Bondi twinkling in the north, waves that formed far beyond the horizon push towards the shore and beat with rhythmic certainty against the rocks. They remind me that humans, in our self-centred little worlds, are just an insignificant speck in the infinite, elemental system that whirrs on with or without us. That our role in this magnificent machine is to marvel at the beauty, and take every turn that comes our way.
Of course, this kind of experience comes from a position of immense privilege. I know that not every Sydneysider’s experience of this city is as charmed, and my infatuation with Sydney doesn’t totally blind me to its failings. Our real estate market is the second-most expensive in the world, and our crystal-clear air quality hangs on by a silver thread as the climate crisis mutates like a silent, ugly tumour. The scar that colonialism has left still manifests as insidious injustice, and the threat of the globally polarising political climate is closer than we think. I know these problems exist – but I can also see through them, to a gorgeous, sun-soaked, kind-hearted city.
Sydney is warm and safe and unpretentious. It’s gloriously uncool and shameless in its sparkle. Its beaches are the best in the world and it’s fringed in all directions (except the east, obvs) by wildly stunning national parks, where waterfalls flow into bean-shaped swimming holes and rainbow-coloured birds call from prehistoric treetops.
Transport is (if, sometimes unpredictable) affordable, and although Sydney is big (the largest city in Australia, and home to the country’s fastest-growing population), it’s hard to leave the house without bumping into a friendly face. People are – although sometimes cliquey – funny and kind; and maybe cliquey only because they don’t have space left for any more funny and kind people in their already-full lives.
Good coffee is standard, the (pokies-free) pubs strike the perfect balance between daggy and delightful, and the restaurants and bars speak for themselves. There are daily happy hours and rooftop bars in every corner of the city, and outdoor pools in urban parks where you can wash it all away. There are bath houses and open-air cinemas and ornate theatres all within walking distance of the water. There's the Opera House, of course, which really deserves a seperate love-letter: the beautifully brutalist beating heart of our city.
And I'll go on. In an average year, the sun shines down on Sydney for 200 out of 365 days, and when it rains here it really rains: loud and theatrical. Sydneysiders live for the days, but (despite the legacy of the lockout laws, which attempted to squash the city’s dance scene) some of Australia’s best parties can be found in the Harbour City: brought to life in venues that range from multi-level mega-clubs to underground Inner West alleyways. There’s the Sydney Metro, our new golden child. And then there’s the harbour: a sapphire snake that turns to crystal on quiet winter mornings just before dawn and honey golden after sunset. Head to a harbour beach on a warm summer evening to watch the day disappear behind the silhouetted skyline, then tell me there’s a more magnificent city in the world – I dare you.
I realise this starry-eyed portrait doesn’t scratch the surface of the structural and societal failings that we face as a city, so if you were expecting an intellectual critical analysis, I’m sorry I didn’t deliver. People love to rag on Sydney, and that's probably a natural response to the place you've lived in and known since you were born. But through an outsider's eyes, this city is a dream. I wrote this love letter to Sydney because I believe the place deserves to have its praises sung by someone who frequently faces their greatest fear (spreadsheets) to be here.
If you’re moving to London, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And if you work for the immigration department: please, for the love of the Matlidas, give me a passport.
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