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During our time in Melbourne, we noticed that the locals seemed to have a slight obsession with Sydney. It would be fair to argue that this was largely media driven; for example we saw a number of articles in backpacker magazines pitting the two cities against one another (most of these contests seemed to end in an unfriendly draw).

Melbourne’s local paper The Age would regularly have a pop at Sydney: about how the city had done very little with the site of the 2000 Olympics, and about how Melbourne, being Australia’s “sporting capital”, should have the honour of hosting a future soccer world cup final, not Sydney. With all this animosity, it’s no wonder they designated Canberra as the “compromise” Federal capital!

Melbourne is viewed by many as the more cultural and cosmopolitan city, while Sydney with its multiple waterfronts and hills appeals to the more active, beach loving type. However, Sydney’s detractors argue that its charms are more superficial: for them, Melbourne has more depth.

After spending five months in Melbourne, I can vouch for the fact it is cultural and cosmopolitan. But until last week, I had not experienced what Sydney has to offer. We had five days in the Harbour City to find this out.

Our first day in Sydney coincided with ANZAC Day, a holiday to commemorate the Gallipoli landings, which seems to have evolved into a pub crawl for Australia’s armed forces. If you ever want to see men and women in uniform partying hard then go to Sydney on ANZAC day. Alternatively, you could go down to JD Wetherspoons in Aldershot on a Saturday night.

All this activity was just a short bus journey from our hostel in Newtown, as was the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. After seeing these icons of engineering lit up at night we returned the following day to take a peek inside the Opera House (you can’t see much without going on the tour) and to walk across the bridge. The walk is really worth doing, though I can’t help being a little disappointed that it is painted black. I was expecting it to be a stunning turquoise like the Tyne Bridge.

Not all of Sydney’s attractions lie in the Harbour. The city is also famous for its beaches, so we went to the most famous of all – Bondi. Now, I’d heard some slightly negative reports about Bondi Beach – mostly to do with the fact it was brash and crowded. But on a Monday in late autumn it seemed neither crowded nor brash. In fact, we had a very pleasant afternoon doing the Bondi to Coogee clifftop trail, though I did expect both bays to be bigger than they were.

Our trip to Manly gave us a chance to see another famous beach and to embark on another walk. The Manly Scenic Walkway is 11km long and goes through part of the Sydney Harbour National Park. We didn’t manage to get to the end of the walk, but still got to see some pretty little bays and nice views over the Harbour from Dobroyd head.

The trip to Manly is worth it for the ferry ride alone. Spending time in a boat on the harbour was among the highlights of our time in Sydney and we got another opportunity to ride a ferry across the harbour when we visited a family friend in Mosman one evening. On that occasion we were treated with a double rainbow across the opera house and a great sunset.

So after five days in Sydney, I would agree that its charms are pretty evident from the outset, though I can’t comment on whether it is superficial and lacks depth. I got the impression that the rich cultural life that exists in Melbourne is probably there in Sydney too, but I think you have to be there for more than five days to see it.

What I will say is that Melburnians are wrong about one thing: having visited the Olympic site whilst in Sydney, it is not the underused wasteland that they would have you believe. There seem to be plenty of visitors to the site, including 180 native bird species and seven different types of frogs!