Another week, and another duel between rivals Sydney and Melbourne as to which city is more liveable/cultural/interesting/full of wankers.
This time, the salvo was inadvertently thrown by Time Out magazine, which awarded Melbourne second place behind Chicago in its index of the most fun cities in the world.
Sydney came a sad third-last and, according to Time Out, Sydneysiders are “drunk, horny and miserable”. Quite the trifecta of emotional dead-ends.
Smug Melburnians, meanwhile, get to delight in yet another survey, which confirms the most entrenched of Melbourne prejudices: that we live in the best city in Australia and Sydney is the flashy, tarted-up counterpoint to our gentle sophistication.
But as someone who has lived in all three capital cities at one point in her adult life, and who has called Melbourne home for the past eight, I’m here to tell both Sydney and Melbourne residents that you have it wrong.
The best capital city to live in is Brisbane.
CULTURAL BACKWATERS NO MORE
Now, this wasn’t always the case. Growing up under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s reign in the 1980s was like growing up in a gulag with vaguely pleasant guards.
The weather was great, and the tropical fruit was plentiful, but you couldn’t protest without genuine fear of arrest and sex education was banned in public schools (to name but a few of the restrictive measures imposed by the Hillbilly Dictator, as Joh was known).
But the Sir Joh phenomenon did not occur in a vacuum and the incredible underground music scene in Brisbane that sprung from that time — the likes of The Saints, The Go Betweens and Powderfinger — were influenced and driven by the cultural repression of Joh’s lengthy reign to at least some degree.
Post-Joh and things are not perfect, but, culturally, Brisbane is anything but a backwater.
The Gallery of Modern Art holds consistently provocative and world-class exhibitions, while the Queensland Art Gallery is home to a comprehensive international collection, including a healthy amount of Australian art.
In the hip suburb of New Farm, the old power station, Powerhouse, is home to numerous foodie events, music, markets and restaurants.
Uni students thrive in the River City, too.
According to the University Rankings List, the University of Queensland is the third best university in Australia, finishing ahead of the University of New South Wales, Monash University, Macquarie, Deakin and RMIT.
PROPERTY PRICES
Then there is the not-inconsequential matter of property prices. There is something fundamentally freeing about living in a city where the cost of a family home has not escalated dramatically, and not every barbecue is devoted to hotspotting and chat about terrace bargains you picked up for just under a million.
My partner and I have bought a small art deco house in a gentrifying Melbourne suburb that is 8km from the CBD. It’s a great area, but we paid a fair amount for the home.
I can’t help but think (and Google) what that same amount of money could buy on the doorstep of Brisbane’s CBD.
Here are some examples:
This three-bedroom Queenslander is listed for $695,000 in the leafy suburb of Bardon, just 5km from the CBD.
Or this two-bedder in the emerging northern suburb of Alderley, which is asking for offers from $695,000.
Or how about this one in Gordon Park, 5km north of the CBD, calling for offers in the low to mid 700,000s:
Queenslander homes are not only gorgeous, they’re also relatively cheap for period properties (compared to Melbourne and Sydney terraces and cottages), and they’re often surrounded by established trees, are on large lots, and many offer views to the CBD.
Bliss.
FOOD
Previously, Brisbane’s food scene was a pretty basic one. Ambitious chefs headed to Sydney or Melbourne, and the highlight of a Saturday night out was a beer and steak at the Breakfast Creek Hotel (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Now the hipster enclaves of West End and Fortitude Valley offer every conceivable cuisine imaginable, while the CBD and Southbank fine dining restaurants serve hatted dishes, which you can invariably eat while enjoying views of the Brisbane River.
Furthermore, because you aren’t forking out a fortune for your mortgage on that expensive Sydney or Melbourne home, you can afford to order the bottle of Billecarte champagne and a delicious Morton Bay bug the size of your head.
So you may be wondering why I have spent the past eight years in Melbourne rather than in a semi-retired tropical fug up north?
Well, for all of Brisbane’s charms, its economy isn’t exactly firing, and Melbourne has more employment opportunities than Brisbane. Which, ironically, is what has helped keep population, and hence property prices, in check, and allowed Brisbane to become so genuinely “liveable”.
Which is also why I’m happy for everyone else to fight over Sydney and Melbourne: It will mean more of a chance to invest in that fully renovated three-bedroom Ashgrovian Queenslander (yep, it’s a style) with ample room lie about beneath the shady Jacarandas.
Johanna Leggatt is a Melbourne-based journalist, who grew up in Queensland and has also worked in Sydney. Follow her on Twitter @johannaleggatt
Originally Published: http://www.news.com.au/