At the heart of Sydney - Australia's oldest, largest and most diverse city - is the outrageously good-looking Sydney Harbour. Like a psychedelic supermodel, the city curves and sways through this glamorous maze of sandstone headlands, lazy bays and legendary surf beaches. The Sydney experience is essentially physical - dunk yourself in the Bondi surf, sail under the Harbour Bridge on a yacht, jog along the Coogee cliff tops or rampage through Centennial Park on horseback. Everybody seems to be outside - the beaches are swarming, street caf?s buzz and the harbour blooms with sails.

Jealous as hell, the rest of Australia stereotypes Sydney as more body-beautiful than bookish, more carpe diem than museum - a narcissistic 'Sin City' fixated on sunglasses, salons and soy lattes. Sure, there's a lot of blonde dye in Bondi, but the genetic legacy of the British and Irish convicts who built Sydney is more evident in gutsy self-belief than anything mirror-worthy.