Sydney - Vibrant city on a roll

By COLIN MOORE travel editor

It's big, it's brash, and it's got the first Olympics of the new millennium.

Traditionalists might have wished that the Olympic honour had gone to the Games' country of origin. Yet it is arguably more appropriate that the world's greatest festival of sport should mark the start of a new epoch in Sydney.

Australia is the most vibrant and has the most potential of the globe's younger nations.

And, as befitting its mostly sun-drenched and vigorous character, Australians have turned sport and the celebration of it into a passionate national religion.

Sydney, where the nation began, is the most Australian of all its cities. Melbourne considers itself the more intellectual and artistic; Adelaide is more dignified; Perth is a pretty mining and entrepreneurial town, and Brisbane is old-fashioned and kitsch.

But in Sydney, with its beautiful harbour, there is freshness, tolerance, innovation, a touch of arrogance - and sometimes some awful mistakes.

It is the Los Angeles of Australia, and, like such cities, including our own Auckland, must take the barbs of its envious sibling cities. It is the price you pay for building an opera house that is a work of art, for welcoming an extroverted celebration of homosexuality and for taking the Olympic Games to new heights of extravagance.

Whether you visit Sydney for the Games or watch the city exposed on television, you cannot fail to be drawn to it.

Travel today gives an insight into the Games city and many of the reasons Sydney is the first port of call for most New Zealanders visiting Australia.