Celebrated as the ‘Queen of the Pacific Rim’, vast, vibrant Sydney is home to one of the world’s most beautiful harbours, with the imposing Opera House as the jewel in its crown.

The State capital of New South Wales, Sydney is a thriving centre for both business and the arts. The city has all the cosmopolitan amenities – top shopping, excellent restaurants and buzzing nightlife.

Carved between the mountains and the sea, it also offers the ultimate in the great outdoors. The Pacific Ocean swells onto golden beaches, while a seasonally shifting palette of colours unfolds further inland over the Blue Mountains. In addition to the harbour, famously adorned with sailing boats that mirror the distinctive curves of the Opera House, there are numerous inland waterways and national parks.

From its sordid beginnings as a British penal colony in 1788, Sydney rapidly flourished, establishing booming trade links and witnessing large-scale development throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Sydney Opera House (a feat of avant-garde architectural vision) epitomises the city’s desire to lead the New World in the 21st century. Sydney’s architecture is a stunning melange, with little Victorian structures nestling below towering concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers.

All the exuberance and plate-glass sophistication nonetheless fail to compensate for a certain competitive edginess in the city’s psyche. After the Australian Federation was created in 1901, the traditional bickering between Sydney and its arch rival, Melbourne, was settled in 1908, by making Canberra the new national capital. However, until 1927, when the city of Canberra was completed, Melbourne remained the seat of national government.

Nevertheless, Sydneysiders insist that their city remains the ‘true’ capital of Australia and indeed, with a triumphant hosting of the 2000 Olympic Games, the world might even agree with this. But the rivalry with Melbourne persists – a rivalry based more on style than on stature for, while Sydney is decidedly Anglo in its ethnic orientation, Melbourne is more continental, with a much more tangibly imported culture. To Melbourne, Sydney will always be hedonistic and shallow, just as to Sydney, Melbourne will always be grey and intellectual.

Australia’s white history has eclipsed its indigenous inheritance and, although Sydney has the highest Aboriginal population of any Australian city, a stroll around the city’s streets offers little evidence that it has anything other than a white (and latterly, an Asian) heritage. While museums, galleries, theatre and dance troupes pay tribute to the archaeological and cultural legacy of indigenous culture, Aborigines in the city remain very much an invisible minority.

With the Olympics, Sydney came of age as one of the world’s great cities. The games’ smooth running has been attributed to the thousands of local volunteers, whose helpful, welcoming attitude revealed (much to Sydney’s own surprise) that beneath its somewhat vain and self-seeking surface there still exists a bedrock of traditional Australian virtues.

But the Games did more than affect the city’s mindset: they transformed its physical appearance. Streets and public areas were remodelled, long-neglected eyesores were removed and new street furniture erected, resulting in a city centre that is more pleasant and easier to navigate than ever before. Combine that with semitropical summers and mild winters and the result is an excellent city to visit at any time of the year.