Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
We've received a lovely DM from a fan but also a loyal Flex and Frooms listener. Their name is Ruby. The moving from London to Australia and they need to know which state to choose, which city Sydney or Melbourne.
They've said, Hey, Gurley, he's a big.
Fan here from the UK, hanging since the catastrophe that is Brexit.
I'm a jump in. Brexit was also when the fabric of time stopped. That was the main calendar moment of Oh, that's the my calendar, my calendar. Yeah, I want to hear more about do you have any more on that or that's just it?
Okay.
I've been toying with the idea of moving to Australia. England is going Hella downhill and your girl needs out. Brexit has stripped our opportunities to freely move to other countries in Europe, and Australia is likely the only country that'll take us Brits. It's giving immigrant to welcome obviously, though this is a huge decision to make, so I'm in the process of gathering dart and I wonder if you could help. I know both of you have experienced
living in Sydney and Melbourne. I wondered if you could share your thoughts on both cities and the pros and cons of each. Where are the vibes and where is the quality of life best? Where are there more opportunities for a creative girlie? What are the pros and cons of living in Australia in general?
Anything that might be useful. I'd love to hear it.
And if you read this, I'll be so gaffed by the way way sending you much.
Love, respect and admiration.
Yes, Rubiana Ruby, we will come through with a pretty consolidated list of pros and cons. Bear in mind that we haven't lived anywhere aside from Australia, so.
All we know is what we know.
But we can come through with some generalizations that are likely to offend Australians, but that's what we're here to do.
I did do ten days in New York a couple of weeks ago, and it was giving.
It was given that lived in experience.
I was saying, it's friends in Greenwich, so yeah, actually it was in Brooklyn, green Point.
I didn't even know.
Pros and cons of living in Australia general. Whenever I travel to another country, I often think of the reasons why it's easy for me to assimilarly there, but they might not be able to assimilate here very easily. The one thing that gets me about the UK London in particular, I didn't realize, and I'll be straight up, it is so strange to be black in Australia when I went to London and realized that, like everybody is mostly ethnic and not just black people, like all the diaspora of
ethnicities that exist, they're there and they're not others. I'm walking down the city, I'm looking at a voter phone ad black person in Australia. If you see black people on ads, they're going to be for like particularly urban things, sports hip hop, shoe store, burger chain that's based on Kanye Like, it's very particular ways.
Of framing people.
And then every now and then you'll get like a beauty company trying to show you that they're inclusive. They'll use their one dark skin models just so you can catch a break. So I think you'll be very very surprised at how not black and like not ethnic Australia is and how it's not infused and integrated. There are pockets of ethnic people in different suburbs and that is weird.
Literally, So I get like pretty much all my media through social media based on the people that I follow, and I would say I follow like relatively diverse range of people. So then when I watch like Free Day Air TV, I'm like, yeah, oh it's.
The TV TVA where well even most media, to be honest, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, h.
Well I'm not really I'm not really dating in the traditional media since I'm reading a little bit of smh. That's more news rather than advertisements. So they're trying to sell the Australian public products.
Okay, even the Sydney and Melbourne, I don't feel like they're twenty four hour cities. I think they really close at a certain time. Melbourne they've got a Monday Tuesday thing when a lot of hospitality venues are closed.
Weird.
Sydney is sleepy by seven pm, maybe eight pm if you're pushing it. And this is like major metropolitan cities, whereas I feel like in Europe a lot of places feel like they're always on. You could league the house and have a dinner reservation at eleven pm and it's not a big deal. You're not doing that in Australia.
It's totally different in that respect, I think as well. I noticed when I went to New York everybody gets up Well this is a generalization, but places open really late, like ten am cafes like, guys, what are we doing? Whereas if you moved to Sydney in particular, six am, there's a little six am buzz about town to Bondai Beach. Six am it's popping. Bondai Beach in the morning pops off the most at seven a m. Guys, that's early. It's not I'm fully Sydney cod now. I've been here
for five years and it's giving. I've like assimilated.
I've assimilated.
I haven't, no, but I mean when you grew.
Up here, so you know it's not that novel.
I would say one more thing may be quite different, the currency.
I think you're gonna be very surprised at how expensive it is to live in Australia in particular.
I know they say.
London is like the most expensive place to live ever, but there are places that you can go to and to get like a bit of a you're not really getting deals in Sydney. There's really like not like cheap places to live. And even Melbourne now, rent prices going up, cost of living is going up. It's all an expensive place to live. And if you don't have money coming up and you're not really good at budgeting, cooking, doing all of the stuff, you're gonna struggle.
People are struggling.
Before we get into the creative like which place is more creative city?
I just want to give a little vibe check.
We've spoken about it a lot on the podcast, to the point where someone and the team was like, we can't do another video on this, guys, because all you do is talk about Melbourne vis Sydney. But just let me give you a quick lay of the land before you choose your city. Okay, let's say you're moving to Melbourne. I'm from melbourne' this is what I know best. If you are more of a creative girlie and you've you know, more adventurous and kind of more interested in the future, go north side.
Yeah, this is where we're getting like very cool we are.
You're talking about if you want to go to Melbourne, where you should live.
Correct, got it, then go north Side. South Side is for people who don't work in the creative industries.
Typically is what I've known.
What is a creative industry?
Though a creative industry is like if you're like.
A writer, photographer, tattoo artists, like all of them kind of vocations is giving north Side.
What if you're like a makeup artist, or what if you work in retail.
That's a bit more south Side coded.
What I think you say specific I know, but they're catching, they're catching a vibe. We're using or using stereotypes.
Then I think you.
Should use stereotypes, don't say creative industry, and then like make nuance. South Side, from what I can see is white, bougie, traditional beauty standards vibes. It's like the archetype of what people think Australia is like posh Australian accents. You're gonna find them there. Rogue Australians is like, this feels archetype of Australians. North Side to me feels culturally aware and coded from the Internet. North Side feels really informed by the Internet.
It's global.
It's like different cuisines and cultures and people and la la la and like countercultural and whatever, but really little you could afford facts.
You said that way better than I could ever, So thank you. No, that's not true, Okay, Sydney. Sydney to me, from the very specific pocket where I've lived, which is all within a five kilometer radius, is so much more health coded, but in a way that I think is quite fun. Like the weather in Sydney is so much better than Melbourne in a way that I can't even describe, in a way that really shook me. When I first moved here five years ago, I didn't even realize that
Melbourne weather was bad. It just it's like Stockholm syndrome. I didn't realize how bad it was and how great it was until I moved to Sydney.
And that sounds out every day, blue skies, blue skies, and if it's not out, it's an anomaly and.
It's giving dystopia. So that's what's kind of like keeping me in this city. And it's such a boring thing to say, but it's what everybody says.
It's a real thing.
It's a real thing, and the beaches will just blow you away.
I feel like, if I'm want to beat crass, please and The oversimplified way to put it is that Sydney is la and then Melbourne, New York in the sense that you can do the same things in both places. They both offer you a lot in terms of dating and culture and lifestyle and work opportunities and going out. It's a different approach with the same intention. People will be like, oh my god, Mellen people.
Are so much nicer.
It's like, no, they definitely understand casual interactions a little bit better than Sydney people do, whereas the interactions in Syney can feel transactional, but that is about your little niches that you hang out with. I would definitely say that like Sydney is more commercial, Melbourne is more underground. But that is broadly speaking for people in our demographic. People say, like Sydney is so clique, Melbourne is clique. They're both CLIQI They're both cities where you need to
know to do the stuff you really want to do. However, I feel like going into a new city for the first time with no context, Melbourne is set up much better for you to just like find your way meet people casually. There's something on every day of the week. There's somewhere to go except Monday, as you say, as we said, but that's that's hospital and dining. In some areas you'll always find a play to watch, a movie, to watch art, to see, show on sports on it's
always pumping. Whereas Sydney the particular moments in the year where something is happening and people don't go anyway. People aren't going to Vivid in May, people are not in Sydney for Sydney Festival. In January when Sydney Fringe is happening, people aren't going.
It's a marketing problem.
Really, it's a marketing problem.
I will say.
Sydney is very expensive and you have a smaller time to get it right. If you don't have a job set up, if you don't have a network, if you don't have your ducks in a row, you're gonna struggle. Sydney's not a chill place.
Yeah.
A lot of people who are managing are from Australia who have families here and like relatives and resources and you understand the dynamics of it. Whereas if you're coming here and especially wanting to get the most of your life before you got to do farm work to stay, then oh.
Farm work to stay.
It's like go to Melbourne, you get the best of you know, a metropolitan experience, and then go visit Sydney for a couple of beaches. But I don't think Sydney's worth moving to from across the world if you don't have your stuff an order, if you're not getting sponsored by a job or something.
I've heard it's a bit of a party though.
Yeah, but I have. But it's a mandatory thing.
Yeah, to live in these disgusting conditions on site.
I think someone's family, Yeah, yeah.
You would. I think that's a great way to meet friends.
Yeah, I think.
I say they're all bonding through the trauma.
In terms of farm's locations, go to Orange like that, alright's actually quite a big city, Yeah, exactly.
People don't want northern Queensland or something isolated rural regional.
I had a friend do it and they had like a like I found myself in the farmland.
Yeah, like she said that it was a really mindful activity and it like reframed what.
She did with her life amazing.
So might be fruitful.
That's your permanent residencies, guy, that's just to extend your So be mindful.
I've got a really good idea, real quick.
If you are a creative girl, what I recommend is go do farm work, make of simple life, make a spin off of simple life, than curtail into your creative career. Guys, it's been twenty years. It's time for a reboot.
It's time for a reboot.
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