What city in your country do you feel would give a foreigner the best idea of said country’s culture?

So. Mate. Maaaaate.

Youse wanna hang out in a ciddy where youse’ll get the bestest idear of some dinky-di Aussie culture, mate?

Tough question, because of our parochialism, and because our culture has been shifting noticeably over the last fifty years.

For the old Australia, a regional city. Tamworth, New South Wales, because they play country music unironically?

For the new Australia, Sydney or Melbourne. Sydney and Melbourne still loathe each other, so I can’t give an unbiased answer, and I’ve give you the biased answer of Melbourne.

They’re clines of course: there’s nowhere left in Australia that you can’t get a half-decent latte from, and there’s quite a cultural divide between the hipster inner city and the burbs.

EDIT: I queried this of a better travelled colleague. Her retort: Tamworth would be so desperate to cater to out of town yuppies, that you would not see anywhere near as much Old Australian culture as I’d hope. My two colleagues concurred that Queensland was a better bet, as a more decentralised state. Christine Leigh Langtree, Tracey Bryan, what say you?