Have you heard? The invisible difference that separates Sydney and Melbourne

December 7, 2025 — 5.00am

I visited Sydney recently, for the first time in nine years, and was stunned at how different it is from Melbourne. The weather was a lot better – that goes without saying – and the locals weren’t dressed head-to-toe in black. The streets are a bit cleaner, too, and the spotless coffee shops all look like they opened a week ago. Another thing is that the trees in Sydney are native to Australia, which is a nice change from the English imports across Melbourne that mess up the ecosystem and make me sneeze constantly.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the two cities was also the least obvious: the way they sound. For one, the shriek of $400k Italian supercars was a dominant fixture of the Sydney soundscape. The crosswalk klaxons are also a near-constant sound in Sydney, thanks to the seemingly directionless streets squished into the city centre that mean you’re crossing the road every two minutes. The sound itself is also insistent and aggressive, it feels like you’re being pushed into the road. It’s easy to see why Billie Eilish used those klaxons on her hit track Bad Guy, as you’ll always be on your feet when you hear them.

The pedestrian crossing button design sampled by Billie Eilish. The buttons are used in both Melbourne and Sydney but have different sounds.Credit: Lucy Stone

Though Melbourne has the same crossing buttons, ours have a more mechanical, retro sound of clacks and clicks that is more soothing and less hurried.

Another thing is how the word on the street – literally – varies wildly between the two rival cities. Sydneysiders tend to talk really loudly, often about where to get food or where particular items of clothing were bought, or real estate, of course. In much the same way that everyone in Sydney walks very fast for no immediately obvious reason, they also speak at a higher volume than necessary to the person sitting just 10 centimetres away.

Melburnians, on the other hand, speak more quietly and routinely throw out the kinds of quirky non sequiturs that make you want to carry a notepad in your back pocket at all times. I once observed two uni students on the City Loop passionately debate the structural consistency of different kinds of cheese.

Weird, amusing conversations like this are a staple of Melbourne’s overcrowded and frequently delayed public transport service, where people love a natter, it seems. For all the sleek, spacious efficiency commuters enjoy in the double-decker trains of the Sydney City Circle, there’s hardly a peep to be heard from anyone travelling on them.

The shivering, damp occupants of Melbourne’s trains, meanwhile, are perfectly happy to detail their Sunday hangovers in graphic detail or discuss the South-East Asian city from which they bought their ironic T-shirt. If Sydney is the loudspeaker centre of finance and media, then Melbourne remains the eavesdropper’s hub of the everyday storyteller.

But there’s one other thing that cuts through the esoteric conversations about dairy products on Melbourne’s public transport: the overhead announcement bongs. Melbourne is teeming with these peculiar noises, many of them as iconic as the old-school clatter of its trams. Every time you tap on your myki card or listen out for the platform announcement at Flinders Street Station, the small bongs and tritones that you hear are in equal measure antiquated and a part of Melbourne’s historical fabric.

Our train stations, including Flinders Street Station, have their own, distinctively Melbourne sound effects.Credit: Wayne Taylor

The fact many of these quaint musical notes have been in circulation for decades is what adds to Melbourne’s charm. In many ways, Melbourne operates at a slower pace than Sydney. Just look at how long the Victorian government took building its Metro Tunnel (about 10 years), for instance, and the fact that Melbourne Central looks like it hasn’t had a refresh since the 1980s.

Now the Metro Tunnel is in full operation – finally – these sounds maintain a vital link to the city’s past. With many of the new stations along the Metro line containing vast, cavernous spaces deep underground, they run the risk of replicating any other generic metropolitan train station. Or worse, copying the new Sydney Metro service that opened in 2024 (typical Sydney, beating us to the punch).

What’s going to keep Melbourne distinctly Melburnian for the millions of people who live here and use its sprawling public transport network – and remember, Melbourne has a bigger population than Sydney, thank you very much – is the continued presence of these old-school bongs and tritones.

Melbourne’s new Myki readers have adopted Sydney’s harsher beeps.Credit: Luke Hemer

There is, alas, change afoot. Even before the Metro Tunnel opened earlier this month, the freshly updated myki gates started recycling the unfriendly electric beeps that assault one’s ears in Sydney. These colourless, bland changes not only represent a small, spiteful victory to NSW in the tired Melbourne v Sydney rivalry, but embody a loss of Melbourne’s uniquely eccentric sonic texture.

These sounds are not only historical in their place within the city’s sensory fabric, they are simply welcoming and soothing. They make the usually hellish experience of commuting to work every day just that little bit less dreadful, when you have that fun little bong to tell you when to pile out.

The beeps of card readers on Sydney buses and Metro services are short and sharp, in their curt tones ordering you to hurry up just as brusquely as the shifty feet of the locals bristling behind you. Melbourne’s bongs and clatters and overhead trills, on the other hand, are so fantastically outdated that they dreamily invite you to just take your time. If Melbourne’s public announcement tritones take 20 years to be updated, then I’ll gladly take that as clear evidence that you shouldn’t be in a rush, either.

Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier is a freelance writer and classical music critic based in Melbourne.

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