Sexy, sultry Sydney is a gold-medal city that glitters with sun-drenched attitude and seduces with beaches and bodies beautiful. Her Olympic-sized heart charmed the socks off the world during the 2000 Games and continues to beat with passion and pride. She is Australia's premier city, the oldest settlement in Australia, the economic powerhouse of the nation and the country's capital in everything but name. Built on the shores of stunning Port Jackson, you would have to die and go to heaven before you see a more spectacular setting for a city. It's a vital, self-regarding metropolis, exuding both a devil-may-care urbanity and a slavish obsession with global fads.

Despite its brutal European beginnings as a British penal colony, the city's mixture of pragmatic egalitarianism and plain indifference has transformed it into a thriving multicultural society with an out-and-proud gay community. The Sydney area was originally the ancestral home of the Eora tribe, and evidence of its original Aboriginal inhabitants survives in some 2000 rock engravings and suburb names.