A midwinter break in Sydney or Melbourne? Here's the verdict

By Amy Cooper

Here's the secret to winning at winter: you need just the right amount of cold. Enough to impart a rosy glow and justify hot toddies and open fires, but still the right side of hyperthermia.

Sydney hits exactly that sweet spot.

It's cold, sure - but without the icy windchill blasting straight from Antarctica to Melbourne and freezing you solid in a laneway where your agonised form is mistaken for weird public art until you are discovered centuries later and displayed in a museum as a human relic called Flinders Lane Woman. A Sydney winter is sufficiently fresh for fabulous knits, beanies and boots, but never ugly functionality. Sydney is Cameron Diaz in The Holiday, radiantly rocking cashmere winter whites paired with pre-bald Jude Law. Melbourne is Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, losing his mind in filthy bearskins across merciless frozen terrain. Or worse still, Dan Andrews in his North Face puffer jacket.

Sydney's drop-dead gorgeous coastline is especially beautiful in winter, when turbulent surf and skies add cinematic drama to the city's oceanside walks. Temperatures ideal for moving rather than melting entice you outdoors to winter wanders like the Bondi to Bronte coastal walk, Watsons Bay to historic Hornby Lighthouse or the trails on Manly's North Head - recently enhanced with cantilevered lookouts for even bigger clifftop vistas.

They're a sure fin for whale watching, and Sydney's favourite winter visitors also pop up around all the city's ocean shores, frolicking almost as hard as the city's party-inclined humans. After Vivid come Bondi Festival, Darling Harbour Winterfest and Campbelltown's Chillfest, all with ice skating, entertainment and live music, plus Bastille Festival at The Rocks, with pop-up igloos.

While Melbourne's too cool for yule, Sydney embraces Christmas in July like a kid in a grotto, feasting on delicious comfort foods that defy digestion in December: Sunday roasts fireside at CBD English pub the Duke of Clarence or in a giant Yorkshire pud at Surry Hills Forrester's; gooey S'mores over the firepit at North Sydney's The Greens.

Winter reminds you Sydney's beautiful on the inside, too. My favourite chill-busting indoor pursuits include Camperdown's Chau Chak Wing museum, housing the southern hemisphere's largest collection of antiquities, and Hyde Park Barracks Museum, filled with voices from the past. Sydney now has so many basement bars you could spend all winter happily hibernating underground, at hotter-than-hell late-night live music joints such as the CBD's Caterpillar Club and Newtown's the Pleasure Club, or quaffing cocktails at downstairs dens Apollonia, Old Loves, Door Knock or Centro 86.

In or out, Sydney's winter wonderland warms my heart, but Melbourne just leaves me cold.

By Mal Chenu

It seems appropriate to be comparing these cities a week after they both struggled to deal with winter traumas.

At the Vivid Sydney light show, so many people swarmed into Circular Quay they had to move barriers to avoid a crush. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, an 85,000-strong crowd at the King's Birthday AFL match at the MCG roared so loudly it drowned out the noise created by the wailing and gnashing of teeth over Daniel Andrews' curious King's Birthday honour.

These respective blockbuster occasions demonstrated how each city handles hordes: Melbourne deals; Sydney doesn't.

Crowds of this size file in and out of the "G" all winter, without so much as a behind being rushed. You can walk to Australia's premier stadium from the CBD via William Barak pedestrian bridge and Birrarung Marr urban park. Leave plenty of time to see the Aboriginal art and Deborah Halpern's striking two-headed Angel sculpture, and hear the Federation Bells chiming their tunes.

If you don't want to get livid at Vivid, you should know Melbourne has its own impressive winter illuminations.

Lightscape's 100,000 globes radiate through the Botanic Gardens. Firelight Labyrinth turns a subterranean space under Marvel Stadium in Docklands into a maze of light and sound as it recounts the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. And The Lume digital art gallery - the largest of its kind in the world - is cool all year round. Not too far out of town, Gumbuya World lights up Indigenous stories in Gippsland, while Puffing Billy's Train of Lights chuffs through the Dandenong Ranges.

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Beyond the bright lights, in less than two hours you can be soaking in the natural hot springs at Daylesford or the Mornington Peninsula. And for piste schussers, it's only a three-hour drive to Mount Buller, as opposed to the 10-hour trek to the white stuff from Sydney.

Melbourne gets merry in winter and hot-ticket items include the Leaps and Bounds Music Festival, Bastille Day French Festival, Mould Cheese Festival, and GABS Beer, Cider and Food Festival.

While Sydneysiders are busy putting on every bit of clothing they can possibly rustle up, wondering what the cold weather will do to house prices and fretting about their State of Origin team, Melburnians reach for their stylish coats, chic scarves and black berets, and head out to an affordable restaurant. Over a spicy mulled wine or two, they might even consider going to the next State of Origin match, to be held at - you guessed it - the MCG.

Let's face it. Sydney doesn't do winter. It hibernates and waits for spring when it can shed its unnatural clobber and get back into shorts and thongs. Melbourne should be your goal this winter if you want to get kicks and chill.