Besides the cost of housing, electricity, transportation and water, Sydney is a reasonably cheap place to live. Fresh food is pretty cheap and there is a wide variety. If you are into Chinese food or food from around there, then there are plenty of options plus its usually pretty cheap too.
Botany Bay is a beautiful stretch of flat water for watersports of all kinds. The beaches here are great. Sydney is surrounded by bushland and rugged terrain.
The weather is generally pretty good here though its not as windy as I'd like it to be, plus we seem to get a lot of rain. But thats good for the garden. So there is an upside to most events.
Gigs:
All the international tours play a show in Sydney.
Plus you get side shows from festival acts.
There's great coke there.. apparently. 
Well at least that's what the typical Sydney coke-head BS artists say. 
i always feel sorry for the new australiand that migrate there, live out 3/4 of the way to canberra and have to commute into the city everyday to drive a bus or drive a cab or whatever. Life would be soo much nicer on a low income in a regional are, but it's like a magnet. they all have to live in sydney. If I was a low income earner Id rather be a low income earner in a pretty little coastal town or even a regional city, rather than an expensive capital city
It's also sad growing up in a regional area and having to move to the city to study and get work. Fact is in most of regional NSW incomes are very low. The mid north coast of NSW is one of the lowest income areas in Australia. No mining boom there plus most of the industries there such as the timber industry closed down because of political decisions made in the city.
I grew up in Sydney and have moved around Aus a lot for work since then. It really is nothing special. Probably the only thing it has that other parts of Australia dont, is that it has greater job opportunities and a nice harbour area.
Now I am living down on the south coast of NSW, and if I could find a way to live here for the rest of my life, I would. It's perfect.
The reality is most of us spend most of our time at work or at home.
Going to work in Syndey:
-Bus, they're slow, late, don't follow the schedule. When you get on you're going to be standing next to some one who thinks BO smells good, a Chinese woman/man that has a cough that hasn't gone away in years, or some body like you who hates everybody. There's no AC, you're going to start sweating and everybody's going to be sloshing around like water in a tank as the bus stops a thousand times on it's interminable odyssey in to the chity.
-Train, better than buses when they run, but again BO, lepers, etc...
-Car, you'll be in a traffic jam the moment you get on the road. AC, Podcasts, happy times... until you realise there's NO WHERE to park without getting a $99 fine in less than 3 minutes!
-Motorcycle, farked if it's raining and it rains here more than London. Again no where to park and nobody knows what the rules are.
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So before you even arrive at work you're farked off.
Work is probably the same as everywhere else in Aus (except everyone is farked off), and usually pays enough for you to afford your $500-$900 a week rent, but not enough to rationally enter in to a life time $1,000,000 mortgage.
Getting back home you have to go through the same but usually worse as there's more than likely been some accident/break down and they've closed the bridge or tunnel, in both directions just for a laugh or a news story. The trains have stopped, the bus queues reach round the block and every bus is full.
Home... a carbon monoxide blanketed over price gyprock castle, hmmm, unit.
The next day you're feeling a little off cos you're fighting off the Chinese whopping cough... and it goes on.
Weekends... you guessed it, traffic as far as the eye can see, this time people queuing up to go shopping @ Westfields. So you join the traffic jam, then drive around and around the farking car park so you can go stock up on sugar coated sh!t at Woolies. By the time you've waded through the crowds and bought your crap it's 16:00hrs and you've got 2hrs to get through Sydney to the beach.
The pressure's on and as soon as there's 100m of clear space you put it in 3rd and just edge over 60kmh, when some farking do gooder cop hiding in the bushes thinks he's saved your life and some imaginary woman pushing her pram in to a grid locked road by fining you a couple hundred $$$.
Get to the beach and start circling to find a parking space.
The water's dirty and polluted, the wind dies, you get fined for parking on the grass, farking grid lock getting back bcos of some gay parade, some whack job islander is screaming at you and you're now scared for your life... they kill people for real and the farker screaming at me with eyes popping out of his head meant business and he was HUGE, well his head was.
Sydney is great. It has Sydney Harbour.
It is just a pity the harbour is surrounded by Sydney.
It takes me an hour to get to North Sydney, but only 20 minutes to some nice beaches. If the trains were all express trains and all airconditioned, I would be really happy living where I am.
I guess you have to make a choice, unless you are rich enough to have two places.
^^^ +1
Nowhere has everything, otherwise it would be even more expensive that the expensive places we have in Sydney today.
I do like the north side, except for the worse that usual commute times and lack of wind.
I left Sydney 20 years ago, didn't think it was a great place to bring up a family on our income. We moved to Melbourne, which seemed to offer much better value for money. Although, not as pretty, but not nearly as ugly, we do get much better weather than Sydney and are probably around 5 - 10 years behind you traffic/public transport/parking/useless copper/crime wise. Ocean beaches are not as close, but they are less crowded and have this rugged beauty, which is hard to beat.
Sydney was a great place to be in my 20's - except for the fact of getting our house and cars broken into regularly. I'd move back there now if I was living around Elizabeth Bay, Point Piper, Bondi or Clovelly.
Overall, unless you are stupidly rich, I'd reckon as far as big cities go - Melbourne has it all over Sydney.
I used to marvel about how cheap houses were in Melbourne compared to Sydney. Then one day I went there and saw how the flat land rolls on as far as the eye can see. I then understood why houses/land is so cheap there. There is so much land available for development.
Nowdays I don't understand why houses in Melbourne are so expensive.
