by wes

I’m sitting in a new coffee joint in an alley just off Oxford Street called Mecca, drinking my coffee and watching a barista perform on this giant monolith of a slab of stone that is their stage.

It is dramatic, slightly ridiculous and very Sydney.

And I suddenly thought, bloody hell, I really do live in a special part of the world. Maybe that is why I don’t leave my very specific Sydney bubble much.

I live on Baptist Street in Redfern. I train at City Gym on Crown Street. My office is on Foveaux Street in Surry Hills. I sell property from Elizabeth Bay through Surry Hills and Redfern, down into Waterloo and Alexandria.

My friends are here. My restaurants are here. My gym is here. Most of my life happens within a few kilometres.

I could probably survive for months without crossing a bridge.

This year I missed the annual Sydney pilgrimage to Europe, where seemingly the entire city relocates to Mykonos, Ibiza and the Amalfi Coast for winter and sends photos back to make the rest of us feel inadequate.

The very fortunate problem I had was too much work and too many owners who trusted me to help them sell in this kinda tricky market. I wasn’t going anywhere.

So instead, I decided to travel Sydney.

Every couple of weeks I pick an area and actually explore it. Parramatta. The Northern Beaches. Sylvania. Manly. Wherever.

Not drive through it. Not go to one restaurant and claim I have “done” the suburb. I walk around, poke my nose into things and try to get a feel for the place.

And it has been too much fun.

I am also trying to make these days about more than a three-hour lunch and six bottles of wine. I mean, obviously food will be involved. I am not a savage. But I want to find the things that make each part of Sydney different.

The local institution. The weird shop. The walk. The architecture. The beach. The dumpling place somebody’s aunt has been running for 30 years.

It has reminded me of something I probably should know considering I sell real estate for a living.

Sydney isn’t one lifestyle.

It is dozens of completely different lives stitched together into one city.

And the same applies to property.

People tell me they want 100sqm for around $1 million and assume Sydney has nothing for them.

Maybe Waterloo does.

Want an old warehouse conversion with ridiculous ceilings and some actual character?

Let’s look around Surry Hills.

Want water, village life, apartments, terraces, new developments, old buildings, density, space, grit or polish?

This city has it somewhere.

Not everything in Sydney is $5 million and overlooking the Harbour Bridge.

Sometimes we get so obsessed with the suburb we think we should live in that we stop looking at the lifestyle we actually want.

I have been guilty of doing exactly that with Sydney itself.

Travel beyond our shores will always be important to me. I love it far too much to pretend otherwise.

But missing Europe this year forced me to explore what was sitting right outside my front door.

Turns out getting out of my bubble didn’t require going very far at all.