Arriving back in Melbourne after more than a two year's absence was a shocking experience for me. This place has really gone ahead with lots of interesting new architecture, and an inner-city vibrancy which has seen the number of inner-city residents climb from a mere 100 in the 1980s into tens of thousands today. Lots of the new apartments going up have an experimental quality absent in the prefabricated look of Sydney ones - oh yes, let me keep the rivalry between the tale of two cities alive.