Ms Chipchase's campaign to put a smile on Sydney's face has elicited disdain from the xenophobic - ''Sydney is overburdened by overseas students and immigrants'' - to the travel-weary - ''until transport is sorted out, Sydneysiders won't be positive'' - to the cramped - ''Sydney's crowded enough; who needs tourists standing around gawping?''

You get the flavour; most have lived with it for years, this whirlwind of whinge, this den of the disparaging. No city in the world impresses more in its approach from the air - the harbour, the beaches, the bridge, the Opera House, the mountains. And yet we sell ourselves short. Why did Sydney think, until the last minute, that the Olympics would be a disaster? Why were we so surprised at our own success? And why does success seem to breed only greater pessimism, darker gloominess?

The managing director of the Tourism and Transport Taskforce, John Lee, said Ms Chipchase had hit a raw nerve: ''Sydney is tribal and has sat on its hands since the Olympics'', while ''an earnestness and spirit of co-operation in Victoria has enabled them to outflank Sydney''. The Chipchase remarks about negativity go to the Sydney character, Mr Lee said. ''It's always been a fight for anything in Sydney.''

Yet the odd thing is Sydneysiders are no unhappier than Melburnians and, for the most part, are indistinguishable in the happiness stakes from Australia's largely contented lot.

Dr Anthony Grant, a Sydney University psychologist who led the happily-healthy.com.au study of the attitudes of 75,000 Australians, says the hint of contradiction might be explained by the gap between Sydney's reputation for brashness and ''its quiet pride in the city''.