MELBOURNE might pride itself on being the world’s friendliest city, but if you’re out exercising, you might beg to differ. Try getting a smile, a grin or a g’day out of passers-by and you’ll be sorely disappointed.

The grim nature of my neighbourhood Elwood (near iconic St Kilda) was brought to my attention after a recent trip to visit family in Wodonga.

During an early morning jog around Wodonga’s hills I was inundated with greetings from dog walkers and joggers. As I attempted the World’s Steepest Hill, I received a friendly call of encouragement from a jogger making the descent. Not a single passer-by ignored me or kept their eyes to the pavement.

I put the extra endorphins that day down to the fact the run was bloody hard compared to my ludicrously flat route at home, but when I hit the Elwood pavement a couple of days later I realised what’d made it so great — it was the eye contact and good nature of the people I passed.

I took it upon myself to see if I could bring a bit of the country friendliness to Melbourne and decided to grin or make eye contact with anyone who passed me and see how they would react.

The trouble was, not a single person would make eye contact to open the possibility for a happy holler.

I craned my neck, grinned like a hyena and even got in the way of a particularly focused jogger so we could do that “which way” game you play when you’re in someone’s path that usually ends in a bit of a laugh. He grunted an apology without looking at me and continued on his sweaty way.

I’ll admit I felt a bit creepy when a buff bloke was jogging towards me and I was expectantly smiling at him so I’ll let his unfriendliness off the hook given I probably looked like I was propositioning him.

All up, I reckon I passed 30 individuals or couples on my friendliness experiment without so much as a sideways glance of interaction. A lot were glued to their phones, others blatantly ignored me, while some were wrapped up in conversations (which you might excuse, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Wodongarians from a nod and a smile).

And you can’t blame this one on self-absorbed Gen Ys either — Baby Boomers made up at least half of my sample size and they were as steely as the rest of them.

I know that people use exercise for stress relief and sometimes you just need to get in the zone, but surely we could manage a sideways glance and a nod of acknowledgment even if our heart is hammering at 190bpm.

Psychologists say eye contact is one of the most important forms of communication, and if you add a friendly greeting your chances of pepping up someone’s day seriously magnify.

So if you see a huffing redhead jogging along the Elwood foreshore smiling like a right dill, then do me a favour and say hi. I’ll try not to bear hug you.