Both Sydney and Melbourne have roaring red light scenes. Calling a “winner” is tricky when the two cities together boast close to a thousand adult venues. But let’s say we’re speaking to John Doe the Sex Tourist. He’s only got a single weekend to let his hair down… and he’s looking for the finest adult entertainment in OZ.
Which city should he pick? If you pushed us for an answer… we’d say: pick Sydney.
It has the bigger menu, later nights, and more ways to get into fun trouble fast. If John Doe has one weekend, Sydney gives him instant variety: stacked brothels, busy escort rosters, wall-to-wall massage shops, and enough strip clubs to lose the lads. That’s not to say Melbourne is a slouch.
Comparing The Adult Industry Size
Let’s start with the most obvious feather in Sydney’s cap: its adult industry is bigger.
NSW decriminalised sex work back in 1995, and the market grew up with fewer barriers. This has ultimately led to a more stable sex trade in the Harbour City.
If we go back a decade, a government-commissioned study counted at least 101 brothels within 20 km of the CBD and estimated 3,000-4,500 sex workers active in any year around Sydney.
“The healthiest sex industry ever documented“, they called it. 😂
This actually clashes slightly with our most recent brothel listings, with Melbourne having slightly more brothels. Probably because Sydney has many bordellos that simply aren’t as well documented (or easy for us to track) as those in Melbourne.
If we look at variety, that again tilts to Sydney.
You get mega houses and boutique rooms, thick escort rosters, and whole strips of “massage” shops offering extras. The city’s tourism and corporate churn mean fresh punter demand and a steady flow of touring talent year-round. Enough to keep John Doe the Tourist well and truly satisfied.
Still, we have to give Melbourne its due.
It might be smaller on paper, but it still makes every other city that isn’t Sydney look tiny by comparison.
For years, Victoria ran a licensing model that kept parts of the scene underground. Full decriminalisation landed in late 2023, and you can feel the handbrake come off.
More operators are stepping into the light, more independents are advertising openly, and the CBD-to-inner-suburbs belt (South Melbourne, Richmond, Collingwood, Footscray) is humming with legit, traceable venues instead of shadows and punter forum whispers.
Sydney brothels often have more liberal policies, like allowing alcohol on premises and a looser approach to extras, whereas Melbourne’s licensed brothels have historically had tighter rules. That may change in the years to come, but it’s still the case today.
Red Light District Prominence
What about the classic red light districts of yesteryear?
The neon, the revues, the chaos…
Wouldn’t John Doe like to sample the old school sex trade?!
For Sydney, Kings Cross used to be the headline act. Then the lockout era clipped its wings and the big names faded. Porky’s switched off the lights after 30 years, and the building that housed Porky’s and Dreamgirls got reworked for offices and shops… a story that has been repeated over and over in this part of the city.
Yet brothels in Sydney have simply proliferated elsewhere: from the CBD to suburban industrial areas, it’s “sex in the suburbs” these days. Sydney also boasts some glitzy mega-brothels, seemingly in everlasting competition competing to see who can add the most stars to a luxury service.
At last check, we’re up to ‘eight star luxury facilities’!
Most of the action beyond brothels is CBD-first, dotted around titty bars with premium rooms and VIP floors, with pockets of street work in Chinatown and the Inner West. Yes, street prostitution does exist… but why the hell would you bother if you have the cash to spare?
What we’re left with is more of a dispersed red light map rather than a single strip.
Over in Melbourne, most of the famed red light hotspots run through the CBD. King Street and Lonsdale Street carry the most reliable cluster. St Kilda’s old street scene is a shadow of itself after years of gentrification, but it can still get pretty… gritty… afterdark.
Perhaps the most notorious remaining red light spots are Grey Street and Fitzroy Street, both known for a high turnover of sex workers (many of them fuelling heroin addictions).
As with Sydney, we have to ask why any punter would dabble in these markets when there are legal and safe establishments at every other intersection.
In both cities, it’s inescapable that the red light “district” is now mostly… digital.
Escorts and parlours do most of their marketing online. Touring schedules live on directories and social feeds. Sites like ours take much of the guesswork out of the world’s oldest trade.
And while you do find some punters who enjoy the illicit pull of street action, neither cities has the level of activity that was apparent just 10 or 15 years ago.
The Punter Perspective
As you’d imagine, we speak to quite a few punters here at Red Light Australia. It’s always interesting to see how views are shifting on the ground.
We spoke to Matt, 48, who flies in from Brisbane a few times a year. Principally for work, but… well, you can see where this is going. He treats Sydney like a vending machine. Land. Check in. Play.
“I drop my bag in the CBD and I’m ten minutes from three solid brothels,” he told us. “If an escort cancels, I open the boards and there’s a replacement in twenty minutes. Sydney feels plug and play, fast and ready. Some of the girls in Melbourne can be a little pretentious for my liking, and especially the management…”
His Friday looks the same every time. Quick walk-in at a mid-tier house to shake off the flight. Late dinner. Then a longer booking with a touring GFE (who is probably in town precisely for corporate midweek traffic). “I text clear details, lock the time, and that’s it. By midnight I’ve had two very different sessions”.
He rates the massage scene too. “Sydney has shops everywhere. You kiss a few frogs, but once you find your girl, it’s a local cheat code. Overall, I much prefer the scene in Sydney.”
Chris, 41, lives in Sydney but saves his longer nights for Melbourne. He calls it the city of slow burn.
“In Melbourne the rooms feel calmer and it’s generally a bit more laid back,” he said. “The lineups are smaller, yeah, but it’s not like they’re exactly running out of hookers.”
What about pricing?
“I pay roughly the same in both cities,” Chris said. “One thing I’d say is that Sydney has a better choice of short stay options and quickies – like 15 minutes, even 10 minutes in some of the smaller shops.“
And Matt: “If you’re using a mid-upper tier escort, the prices are very similar. I mean, a lot of the girls work both markets, so there’s not much between them. At the lower end, in brothels and massage shops, Sydney is definitely cheaper.“
Neither man bothers with the street scene anymore. Matt put it bluntly. “I loved the chaos in the Cross years ago. These days I wouldn’t touch it with my dick wrapped in a fucking hazmat, three condoms deep and a papal blessing. The only girls working the streets are those who can’t get hired by the brothels… and why do you think that is?”
The Sex Worker Perspective
To balance this out, we asked a friendly old hand to lift the curtain.
We spoke to a sex worker with experience of working both cities. “Call me Ava,” she said with a grin.
Ava did just over two years in Sydney brothels, a year in Melbourne houses, then went fully independent. Now she tours both cities every month.
She says Sydney trained her to move fast. “Sydney bookings can move really quick and it’s a much busier market,” she told us. “There’s short notice, especially on the weekends. Clear asks. In and out. If a client ghosts, there’s a never-ending supply of tourists and corporate types who are ready to play. You don’t have as many repeat customers and it can feel kinda transient.”
Melbourne feels different.
“The pace is slower… in a nice way,” she said. “I get a steady stream of longer bookings and more couples. A classic Friday for me is a 2 hour with a finance guy at a Southbank hotel. We do a glass of pinot or whatever, shower, then a proper unhurried GFE. I’d say it’s generally less frenetic… but, of course, there are good and bad apples in both places. No city is going to buy you that certainty.”
Ava didn’t need to think hard about the brothel years.
In Sydney, she says, the machine never really slept: reception moved girls like air-traffic control, lineups rolled every ten minutes on a Friday, and the moment a room wrapped she was back on the carpet with damp hair and a sales smile.
“It was busy and drilled like the damn military,” she told us. “Clear briefs, clear targets, security that actually watched the monitors. If a guy got weird, a knock and a face appeared before you could reach for your robe. You always knew you’d get paid, but it was stressful as hell.”
Melbourne ran to a different rhythm; she might do half the rooms but twice the minutes: sixties, nineties, occasionally two hours if the chemistry landed.
“The houses leaned into comfort, which was nice,” she said, “better showers, softer linen, lighting that didn’t scream interrogation,” and the men were chattier before they chose.
Management, too, felt gentler.
“If I had to choose, Melbourne was a much healthier work environment. But there’s no way you’d get me back in either. Touring as an independent is infinitely better for where I’m at now. Not to mention… the money is actually liveable. I don’t envy any of the younger girls today.”
Sydney or Melbourne?
So where does this leave John Doe, our time-poor hedonist with a single weekend and a healthy appetite for mischief on the tiles?
There’s no correct answer.
Both cities have more than their fair share of dirty spoils.
But, if he wants the easiest path to maximum variety, Sydney is probably the safer bet.
Since decrim, much of the action in Melbourne sits in the open (it did even before decrim), and what it lacks in brute scale it makes up for in pace and polish.
Still, the old red-light geography has faded on both sides of the Hume.
Kings Cross is now a souvenir, St Kilda’s rough edges have been sanded down, and the real “district” lives online where touring calendars, reviews, and quiet incall addresses make planning the next adventure a breeze.
We want to hear your thoughts, though.
Sydney or Melbourne? Which is the better destination for red light fun? And why?
