Melbourne (,
[Macquarie Dictionary, Fourth Edition (2005). Melbourne, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd. ISBN 1-876429-14-3] locally )
[Due to the 'salary-celery' merger, some locals pronounce the phoneme as before . This is a feature of the English spoken in the State of Victoria, and also New Zealand.] is the
capital and most populous city in the state of
Victoria, and is the second most populous city in
Australia.
The
Melbourne city centre (also known as the "
Central Business District", or "CBD")
is the anchor of the greater geographical area and the
Census statistical division known as the "Greater Melbourne
metropolitan area" - which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of late 2009, it had an approximate population of 4 million.
A resident of Melbourne is known as a "Melburnian".
The metropolis is located on the large natural
bay known as
Port Phillip, with the city centre positioned at the
estuary of the
Yarra River (at the northern-most point of the bay).
The metropolitan area then extends south from the city centre, along the eastern and western shorelines of Port Phillip, and expands into the
hinterland. The city centre is situated in the
municipality known as the
City of Melbourne, and the metropolitan area consists of a
further 30 municipalities.
It was founded in 1835 (47 years after the
European settlement of Australia) by
settlers from
Van Diemen's Land.
The early settlement was originally known as "Bearbrass".
It was renamed Melbourne in 1837 - in honour of
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne,
the
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the reigns of both
King William IV and
Queen Victoria.
Melbourne was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847.
In 1851, it then became the capital of the newly-created colony of Victoria.
During the
Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the World's largest and wealthiest cities.
After
Australia was federated in 1901, Melbourne was interim seat of government for the newly-created
Commonwealth of Australia until 1927.
The city centre is also notable for its distinct blend of
contemporary and
Victorian architecture,
[http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/09/travel/victorian-scenes-on-a-melbourne-walk.html] expansive
parks and gardens,
alleyway and arcade culture, diverse
multicultural society,
and is also home to the
World’s largest tram network. Since 2002, Melbourne has been consistently ranked amongst the
World's Most Livable Cities by
The Economist magazine, and is recognised as a
Beta World City+ by
Loughborough University. It is also classified as a
City of Literature by
UNESCO, and is ranked as one of the top five university cities by
RMIT. Melbourne was ranked as one of the world's top 25 Nexus cities for innovation by 2thinknow, in the Innovation Cities Index 2009
Melbourne has played host to a number of significant international and national events, including: the first sitting of the
Parliament of Australia in 1901,
1956 Summer Olympics,
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1981,
World Economic Forum in 2000,
2006 Commonwealth Games and
G20 Summit in the same year.
History
Early history and foundation
thumb|Melbourne Landing, 1840; watercolour by W. Liardet (1840)Before the arrival of European settlers, the area was occupied for an estimated 31,000 to 40,000 years by under 20,000
[http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/__data/page/1062/Indig.pdf] hunter-gatherers from three
indigenous regional tribes: the
Wurundjeri,
Boonwurrung and
Wathaurong. The area was an important meeting place for clans and territories of the
Kulin nation alliance as well as a vital source of food and water.
[Isabel Ellender and Peter Christiansen, People of the Merri Merri. The Wurundjeri in Colonial Days, Merri Creek Management Committee, 2001 ISBN 0-9577728-0-7] The first European settlement in Victoria was established in 1803 on
Sullivan Bay, near present-day
Sorrento, but this settlement was abandoned due to a perceived lack of resources. It would be 30 years before another settlement was attempted.
In May and June 1835, the area that is now central and northern Melbourne was explored by
John Batman, a leading member of the
Port Phillip Association, who negotiated a transaction for of land from eight Wurundjeri elders.
Batman selected a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village", and returned to
Launceston in
Tasmania (then known as
Van Diemen's Land). However, by the time a settlement party from the Association arrived to establish the new village, a separate group led by
John Pascoe Fawkner had already arrived aboard the
Enterprize and established a settlement at the same location, on 30 August 1835. The two groups ultimately agreed to share the settlement. It is not known what Melbourne was called before the arrival of Europeans. Early European settlers mistranslated the words "Doutta-galla" which are believed to have been the name of a prominent tribal member, but said by some to also translate as "treeless plain". This was nevertheless used as one of the early names for the colony.
Batman's Treaty with the Aborigines was annulled by the
New South Wales government (that at the time governed all of eastern mainland Australia), which compensated the Association.
Although this meant the settlers were now trespassing on Crown land, the government reluctantly accepted the settlers'
fait accompli and allowed the town (known at first by various names, including 'Batmania'
) to remain.
In 1836,
Governor Bourke declared the city the administrative capital of the
Port Phillip District of New South Wales, and commissioned the first plan for the
Hoddle Grid in 1837.
Later that year, the settlement was named Melbourne after the British prime minister
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who resided in the village of
Melbourne in Derbyshire, and the General Post Office opened under that name on 13 April 1837.
Melbourne was declared a city by
letters patent of
Queen Victoria, issued on 25 June 1847.
The Port Phillip District became a separate colony of Victoria in 1851 with Melbourne as its capital.
Victorian gold rush
thumb|right|Lithograph of the original plans for Parliament House, MelbourneThe discovery of gold in Victoria in the same year led to the
Victorian gold rush, and Melbourne, which provided most service industries and served as the major port for the region, experienced rapid growth.
Migration to Melbourne, particularly from overseas including Ireland and China, caused a massive population increase. Slums developed including a temporary "tent city" established on the southern banks of the Yarra, the Little Lonsdale district and at
Chinatown.
The population growth and flow of gold into the city helped stimulate a program of grand civic building beginning with the design and construction of many of Melbourne's surviving institutional buildings including
Parliament House, the
Treasury Building and Treasury Reserve, the
Old Melbourne Gaol,
Victoria Barracks, the
State Library,
Supreme Court,
University,
General Post Office, and
Government House, the
Melbourne Town Hall,
St Paul's,
St Patrick's cathedrals and several major markets including the surviving
Queen Victoria Market. The city's inner suburbs were planned, to be linked by boulevards and gardens. Melbourne had become a major finance centre, home to several banks, the
Royal Mint to Australia's first
stock exchange in 1861.
Before the arrival of white settlers, the indigenous population in the district was estimated at 15,000, but following settlement the number had fallen to less than 800, and continued to decline with an estimated 80% decrease by 1863, due primarily to introduced diseases, particularly
smallpox.
The land boom and bust
thumb|left|Lithograph of the [[Royal Exhibition Building (now a
World Heritage site) built to host the
World's Fair of 1880]]
By the 1880s, Melbourne's boom was peaking. The city had become the second largest in the
British Empire (after London), and the richest in the world.
Melbourne hosted five international exhibitions at the large purpose-built
Exhibition Building in the decade of
prosperity.
During an 1885 visit, English journalist
George Augustus Henry Sala coined the phrase "Marvellous Melbourne", which stuck long into the twentieth century. Growing building activity culminated in the "Land Boom" which in 1888 reached a peak of speculative development fuelled by consumer confidence and escalating land value. As a result of the boom, large commercial buildings,
coffee palaces,
terrace housing and palatial mansions proliferated in the city.
[The Land Boomers. By Michael Cannon. Melbourne University Press; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966] and the establishment of a hydraulic facility in 1887 paved the way for elevators and high-rise buildings to dramatically change the city's skyline. This period saw the expansion of a major radial rail-based transport network.
[Lewis, Miles (Melbourne the city's history and development) p47]The brash
boosterism which typified Melbourne during this time came to a halt in 1891 when the start of a severe depression hit the city's economy, sending the local finance and property industries into chaos
during which 16 small banks and building societies collapsed and 133 limited companies went into liquidation. The Melbourne financial crisis helped trigger the
Australian economic depression of 1890s and the
Australian banking crisis of 1893. The effects of the depression on the city were profound, although it did continue to grow slowly during the early twentieth century.
Federation of Australia
right|thumb|Melbourne and the Yarra in 1928At the time of Australia's
federation on 1 January 1901, Melbourne became the temporary seat of government of the federation. The first federal parliament was convened on 9 May 1901 in the Royal Exhibition Building, where it was located until 1927, when it was moved to
Canberra. The
governor-general remained at Government House until 1930 and many major national institutions remained in Melbourne well into the twentieth century.
[Lewis, Miles (Melbourne the city's history and development) p. 113–114] While Sydney had overtaken Melbourne in size, Melbourne's transport networks were more extensive.
Flinders Street Station was the world's busiest passenger station in 1927 and Melbourne's tram network overtook Sydney's to become the world's largest in the 1940s. During World War II, Melbourne industries thrived on wartime production and the city became Australia's leading manufacturing centre.
Post-war period
After World War II, Melbourne expanded rapidly, its growth boosted by an influx of
immigrants and the prestige of hosting the
Olympic Games in 1956. The post-war period saw a major urban renewal of the CBD and
St Kilda Road which significantly modernised the city. New Melbourne City Council fire regulations and redevelopment saw most of the taller pre-war CBD buildings
demolished, despite the efforts of the National Trust of Victoria and the Save Collins Street movement. Many of the larger suburban mansions from the boom era were either demolished or subdivided.
thumb|left|upright|[[ICI House (now
Orica House), commenced in 1955, was a powerful symbol of the
Olympic city's
modernist aspirations.]] Signs of
Whelan the Wrecker became a symbol of Melbourne's progressive spirit during this time, which saw wholesale destruction of Victorian period architecture from Melbourne's golden era, including the so-called "Paris end" of Collins Street in the CBD. To counter the trend towards low-density suburban residential growth, the government began a series of controversial "slum reclamation" public housing projects in the inner city by the
Housing Commission of Victoria which resulted in demolition of many neighbourhoods and a proliferation of high-rise towers. In later years, with the rapid rise of motor vehicle ownership, the investment in freeway and highway developments greatly accelerated the outward suburban sprawl and declining inner city population, that had begun in the late 19th century with the introduction of trams and suburban railways. The
Bolte Victorian government sought to rapidly modernise Melbourne. Major road projects including the remodelling of
St Kilda Junction, the widening of
Hoddle Street and then the extensive
1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan changed the face of the city into a car-dominated environment.
Australia's financial and mining booms between 1969 and 1970 resulted in establishment of the headquarters of many major companies (
BHP Billiton and
Rio Tinto, among others) in the city.
Nauru's then booming economy fuelled several ambitious investments in Melbourne, such as
Nauru House. Melbourne remained Australia's business and financial capital until the late 1970s, when it began to lose this primacy to Sydney.
As the centre of Australia's "
rust belt", Melbourne experienced the worst of Victoria's economic slump between 1989 to 1992, following the collapse of several of its financial institutions. In 1992 the newly elected
Kennett Coalition government began a campaign to revive the economy with an aggressive development campaign of public works centred on Melbourne and the promotion of the city as a tourist destination with a focus on major events and sports tourism, attracting the
Australian Grand Prix to the city. Major projects included the
Melbourne Museum,
Federation Square, the
Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre,
Crown Casino and
CityLink tollway. Other strategies included the privatisation of some of Melbourne's services, including power and public transport, but also a reduction in funding to public services such as health and education.
[Lewis, Miles (Melbourne the city's history and development) p203,205–206] Contemporary Melbourne
thumb|Melbourne's CBD from [[:en:Melbourne Docklands|Docklands at twilight]]
Since 1997, Melbourne has maintained significant population and employment growth. There has been substantial international investment in the city's industries and
property market. Major inner-city urban renewal has occurred in areas such as
Southbank,
Port Melbourne,
Melbourne Docklands and, more recently,
South Wharf.
Figures from the
Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that Melbourne sustained the highest population increase and economic growth rate of any Australian capital city in the three years ended June 2004.
Geography
Topography
thumb|left||Map of greater Melbourne and Geelong.
Melbourne is located in the south-eastern part of mainland Australia, within the state of
Victoria.
Geologically, it is built on the confluence of
Quaternary lava flows to the west,
Silurian mudstones to the east, and
Holocene sand accumulation to the southeast along
Port Phillip. The southeastern suburbs are situated on the
Selwyn fault which transects
Mount Martha and
Cranbourne.
Melbourne extends along the
Yarra through the
Yarra Valley toward the
Dandenong Ranges and
Yarra Ranges to the east. It extends northward through the undulating bushland valleys of the Yarra's tributaries –
Moonee Ponds Creek (toward Tullamarine Airport),
Merri Creek,
Darebin Creek and
Plenty River to the outer suburban growth corridors of
Craigieburn and
Whittlesea. The city sprawls south-east through
Dandenong to the growth corridor of
Pakenham towards
West Gippsland, and southward through the
Dandenong Creek valley, the
Mornington Peninsula and the city of
Frankston taking in the peaks of
Olivers Hill, Mount Martha and
Arthurs Seat, extending along the shores of Port Phillip
as a single
conurbation to reach the exclusive suburb of
Portsea and
Point Nepean. In the west, it extends along the
Maribyrnong River and its tributaries north towards
Sunbury and the foothills of the
Macedon Ranges, and along the flat volcanic plain country towards
Melton in the west,
Werribee at the foothills of the
You Yangs granite ridge and
Geelong as part of the greater metropolitan area to the south-west.
Melbourne's major bayside beaches are located in the south-eastern suburbs along the shores of Port Phillip Bay, in areas like
Port Melbourne,
Albert Park,
St Kilda,
Elwood,
Brighton,
Sandringham,
Mentone and
Frankston although there are beaches in the western suburbs of
Altona and
Williamstown. The nearest
surf beaches are located south-east of the Melbourne CBD in the back-beaches of
Rye,
Sorrento and
Portsea.
Climate
thumb|right|Autumn in suburban [[Canterbury, Victoria|Canterbury]]
Melbourne has a moderate oceanic climate (
Köppen climate classification Cfb)
and is well known for its changeable weather conditions. This is mainly due to Melbourne's location situated on the boundary of the very hot inland areas and the cold southern ocean. This temperature differential is most pronounced in the Spring and Summer months and can cause very strong cold fronts to form. These cold fronts can be responsible for all sorts of severe weather from gales to severe thunderstorms and hail, large temperature drops and heavy rain. Port Phillip is often warmer than the surrounding oceans and/or the land mass particularly in spring and autumn and this can set up a kind of 'bay effect' similar to the 'lake effect' seen in the United States where showers are intensified leeward of the bay. Relatively narrow streams of heavy showers can often effect the same places for an extended period of time, usually the eastern suburbs whilst the rest of Melbourne and surrounds stays dry. Melbourne is also prone to isolated convective showers forming when a cold pool crosses the state, especially if there is considerable daytime heating. These showers are often heavy and can contain hail and squalls and significant drops in temperature but pass through very quickly at times with a rapid clearing trend to sunny and relatively calm weather and the temperature rises back to what it was before the shower, this occurs often in the space of minutes and can be repeated numerous time in a day. This has a lot to do with why Melbourne has a reputation for 'four seasons in one day'
The phrase
"four seasons in one day" is part of
popular culture and observed by many visitors to the city.
Melbourne is colder than other mainland Australian state capital cities in the winter. The lowest maximum on record is , on 4 July 1901.
However, snowfalls are rare: the most recent occurrence of sleet in the CBD was on 25 July 1986 and the most recent snowfalls in the outer eastern suburbs and
Mount Dandenong were on 10 August 2005, 15 November 2006, 25 December 2006 and 10 August 2008. More commonly, Melbourne experiences frosts and fog in winter.
During the spring, Melbourne commonly enjoys extended periods of mild weather and clear skies. Melbourne and Sydney's average January and February daily highs are similar. However, Melbourne's summers are notable for days of extreme heat, with Melbourne holding the Australian capital city extreme temperature record of 46.4°C, set on 7 February 2009.
Urban structure
thumb|left|"Melbourne Style" Victorian terrace houses are common in the inner suburbs and have been the subject of gentrificationthumb|right|Animation showing the expansion of Greater Melbourne since 1837The original city (known today as the CBD) is laid out in the
Hoddle Grid (dimensions of ), its southern edge fronting onto the Yarra. Office and other commercial developments in
Southbank and
Docklands have made these newly created adjoining areas extensions of the CBD in all but name.
The city centre is well known for its historic and attractive
lanes and arcades (the most notable of which are
Block Place and
Royal Arcade) which contain a variety of shops and cafes. The Melbourne CBD, compared with other Australian cities has comparatively unrestricted height limits and as the result of waves of post war development contains five of the six
tallest buildings in Australia, the tallest of these being the
Eureka Tower, which is situated in Southbank.
The Rialto tower, the city's second tallest, remains the tallest building in the old CBD, and still has an observation deck for visitors. The CBD and surrounds also contain many significant historic buildings such as the
Royal Exhibition Building, the
Melbourne Town Hall and
Parliament House.
Although the area is described as the
centre, it is not actually the demographic centre of Melbourne at all, due to an urban sprawl to the south east, the demographic centre being located at
Glen Iris.
Melbourne is typical of Australian capital cities in that after the turn of the 20th century, it expanded with the underlying notion of a 'quarter acre home and garden' for every family, often referred to locally as the
Australian Dream. Much of
metropolitan Melbourne is accordingly characterised by low density sprawl. The provision of an extensive passenger railway and tram service in the earlier years of development encouraged this low density development, mostly in radial lines along the transport corridors.
Melbourne is often referred to as Australia's garden city, and the state of Victoria was once known as
the garden state.
There is an abundance of
parks and gardens in Melbourne,
many close to the
CBD with a variety of common and rare plant species amid landscaped vistas, pedestrian pathways and tree-lined avenues. There are also many parks in the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne, such as in the municipalities of
Stonnington,
Boroondara and
Port Phillip, south east of the CBD.
The extensive area covered by urban Melbourne is formally divided into hundreds of suburbs (for addressing and postal purposes), and administered as local government areas.
(right), as seen from the Rialto Observation Deck (2008)/" class="wiki">Hoddle Grid (left) and
Southbank (right), as seen from the Rialto Observation Deck (2008)
Environment
thumb|right|200px|A Parks Victoria litter trap on the river catches floating rubbish on the Yarra at Birrarung MarrLike many urban environments, Melbourne faces some significant environmental issues, many of them relating to the city's large urban footprint and urban sprawl and the demand for infrastructure and services.
One such issue is water usage, drought and low rainfall. Drought in Victoria, low rainfalls and high temperatures deplete Melbourne water supplies and climate change will have a long-term impact on the water supplies of Melbourne. Melbourne has been in a drought since 1997. In response to low water supplies and low rainfall due to drought, the government implemented
water restrictions and a range of other options including: water recycling schemes for the city, incentives for household water tanks, greywater systems, water consumption awareness initiatives, and other water saving and reuse initiatives; also, in June 2007, the Bracks Government announced that a $3.1 billion
Wonthaggi desalination plant would be built on Victoria's south-east coast, capable of treating 150 billion litres of water per year, as well as a pipeline from the Goulburn area in Victoria's north to Melbourne and a new water pipeline linking Melbourne and
Geelong. Both projects are being conducted under controversial Prublic-Private Partnerships and a multitude of independent reports have found that neither project is required to supply water to the city and that Sustainable Water Management is the best solution and in the meantime, the drought must be weathered.
Many of Melbourne's inner city councils have a higher than average supporter and voter base for the
Australian Greens, however, the average is lower in the outer suburbs.
In response to
Attribution of recent climate change, the
City of Melbourne, in 2002, set a target to reduce
carbon emissions to net zero by 2020 however not all metropolitan municipalities have followed, with the
City of Glen Eira notably deciding not to be carbon neutral.
Melbourne has one of the largest urban footprints in the world due to its low density housing, resulting in a vast suburban sprawl, with a high level of car dependence and minimal public transport outside of inner areas.
Much of the vegetation within the city are non-native species, most of European origin, and in many cases plays host to
invasive species and noxious weeds.
Significant introduced urban pests include the
Common Myna,
Feral Pigeon,
,
Brown Rat,
European Wasp,,
Common Starling and
Red Fox. Many outlying suburbs, particularly those in the
Yarra Valley and the hills to the north-east and east, have gone for extended periods without regenerative fires leading to a lack of saplings and undergrowth in urbanised native bushland. The Department of Sustainability and Environment partially addresses this problem by regularly burning off.
Several
national parks have been designated around the urban area of Melbourne, including the
Mornington Peninsula National Park,
Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park and
Point Nepean National Park in the south east,
Organ Pipes National Park to the north and
Dandenong Ranges National Park to the east. There are also a number of significant state parks just outside Melbourne.
Responsibility for regulating pollution falls under the jurisdiction of the
EPA Victoria and several local councils. Air pollution, by world standards, is classified as being good, however summer and autumn are the worst times of year for atmospheric haze in the urban area.
Another current environmental issue in Melbourne is the Victorian government project of channel deepening Melbourne Ports by dredging Port Phillip Bay – the
Port Phillip Channel Deepening Project. It is subject to controversy and strict regulations among fears that beaches and marine wildlife could be affected by the disturbance of
heavy metals and other industrial sediments.
Other major pollution problems in Melbourne include levels of bacteria including
E-coli in the
Yarra River and its tributaries caused by septic systems, as well as
litter. Up to 350,000
cigarette butts enter the storm water runoff every day. Several programs are being implemented to minimise beach and river pollution.
Culture
thumb|right|The Shrine of Remembrance is an important cultural landmark
Melbourne is widely regarded as the cultural and sporting capital of Australia, which is considered to encompass the comedy, music, art, literature, film and television capital tags.
It is also listed as a City of Literature by
UNESCO. It has thrice shared top position in a survey by
The Economist of the
World's Most Livable Cities on the basis of its cultural attributes,
climate, cost of living, and social conditions such as crime rates and health care, in 2002, 2004 and 2005. In recent years rising property prices have led to Melbourne being named the 36th least affordable city in the world and the second least affordable in Australia.
The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events and festivals of all types, most revolving around music,
film, art,
comedy, performance and more contemporary areas such as
avant-garde culture and more recently,
sustainability. Melbourne is also considered to be Australia's music capital with a large emphasis on live performance and
independent music.
It is the birthplace of
Australian film and
television (as well as the
World’s first feature film),
, Australian
impressionist art movement (known as the
Heidelberg School) and Australian
contemporary dance (including the
Melbourne Shuffle and
New Vogue styles).
[ – ] It is also home to Australia’s very first, and largest,
art gallery (the
National Gallery of Victoria) and largest sports stadium (the
Melbourne Cricket Ground).
Melbourne has a large international student community – and more international students per capita than any city in the world.
Street Art in Melbourne is becoming increasingly popular with the
Lonely Planet guides listing it as a major attraction. The city is also admired as one of the great cities of the Victorian Age (1837–1901) and a vigorous city life intersects with an impressive range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buildings.
Sport
Huge cricket crowd at the MCG
Melbourne is a notable sporting location as the host city for the
1956 Summer Olympics games, the first Olympic Games ever held in Australia
and the southern hemisphere, along with the
2006 Commonwealth Games.
In recent years, the city has claimed the SportsBusiness title "World's Ultimate Sports City". The city is home to the
National Sports Museum, which until 2006 was located outside the members pavilion at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and reopened in 2008 in the Great Northern Stand.
Australian rules football and
Cricket are the most popular sports in Melbourne and also the spiritual home of these two sports in Australia and both are mostly played in the same stadia in the city and its suburbs. The first ever official cricket Test match was played at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877 and the
Melbourne Cricket Ground is the largest cricket ground in the world. The first Australian rules football matches were played in Melbourne in 1859 and the
Australian Football League is headquartered at
Docklands Stadium. Nine of its teams are based in the Melbourne metropolitan area and the five Melbourne AFL matches per week attract an average 40,000 people per game.
Additionally, the city annually hosts the
AFL Grand Final.
The city is also home to several professional franchises in national competitions including the
Melbourne Storm (
rugby league), who play in the
NRL competition,
Melbourne Victory (
football (soccer)) who play in the
A-league,
netball team
Melbourne Vixens who play in the trans-Tasman trophy
ANZ Championship. A new unannounced basketball team from Melbourne is expected to be announced soon for the 2009–2010 revamped
National Basketball League.
Melbourne is home to the three major annual international sporting events in the
Australian Open (tennis),
(horse racing),
and the
Australian Grand Prix (
Formula One).
In November 2008, it was announced to the AOC that the city was considering potential bids for either the
2024 or
2028 Summer Olympics.
Economy
Melbourne is home to Australia's busiest
seaport and much of Australia's
automotive industry, which include
Ford and
Toyota manufacturing facilities, and the engine manufacturing facility of
Holden. It is home to many other manufacturing industries, along with being a major business and financial centre.
International freight is an important industry. The
city's port, Australia's largest, handles more than $75 billion in trade every year and 39% of the nation's container trade.
provides an entry point for national and international visitors, and is Australia's second busiest airport.
Melbourne is also a major technology hub, with an
ICT industry that employs over 60,000 people (one third of Australia's ICT workforce), has a turnover of $19.8 billion and export revenues of $615 million.
Most recent major infrastructure projects, such as the redevelopment of
Southern Cross Station (formerly Spencer Street Station),
have been centred around the
2006 Commonwealth Games, which were held in the city from 15 March to 26 March 2006. The centrepiece of the Commonwealth Games projects was the redevelopment of the
Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium used for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games. The project involved rebuilding the northern half of the stadium and laying a temporary athletics track at a cost of
$434 million.
Financial centre
Melbourne retains a significant presence of being a financial centre for Asia-Pacific. Two of the
big four banks,
NAB and
ANZ, are headquartered in Melbourne. The city has carved out a niche as Australia’s leading centre for
superannuation (pension) funds, with 40% of the total, and 65% of
industry super-funds including the $40 billion-dollar Federal Government
Future Fund.
The city is headquarters for many of Australia's largest corporations, including five of the ten largest in the country (based on revenue, and five of the largest six in the country based on
Market Capitalization) (
ANZ,
BHP Billiton, the
National Australia Bank,
Rio Tinto and
Telstra); as well as such representative bodies and thinktanks as the
Business Council of Australia and the
Australian Council of Trade Unions. Melbourne rated 34th within the top 50 financial cities as surveyed by the Mastercard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index (2007), between Barcelona and Geneva, and second only to Sydney (14th) in Australia.
Tourism and convention industry
Tourism also plays an important role in Melbourne's economy, with approximately 7.6 million domestic visitors and 1.88 million international visitors in 2004. In 2008, Melbourne overtook Sydney with the amount of money that domestic tourists spent in the city.
Melbourne has also been attracting an increasing share of domestic and international conference markets. Construction began in February 2006 of a $1 billion 5000-seat international convention centre, Hilton Hotel and commercial precinct adjacent to the
Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre to link development along the
Yarra River with the
Southbank precinct and multi-billion dollar
Docklands redevelopment.
Demographics
Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city and melting pot.
This is reflected by the fact that the city is home to restaurants serving cuisines from all over the world.
Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. Melbourne has the second largest
Asian population in Australia (16.2%), which includes the largest
Vietnamese, Indian and
Sri Lankan communities in the country.
The first European settlers in Melbourne were British and Irish. These two groups accounted for nearly all arrivals before the gold rush, and supplied the predominant number of
immigrants to the city until the Second World War.
Melbourne was transformed by the 1850s
gold rush; within months of the discovery of gold in August 1852, the city's population had increased by nearly three-quarters, from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants.
Thereafter, growth was exponential and by 1865, Melbourne had overtaken Sydney as Australia's most populous city.
Large numbers of
Chinese,
German and
United States nationals were to be found on the goldfields and subsequently in Melbourne. The various nationalities involved in the
Eureka Stockade revolt nearby give some indication of the migration flows in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Melbourne experienced unprecedented inflows from
Southern Europe, primarily Greece, Italy, Malta, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina also West Asia mostly from Lebanon and Turkey. According to the 2001 Census, there were 151,785 ethnic Greeks in the metropolitan area.
47% of all
Greek Australians live in Melbourne. Melbourne and the Greek city of Thessaloniki became sister cities in 1984, as commemorated by a marble stele (pillar) from the Prefecture of Thessaloniki, unveiled 11 November 2008. Ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese also maintain significant presences.
Melbourne exceeds the national average in terms of proportion of residents born overseas: 34.8% compared to a national average of 23.1%. In concordance with national data, Britain is the most commonly reported overseas country of birth, with 4.7 %, followed by Italy (2.4%), Greece (1.9 %) and then China (1.3 %). Melbourne also features substantial Vietnamese, Indian and Sri Lankan-born communities, in addition to recent South African and
Sudanese influxes.
Over two-thirds of people in Melbourne speak only English at home (68.8 %). Italian is the second most common home language (4.0 %), with Greek third and
Chinese fourth, each with over 100,000 speakers.
Although Victoria's net interstate migration has fluctuated, the Melbourne statistical division has grown by approximately 50,000 people a year since 2003. Melbourne has now attracted the largest proportion of international overseas immigrants (48,000) finding it outpacing Sydney's international migrant intake, along with having strong interstate migration from Sydney and other capitals due to more affordable housing and cost of living, which have been two recent key factors driving Melbourne's growth.
In recent years,
Melton,
Wyndham and
Casey, part of the Melbourne statistical division, have recorded the highest growth rate of all
local government areas in Australia. Despite a demographic study stating that Melbourne could overtake Sydney in population by 2028, the
ABS has projected in two scenarios that Sydney will remain larger than Melbourne beyond 2056, albeit by a margin of less than 3% compared to a margin of 12% today. However, the first scenario projects that Melbourne's population overtakes Sydney in 2039, primarily due to larger levels of internal migration losses assumed for Sydney.
After a trend of declining population density since Second World War, the city has seen increased density in the inner and western suburbs aided in part by Victorian Government planning blueprints, such as
Postcode 3000 and
Melbourne 2030 which have aimed to curtail the urban sprawl.
Religion
Melbourne is also home to a wide range of religious faiths. The largest of which is
Christian (64%) with a large
Catholic population (28.3%).
However Melbourne and indeed Australia are highly
secularised, with the proportion of people identifying themselves as
Christian declining from 96% in 1901 to 64% in 2006 and those who did not state their religion or declared no religion rising from 2% to over 30% over the same period.
Nevertheless, the large Christian population is signified by the city's two large
cathedrals –
St Patrick's (Roman Catholic), and
St Paul's (Anglican).
Both were built in the
Victorian era and are of considerable heritage significance as major landmarks of the city.
The next highest response was
No Religion (20.0%, 717,717),
Anglican (12.1%, 433,546),
Eastern Orthodox (5.9%, 212,887) and the
Uniting Church (4.0%, 143,552).
,
Muslims,
Jews,
Hindus and
Sikhs collectively account for 7.5% of the population.
Melbourne has the largest Jewish population in Australia, the community currently numbering approximately 60,000. The city is also home to the largest number of
Holocaust survivors of any Australian city,
indeed the highest per capita concentration outside
Israel itself. Reflecting this vibrant and growing community, Melbourne has a plethora of Jewish cultural, religious and educational institutions, including over 40 synagogues and 7 full-time parochial day schools, along with a
local Jewish newspaper. Melbourne's and Australia's largest
university –
Monash University is named after prominent Australian Jewish general and statesman,
Sir John Monash.
Media
Melbourne is served by three daily newspapers, the
Herald Sun (tabloid),
(broadsheet)
and
The Australian (national broadsheet).
The free
mX is also distributed every weekday afternoon at railway stations and on the streets of central Melbourne.
Melbourne is served by six television stations:
HSV-7, which broadcasts from the
Melbourne Docklands precinct;
GTV-9, which broadcasts from their
Richmond studios; and
ATV-10, which broadcasts from the Como Complex in
South Yarra. National stations that broadcast into Melbourne include the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which has two studios, one at
Ripponlea and another at
Southbank; and
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), which broadcasts from their studios at
Federation Square in central Melbourne.
C31 Melbourne is the only local community television station in Melbourne, and its broadcast range also branches out to regional centre
Geelong. Melbourne also receives
Pay TV, largely through cable and satellite services.
Foxtel and
Optus are the main Pay TV providers.
A number of radio stations service the areas of Melbourne and beyond on the AM and FM band. Popular stations on the FM band include
DMG Radio channels
Nova 100 and
Vega 91.5 as well as
Australian Radio Network's
Gold 104.3 and
Mix 101.1, both in Richmond, and
Austereo channels
Fox FM and
Triple M, which share studios in
South Melbourne,
Triple J and
PBS 106.7 known for playing music seldom played on other radio stations. Stations that are popular on the AM band include
774 ABC Melbourne,
3AW, a prominently
talkback radio station, and its affiliate,
Magic 1278, which plays a selection of music from the 1930s-60s. Community radio is also strong in Melbourne, with a number of community and subscription based radio stations on both the AM and FM bands. The best known of these stations are
Triple R,
SYN,
3JOY,
PBS &
3CR. There are also a number of community stations based around the greater Melbourne area.
Governance
The
Melbourne City Council governs the
City of Melbourne, which takes in the CBD and a few adjoining inner suburbs. However the head of the Melbourne City Council, the
Lord Mayor of Melbourne, is frequently treated as a representative of greater Melbourne (the entire metropolitan area), particularly when interstate or overseas.
Robert Doyle, elected in 2008, is current Lord Mayor.
The rest of the metropolitan area is divided into
31 local government areas. All these are designated as Cities, except for five on the city's outer fringes which are classified as Shires. Local government authorities have elected councils and are responsible for a range of functions set out in the Local Government Act 1989, such as
urban planning and
waste management.
Most non-local government services are provided or regulated by the
Victorian state government, which governs from
Parliament House in
Spring Street. These include public transport, main roads, traffic control, policing, education above preschool level, health and planning of major infrastructure projects.
Education
thumb|right|La Trobe Reading Room – 5th floor view)/" class="wiki">State Library of Victoria, Melbourne's largest public library. (
La Trobe Reading Room – 5th floor view)
Education is overseen statewide by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), whose role is to 'provide policy and planning advice for the delivery of education'. It acts as advisor to two state ministers, that for Education and for Children and Early Childhood Development.
Preschool, primary and secondary
Primary and secondary assessment, curriculum development and educational research initiatives throughout Melbourne and Victoria is undertaken by the
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), which offers the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) and Achievement Improvement Monitor (AIM) certificates from years Prep through Year 10, and the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) as part of senior secondary programs (Years 11 to 12).
Many
high schools in Australia are called 'Secondary Colleges'. There are three
selective public schools in Melbourne (entry based on examination/audition):
Melbourne High School,
MacRoberston Girls' High School and The Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School (
VCASS), but all public schools may restrict entry to students living in their regional 'zone'.
Although non-tertiary public education is free, 35% of students attend a private primary or secondary school.
The most numerous
private schools are
Catholic, and the rest are
independent (see
Public and Private Education in Australia).
Tertiary, vocational and research
thumb|left|University of Melbourne, Queen’s College
Melbourne's two largest universities are the
University of Melbourne and
Monash University, the largest university in Australia. Both are members of the
Group of Eight. Melbourne University ranked second among Australian universities in the 2006
THES international rankings.
While
The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne as the 22nd best university in the world, Monash University was ranked the 38th best university in the world. Melbourne was ranked the world's fourth top university city in 2008 after London,
Boston and Tokyo.
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