Melbourne

The city site

Metropolitan Melbourne is situated at the northern end of Port Phillip Bay, 30 nautical miles (55 km) from the bay’s narrow entrance. Most of the flat terrain is less than 390 feet (120 metres) above sea level. The expansion of Melbourne from its origins at the mouth of the Yarra River to its present shape displays a strong correlation with the geology and drainage of the land. West of the original city site, basalt flows during the Cenozoic Era (i.e., the last 65 million years) filled the existing valleys and left flat, uniform plains. The eastern region, however, consists of undulating and dissected beds of sandstones, shales, and conglomerates laid down in the Silurian and Devonian periods (about 445 to 360 million years ago). The thicker soils of the eastern region, together with its higher annual rainfall, supported a much denser cover of trees than on the basalt plains. Not surprisingly, the development of Melbourne has been mainly eastward into the broad reaches of land between Darebin Creek, the Plenty and Yarra rivers, and Koonung and Gardiners creeks. In a strikingly asymmetrical fashion, Melbourne’s urban development presently lines the entire eastern shore of Port Phillip Bay, from the mouth of the Yarra River to Point Nepean, 60 miles (97 km) distant, while corresponding development on the west coast of the bay extends for only 10 miles (16 km).

Climate

Melbourne’s weather results from the eastward flow of high-pressure cells separated by low-pressure troughs. These patterns follow a course that passes south of the continent in summer and over northern Victoria in winter. The annual rainfall of 26 inches (660 mm) is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, with October usually the wettest month and January the driest. Temperatures are moderate, only rarely falling below freezing; average daily maximum temperatures vary from 55 °F (13 °C) in July to 79 °F (26 °C) in January. Winds associated with the eastward passage of weather systems ensure that Melbourne is spared the serious air pollution of some other large cities.

Britannica Quiz

Australian Government and Political System

The city layout

The area of original settlement in Melbourne, which today forms its financial, legal, administrative, and ecclesiastical heart, was laid out in a rectangular pattern that has not changed. The area has a frontage along the Yarra River. Within this core are the major suburban and interstate railway stations, Victoria’s Houses of Parliament, the Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals, arts and entertainment venues, museums, the Law Courts, the State Library, and many financial institutions, including the Melbourne Stock Exchange and the headquarters of major banks. Central to this area are two major destinations, Bourke and Swanston streets, which have been transformed into pedestrian malls, closed to automobile traffic. Most of the city’s buildings are modern, but the Town Hall, the Law Courts, and the Exhibition Building provide excellent examples of 19th-century official architecture. The city is divided into 14 precincts, sectors identified by ethnic concentration, commercial clusters, or attractions.

The earliest suburbs—Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond, Prahran, St. Kilda, and Brighton—also have a generally rectangular pattern of streets. Row houses, often with verandas decorated with iron lacework, were common features in the suburbs close to the city’s centre, and in parts of Carlton and South Melbourne some of these traditional terraces have been preserved.

Patterns of immigration

The first official census of Melbourne, in 1836, numbered 177 persons, of whom 35 were females. In the 1850s the gold rush in nearby areas of Victoria sparked the city’s first major period of immigration. Newcomers came principally from other Australian colonies and Britain. By the 1920s Melbourne had become the home of more than half the residents of Victoria, and toward the end of World War II it reached a population of 1,000,000. This trend continued throughout the 20th century. By 2000 the Melbourne metropolitan area comprised nearly three-fourths of Victoria’s population.

The second great wave of immigration came in the 1950s, when the Australian government pursued a deliberate policy of encouraging migration from Europe to provide workers for Australia’s developing industries. The government provided assistance with travel costs and helped the immigrants to settle in Australia, learn English if necessary, and find employment. At first migrants were drawn mainly from the Baltic states and eastern Europe, many of these people being war refugees. Then larger numbers began coming from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Immigration agreements were signed with the Dutch, Maltese, West German, Italian, Greek, and Austrian governments. These programs sowed the seeds of Melbourne’s present multicultural character. Italians, Greeks, and Yugoslavs formed the largest numbers of non-English-speaking migrants, and by the mid-1970s one-fifth of the city’s population regularly spoke a language other than English. Immigration from Southeast Asia, in particular refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, increased during the early 1980s.

Move to the suburbs

In the 1940s about 90 percent of Melbourne’s residents lived within 10 miles (16 km) of the central business district. This proportion fell to less than 50 percent by the 1980s as the outer suburban areas grew correspondingly. By 1966 the population of the Melbourne area had exceeded two million, and the city limits were rapidly being pushed eastward. The migrants from southern Europe were at first concentrated in the older industrial suburbs, where they found lower rents and nearby job opportunities. In those areas support was available from earlier immigrants and the associations they had established. As these people prospered, they embraced the Australian dream of owning a home on a quarter-acre plot and began to move to the outer suburbs. By the mid-1990s the area’s population had surpassed the three million mark. By the end of the 20th century, however, the trend of moving to the suburbs had begun to reverse itself. The central city became increasingly residential as many aging buildings were rehabilitated and repurposed as housing. Melbourne’s suburbs, on the whole, represent a fairly even mixture of social classes and occupations, although some western sections can be typified as working-class districts.

Industry and trade

That Melbourne dominates the economic life of Victoria is not surprising—the city contains the bulk of the state’s population. It is Victoria’s financial centre and seat of government and is at the hub of the communications network linking the state to the rest of Australia and the world.

The city’s original core offers the most employment, but employment is growing at a faster rate in the outer suburbs. The central city mainly holds service activities such as banking, insurance, retailing, entertainment, public accommodation, and railway transportation. Surrounding this core is an incomplete ring of inner industrial suburbs, where the first clothing and metal factories were established in the 19th century. In the outer suburbs, particularly to the east, small manufacturing areas began to develop after World War II, when these suburbs could offer large areas of inexpensive land, few problems of traffic congestion, and an increasing population.

In the 1990s an ambitious project was launched to develop Docklands, a 500-acre (200-hectare) site of crumbling industrial and port facilities, into a multiuse complex featuring high-technology businesses, parks and public spaces, restaurants, a theme park, and apartment buildings and other housing. Docklands was expected to become home for 15,000 people and a workplace for 20,000. The first major facility, Colonial Stadium, a sports and entertainment venue, opened in 2000.

Melbourne’s most important industries, in terms of numbers employed, are metal processing, including the manufacture of transportation equipment, and engineering. Other major industries include textile and clothing manufacture; food processing; papermaking and printing; and the manufacture of chemicals, furniture, and building materials. Melbourne is also one of Australia’s leaders in the manufacture of computers and is developing as a centre for biomedicine and biotechnology.

The port of Melbourne occupies an area of level excavated land at the mouth of the Yarra River, southwest of the central business district. It is the nation’s largest general-cargo port. The chief products handled are foodstuffs, crude oil and petroleum products, chemicals, and iron and steel.

Beginning in the 1960s, large regional shopping centres sprang up throughout Melbourne’s outer suburbs, and the central city lost its dominant retail function. Nonetheless, major department stores and fashionable shops still exert a considerable pull on both residents and visitors.

Transportation

Melbourne is well served by an integrated public transportation system of electric trains, buses, and tramcars, the latter a signature sight in the city. A network of national highways links Melbourne with adjoining states, and a system of freeways was greatly upgraded in the 1990s, including the creation of the Western Ring Road as a bypass route. The City Link project joined three major freeways with a bridge, tunnels, highway extensions, and interchanges to facilitate traffic movement. An underground rail loop serves the central business district. Melbourne’s international and domestic airport is located at Tullamarine, 14 miles (23 km) northwest of the city’s centre.

Government

The Victoria state government has the ultimate responsibility for Melbourne’s major planning decisions and for providing its principal health, educational, and transport services. Local government in the Melbourne Statistical Division is provided by more than 30 entities. Councillors, led by a lord mayor, are elected under a system of compulsory voting conducted by mail. Councillors receive a stipend and represent the city at large. The councils pass local ordinances and control a number of services connected with building regulations, community welfare, garbage collection, and vehicle parking. Revenue for these purposes is raised by property taxes (rates).

Health and education

Since the system of free public hospitals was started in 1846, it has grown to encompass numerous special facilities, which deal with either particular ailments or categories of patients, as well as general hospitals. There are, in addition, many private hospitals.

The University of Melbourne, one of the oldest in Australia, was established in 1853 (though the first students were admitted in 1855); Monash and La Trobe universities were established in the 1960s, and Deakin University, established in 1974, maintains three campuses. Melbourne also has colleges of advanced education that offer degrees or diplomas in a variety of technical and academic subjects.

Arts

Melbourne’s already rich cultural life was greatly enhanced during the period between 1968 and 1984, when the Victorian Arts Centre was created on the south bank of the Yarra River close to the city’s centre. It encompasses the National Gallery of Victoria, the Melbourne Concert Hall, and several theatres, among other facilities for the arts.

The National Gallery of Victoria was originally opened in 1861 and moved to its present site in the arts centre in 1968. It houses several outstanding collections, including, most notably, Australian art ranging from the colonial period to modern times; European art, with 18th-century works particularly well represented; and decorative arts.

The Melbourne Concert Hall seats 2,600. Its patrons appreciate not only the technical brilliance of the acoustic engineering but also the hall’s superb decoration in colours derived from the gemstone and mining industry, which makes the hall appear to have been carved out of a hillside.

Performance spaces of the arts centre include the State Theatre, the Playhouse, the George Fairfax Studio, and the Black Box, providing facilities for opera, ballet, musical theatre, drama, stand-up comedy, cabaret, and a variety of music. The Sidney Myer Music Bowl, in King’s Domain Gardens opposite the arts centre, is an outdoor venue seating 13,000. Yearly seasons of opera, ballet, and concert music include performances by international artists. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1949 and has toured North America, Japan, and New Zealand, as well as major Australian cities.

Recreation

Automobile license plates in Victoria carry the identification “Victoria—Garden State.” Melbourne is worthy as the capital of a garden state, with more than one-fourth of its inner-city area consisting of public parks and reserves. These spaces were set aside in the mid-19th century, at a time when many civic leaders in other cities were concerned with commercial development rather than with the quality of life. Extensive tracts have also been allotted as parklands in the newer outer suburbs.

The most famous park in Melbourne is the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG). This area of 89 acres (36 hectares) was established in 1846 and today contains lakes, lawns, and thousands of named trees and shrubs. The associated National Herbarium of Victoria, which houses a collection of 1,200,000 pressed plant specimens, is internationally recognized and used by scholars. The RBG also maintains a separate 200-acre (80-hectare) facility at Cranbourne, about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of central Melbourne.

Melbourne has hundreds of sports fields, tennis courts, swimming pools, and golf courses for active sports participants. Spectators find good accommodations at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which holds 100,000 and is used for both cricket and Australian Rules football, and at the Flemington Racecourse, where the valuable Melbourne Cup race is held every November. Melbourne hosted the 1956 Summer Olympic Games. New sports facilities, including a large tennis stadium near the Melbourne Cricket Ground, have been added since the Olympics. Sailing and fishing on Port Phillip Bay and surfing on the ocean beaches are also popular, and the winter ski slopes around Mount Buller are within easy reach.