Melbourne Information

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Melbourne (pronounced /ˈmelbən/) is the second most populous city in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 3.8 million (2007 estimate) and serves as the state capital of Victoria.^[1] It is located at the mouth of the Yarra River and on the northern and eastern shorelines of Port Phillip on an area of land that formed part of the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung nation's territories for around 40,000 years. The area was an important meeting place for clans and territories of the Kulin nation alliance as well as a vital food and water resource^[3] that was managed sustainably until early European settlers cleared much of these resources, forcing both nation's people into neighbouring territories.^[4]^[5]^[3]

Melbourne was founded by free settlers in 1835, 47 years after the first European settlement of Australia, as a pastoral settlement situated around the Yarra River.^[6] Transformed rapidly into a major metropolis by the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s, 'Marvellous Melbourne' became Australia's largest and most important city by 1865 the second largest in the British Empire,^[7] and the tenth largest in the world for a brief moment at the turn of the 20th century. Such rapid growth from nothing was unprecedented at the time. However, Melbourne's growth slowed after 1900 and it was overtaken by Sydney as the largest city in Australia during the early 20th century.^[8]

Today, Melbourne is a major centre of commerce, industry and cultural activity. The city is referred to as Australia's 'sporting and cultural capital'^[9] and it is home to many of the nation's most significant cultural and sporting events and institutions. It has been recognised as a gamma world city by the Loughborough University group's 1999 inventory.^{[10
]} Melbourne is notable for its mix of Victorian and contemporary architecture, its extensive tram network and Victorian parks and gardens, as well as its diverse, multicultural society.^[11] Melbourne has hosted multiple international conferences and events, including the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Politically, it was the location of the 1981 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the 2006 G20 summit.

Melbourne served as the federal seat of government from the time of the new nation's federation in 1901, until Federal Parliament moved to the purpose-built capital, Canberra, in 1927.^[12] Melbourne's demonym is Melburnian.^[a]

Topography

Environment

Like many urban environments, Melbourne faces some significant environmental issues. Melbourne has one of the highest urban footprints in the world due to its low density housing, suburban sprawl, and car dependence due to minimal public transport outside of the inner city.^[39] 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.^[40] Significant introduced urban pests include the Common Myna,^[41
] Rock Pigeon,^[42] Common Starling, Brown Rat, European Wasp,^[43
] 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.^[44]^[45] National parks nearby to the urban area include 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.^[46]

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.^[47
]^[48]

The biggest current environmental issue facing Melbourne is the Victorian government project to deepen the channel to Melbourne Ports by dredging Port Phillip Bay. 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.^[49
]^[38] Other major pollution problems in Melbourne include levels of bacteria including E-coli in the Yarra River and its tributaries caused by septic systems,^[50
] as well as up to 350,000 cigarette butts entering the storm water runoff every day.^[51
] Several programs are being implemented to minimise beach and river pollution.^[52]^[38]

Climate

Melbourne has a moderate oceanic climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfb).^[53] and is well known for its changeable weather conditions. This is due in part to the city's flat topography, its situation on Port Phillip Bay, and the presence of the Dandenong Ranges to the east, a combination that creates weather systems that often circle the bay.^[54] The phrase "four seasons in one day" is part of popular culture and observed by many visitors to the city.^[55
]

Melbourne is colder than other mainland Australian capital cities in the winter. The lowest maximum on record is 4.4 °C (39.9 °F), on 4 July 1901.^[57] However, snowfalls are extremely 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,^[58
] 15 November 2006, 25 December 2006^[59
] and 10 August 2008.^[60
] More commonly, Melbourne experiences frosts and fog in winter.

During the spring, Melbourne commonly enjoys extended periods of mild weather and clear skies. On average, Melbourne is not as hot as more northern cities such Sydney or Brisbane in summer, but occasionally experiences hotter and drier summer days, with maximum temperatures above 40 °C (104 °F) when northerly winds blow dry air from the arid Mallee region.^[61
]

In recorded history, Melbourne has experienced a number of highly unusual weather events and extremes of climate as well as the rare natural disaster.^[62
] In 1891, the great flood caused the Yarra to swell to 305 metres (1,000 ft) in width. In 1897, a great fire destroyed an entire city block between Flinders Street and Flinders Lane, Swanston Street and Elizabeth Street as well as gutting a 43-metre (140 ft) office building which was the city's tallest building of the time. In 1908, a heatwave struck Melbourne. On 2 February 1918, the Brighton tornado, an F3 class and the most intense tornado to hit a major Australian city struck the bayside suburb of Brighton. In 1934, storms caused widespread damage. On 13 January 1939 Melbourne had its hottest temperature on record, 45.6 °C (114.1 °F), during a four-day nationwide heat wave^[63
] in which the Black Friday bushfires destroyed townships that are now Melbourne suburbs. In 1951 it snowed in both the CBD and suburbs with moderate cover recorded.^[57] In February 1972, the CBD was flooded as the natural watercourse of Elizabeth Street became a raging torrent.^[64
] On 8 February 1983, the city was enveloped by a massive dust storm, which turned day to night. On 16 February in 1983, Melbourne was encircled by an arc of fire as the Ash Wednesday fires encroached on the city. In 1997, Melbourne was hit by a heatwave with a minimum temperature over a 24 hour period of 28.8. Freak storms struck in December 2003, January 2004 and February 2005. On 9 December 2006 some of the thickest bushfire smoke in recorded history blanketed the city sky.^[65
] A heatwave struck in 2008 and bushfires threatened the suburbs.^[66
]^[54] According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 2008 will be Melbourne's 12th consecutive year of below-average rainfall. This has been widely attributed to escalative effects of climate change on the drought. ^[67
]

Urban structure

The original city (known today as the central business district or CBD) is laid out in the Hoddle Grid (dimensions of 1 by 0.5 miles (1.6 km × 0.80 km)), its southern edge fronting onto the Yarra. 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.^[68
] The Melbourne CBD, compared with other Australian cities has comparatively unrestrictive 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.^[69] The CBD and surrounds also contain many significant historic buildings such as the Royal Exhibition Building, the Melbourne Town Hall and Parliament House.^[70]^[71] 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 Bourne St, Glen Iris.^[72
]

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 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.^[73]^[48]^[74] There is an abundance of parks and gardens in Melbourne,^[75] 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.^[76]

Culture

Melbourne is widely known as the Australian cultural and sport capital.^[77]^[78] It has thrice shared top position^[79
] 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,^[80
] 2004 and 2005.^[81
] 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.^[82
]

The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events, performing arts and architecture. Melbourne is also considered to be Australia's live music capital with a large proportion of successful Australian artists emerging from the Melbourne live music scene. Melbourne has become popular for its street art (see Melbourne street art) 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.^[83
]

Sport

In recent years, the city has claimed the SportsBusiness title "World's Ultimate Sports City".^[87
] 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.^[88
]

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 in Australia 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 1858 and the Australian Football League is headquartered at the Telstra Dome. 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.^[89] Additionally, the city annually hosts the AFL Grand Final.