Visit Melbourne Places

Welcome to Visit Melbourne Places
The Walkfo guide to things to do & explore in Melbourne

  

Melbourne Places Overview: History, Culture & Facts about Melbourne

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Melbourne history

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Early history and foundation

At least 20,000 Kulin people from three distinct language groups — the Wurundjeri, Bunurong and Wathaurong — resided in the area. It was an important meeting place for the clans of the Kulin nation alliance and a vital source of food and water. In May and June 1835, John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association in Van Diemen’s Land, explored the Melbourne area, and later claimed to have negotiated a purchase of 600,000 acres. The settlement was named Melbourne on 10 April 1837 by Governor Richard Bourke. Letters patent of Queen Victoria, issued on 25 June 1847, declared Melbourne a city.

Victorian gold rush

The discovery of gold in Victoria in mid-1851 sparked a gold rush, and Melbourne, the colony’s major port, experienced rapid growth. Within months, the city’s population had nearly doubled from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. An influx of intercolonial and international migrants, particularly from Europe and China, saw the establishment of slums, including Chinatown and a temporary “tent city” on the southern banks of the Yarra. By 1865 Melbourne had overtaken Sydney as Australia’s most populous city.

Land boom and bust

The 1880s saw extraordinary growth: consumer confidence, easy access to credit, and steep increases in land prices led to an enormous amount of construction. During this “land boom”, Melbourne reputedly became the richest city in the world, and the second-largest (after London) in the British Empire. The decade began with the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880, held in the large purpose-built Exhibition Building.

De facto capital of Australia

At the time of Australia’s federation on 1 January 1901 Melbourne became the seat of government of the federated Commonwealth of Australia. The first federal parliament convened on 9 May 1901 in the Royal Exhibition Building, subsequently moving to the Victorian Parliament House. The Governor-General of Australia resided at Government House in Melbourne until 1930.

Post-war period

In the immediate years after World War II, Melbourne expanded rapidly, boosted by post-war immigration to Australia. Height limits in the CBD were lifted in 1958, after the construction of ICI House, transforming the city’s skyline with the introduction of skyscrapers. Suburban expansion intensified, served by new indoor malls beginning with Chadstone Shopping Centre. The Bolte government sought to rapidly accelerate the modernisation of Melbourne.

Contemporary Melbourne

Since the mid-1990s, Melbourne has maintained significant population and employment growth. Major inner-city urban renewal has occurred in areas such as Southbank, Port Melbourne, Melbourne Docklands and more recently, South Wharf. Melbourne sustained the highest population increase and economic growth rate of any Australian capital city.

Melbourne culture & places

Often referred to as Australia’s cultural capital, Melbourne is recognised globally as a centre of sport, music, theatre, comedy, art, literature, film and television. For much of the 2010s, it held the top position in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s list of the world’s most liveable cities, partly due to its cultural attributes. The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events and festivals of all types, including the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival and Moomba, Australia’s largest free community festival. The State Library of Victoria, founded in 1854, is one of the world’s oldest free public libraries and, as of 2018, the fourth most-visited library globally. Between the gold rush and the crash of 1890, Melbourne was Australia’s literary capital, famously referred to by Henry Kendall as “that wild bleak Bohemia south of the Murray”. At this time, Melbourne-based writers and poets Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Rolf Boldrewood produced classic visions of colonial life. Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), the fastest-selling crime novel of the era, is set in Melbourne, as is Australia’s best-selling book of poetry, C. J. Dennis’ The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915). Contemporary Melbourne authors who have written award-winning books set in the city include Peter Carey, Helen Garner and Christos Tsiolkas. Melbourne has Australia’s widest range of bookstores, as well as the nation’s largest publishing sector. The city is also home to the Melbourne Writers Festival and hosts the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2008, it became the second city to be named a UNESCO City of Literature. Ray Lawler’s play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is set in Carlton and debuted in 1955, the same year that Edna Everage, Barry Humphries’ Moonee Ponds housewife character, first appeared on stage, both sparking international interest in Australian theatre. Melbourne’s East End Theatre District is known for its Victorian era theatres, such as the Athenaeum, Her Majesty’s and the Princess, as well as the Forum and the Regent. Other heritage-listed theatres include the art deco landmarks The Capitol and St Kilda’s Palais Theatre, Australia’s largest seated theatre with a capacity of 3,000 people. The Arts Precinct in Southbank is home to Arts Centre Melbourne (which includes the State Theatre and Hamer Hall), as well as the Melbourne Recital Centre and Southbank Theatre, home of the Melbourne Theatre Company, Australia’s oldest professional theatre company. The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are also based in the precinct. Melbourne has been called “the live music capital of the world”; one study found it has more music venues per capita than any other world city sampled, with 17.5 million patron visits to 553 venues in 2016. The Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Kings Domain hosted the largest crowd ever for a music concert in Australia when an estimated 200,000 attendees saw Melbourne band The Seekers in 1967. Airing between 1974 and 1987, Melbourne’s Countdown helped launch the careers of Crowded House, Men at Work and Kylie Minogue, among other local acts. Several distinct post-punk scenes flourished in Melbourne during the late 1970s, including the Fitzroy-based Little Band scene and the St Kilda scene centered at the Crystal Ballroom, which gave rise to Dead Can Dance and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, respectively. More recent independent acts from Melbourne to achieve global recognition include The Avalanches, Gotye and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Melbourne is also regarded as a centre of EDM, and lends its name to the Melbourne Bounce genre and the Melbourne Shuffle dance style, both of which emerged from the city’s underground rave scene. Established in 1861, the National Gallery of Victoria is Australia’s oldest and largest art museum. Several art movements originated in Melbourne, most famously the Heidelberg School of impressionists, named after a suburb where they camped to paint en plein air in the 1880s. The Australian tonalists followed, some of whom founded Montsalvat, Australia’s oldest surviving art colony. During World War II, the Angry Penguins, a group of avant-garde artists, convened at a Bulleen dairy farm, now the Heide Museum of Modern Art. The city is also home to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. In the 2000s, Melbourne street art became globally renowned and a major tourist drawcard, with “laneway galleries” such as Hosier Lane attracting more Instagram hashtags than some of the city’s traditional attractions, such as the Melbourne Zoo. A quarter century after bushranger Ned Kelly’s execution at Old Melbourne Gaol, the Melbourne-produced The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the world’s first feature-length narrative film, premiered at the above-named Athenaeum, spurring Australia’s first cinematic boom. Melbourne remained a world leader in filmmaking until the mid-1910s, when several factors, including a ban on bushranger films, contributed to a decades-long decline of the industry. A notable film shot and set in Melbourne during this lull was On the Beach (1959). Melbourne filmmakers led the Australian Film Revival with ocker comedies such as Stork (1971) and Alvin Purple (1973). Other films shot and set in Melbourne include Mad Max (1979), Romper Stomper (1992), Chopper (2000) and Animal Kingdom (2010). The Melbourne International Film Festival began in 1952 and is one of the world’s oldest film festivals. The AACTA Awards, Australia’s top screen awards, were inaugurated by the festival in 1958. Melbourne is also home to Docklands Studios Melbourne (the city’s largest film and television studio complex), the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the headquarters of Village Roadshow Pictures, Australia’s largest film production company.

Sports

Melbourne has long been regarded as Australia’s sporting capital due to the range and quality of its sporting events and venues. The city is home to 27 professional sports teams competing at the national level, the most of any Australian city. Melbourne hosted the 1956 Summer Olympic Games, the first Olympic Games held outside Europe and the United States. The Australian Open is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments held in Melbourne.

Melbourne economy & business

Tourism

In 2018, 10.8 million domestic overnight tourists and 2.9 million international overnight tourists visited Melbourne. The most visited attractions are Federation Square, Queen Victoria Market, Crown Casino, Southbank, Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne Aquarium, Docklands, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Museum, Arts Centre Melbourne, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Melbourne geography / climate

Melbourne is in the southeastern 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. The nearest surf beaches are 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of the CBD in the back-beaches of Rye, Sorrento and Portsea.

Climate

Melbourne has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) with warm to hot summers and mild winters. The lowest temperature on record is −2.8 °C (27.0 °F), on 21 July 1869. The highest temperature recorded in Melbourne city was 46.4 °C on 7 February 2009.

You can visit Melbourne places with Walkfo Melbourne to hear history at Melbourne’s places whilst walking around using the free digital tour app. Walkfo Melbourne has 243 places to visit in our interactive Melbourne map, with amazing history, culture & travel facts you can explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Melbourne, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route. Our historic audio walks, National Trust interactive audio experiences, digital tour guides for English Heritage locations are available at Melbourne places, with a AI tour guide to help you get the best from a visit to Melbourne & the surrounding areas.

“Curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 243 audio facts unique to Melbourne places in an interactive Melbourne map you can explore.”

Walkfo: Visit Melbourne Places Map
243 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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Melbourne historic spots	Melbourne tourist destinations	Melbourne plaques	Melbourne geographic features
Walkfo Melbourne tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in Melbourne

  

Best Melbourne places to visit

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Melbourne has places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied Melbourne’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo Melbourne’s information audio spots:

Visit Melbourne plaques