Melbourne

Melbourne is Australia’s second-largest city. The capital of Victoria, metropolitan Melbourne is governed by thirty-one local government areas (LGAs), including the City of Melbourne. Covering nearly 10,000 square kilometres (about 3,860 square miles), Greater Melbourne spans four counties: Bourke, Evelyn, Grant and Mornington. Melbourne’s central business district is situated on Australia’s south-east coast and half surrounding Port Phillip Bay. Melbourne’s historic city centre, at the north end of the bay, includes Hoddle Grid and the Queen Victoria Market and is divided between two LGAs: the City of Melbourne and City of Port Phillip.

Settled in just before the Australian gold rush and in a prime location to take advantage of it, Melbourne grew at astronomical speed from its founding as a European settlement through its first one hundred years. In the twenty-first century, the city consistently ranked at or near the top of listings for most liveable cities. Juxtaposed with its historical buildings and laneways are its skyscrapers and high-tech industrial parks. Its iconic tramway system is the largest in the world.

Historical Perspective

Three of the five tribes of the Kulin Nation—Boonwurrung, Wathaurong and Wurundjeri—were living in what is now the Melbourne region when European settlers arrived. The area had been inhabited by Aboriginal Australians for about 40,000 years prior to colonisation by migrants from the United Kingdom. Melbourne was founded in 1835, after initial explorations by John Batman from Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Enterprize, with a dozen settlers onboard, arrived at Batman’s designated site on northern bank of the Yarra River, near what is now Queen’s Wharf, on 15 August 1835. Batman himself returned several days later. The settlement was at first called Dootigala and then, briefly Batmania, after John Batman.

Melbourne became a Crown settlement in 1837, a town in 1842, and a city in 1847. Further, it became the capital of the new colony of Victoria in 1851. The city was named after Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, from the town of Melbourne, in Derbyshire, England.

After the discovery of gold, the city’s population went from 25,000 to 40,000 in just a few months and continued an upward spiral, for a time overtaking Sydney as Australia’s most populous city. The gold rush drew more than Australians and New Zealanders to the area; people arrived from China and Europe, especially Germany and Ireland, and lived in tent cities on the southern banks of the Yarra River. In 1851, the year gold was discovered, immigrants from China established Melbourne’s Chinatown, which has since been a vibrant and economically important section of the city.

Melbourne grew quickly in construction as well, with many of the city’s most iconic structures being built in the 1850s and 1860s. Among those were Parliament House, the Treasury Building, the Gaol, the State Library, the Customs House and the University of Melbourne. With so much money coming into the area, Melbourne became a financial powerhouse as well, with the Royal Mint and the country’s first stock exchange setting up shop. Other government buildings, such as Government House and the Supreme Court, followed in the 1860s and 1870s.

Melbourne enjoyed extraordinary prosperity during this period and achieved international recognition as a great city. The city played host to the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, for which the Royal Exhibition Building was constructed. Electric lights lit up the night for the first time in 1881. The tramway system was introduced in 1885. In 1888, the Exhibition Building was the setting for the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition. Springing up to accommodate the influx of visitors to all of these events were hotels, restaurants, coffee houses and purveyors of alcohol.

Sporting pursuits took off in Melbourne as well, with the construction of the Melbourne Cricket Ground begun in 1855 and the sport of Australian Rules Football being incorporated four years later. Horse racing burst onto the scene in 1861, with the first running of the Melbourne Cup.

In the early 1890s, Melbourne in particular and Australia as a whole suffered an economic crash that lasted through the turn of the century. Construction stalled, banks failed, several dozens of companies went bust, and people left the city in droves. Melbourne’s importance did not decline, however. When Australia became a federation in 1901, Melbourne was the interim seat of government, and the Australian Parliament met in the Royal Exhibition Building. This arrangement continued until 1927, when Canberra became the capital. The Governor-General continued in Melbourne until 1930.

Melbourne’s economic recovery was interrupted by both world wars. However, the post-World War II immigration boom, which boosted the populations of most of Australia’s biggest cities, was especially pronounced in Melbourne. Large numbers of Europeans, especially from southern and Mediterranean countries, and Asians flocked to Melbourne to escape their war-torn homelands.

Melbourne was the host city for the 1956 Olympic Games. It was the first Olympics to take place outside Europe or the United States. This further fuelled the city’s population expansion. Skyscrapers began to raise the skyline in 1958, after the government did away with building height limits; ambitious new development came at the expense of residential housing, some of it quite old. The central business district and some outlying areas underwent extensive renovation, including a road renewal plan designed to improve automobile travel.

By the end of the 1970s, Sydney emerged as one of Australia's preeminent cities. When Melbourne suffered another economic decline in the early 1990s, the city responded aggressively, with new construction that included an exhibition and convention centre and a massive casino. Inner-city renewal was the top strategy for economic stimulation as the twentieth century closed. Melbourne emerged largely intact from the 2008 global financial crisis, with a consequent boom in jobs and financial success; property values and rents skyrocketed as a result.

Melbourne continued to develop at a rapid pace through the 2010s and 2020s; while the city experienced economic growth, it also struggled with emerging social issues, including gentrification. The city was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reached Australia in early 2020. Like other cities in Australia and around the world, over the next two years, Melbourne went into multiple strict lockdowns intended to slow the spread of the virus, which damaged the city's economy and led some people to move out of the city.

Geography and Climate

The city of Melbourne stretches across flat land on Port Phillip Bay and the mouth of the Yarra River. To the northeast of the city are the Dandenong Ranges and the Yarra Valley. To the south is the Mornington Peninsula, which for all but a few dozen kilometres makes Port Philip Bay an enclosed body of water. To Melbourne’s southwest is the popular tourist destination Geelong.

As with other Australian coastal cities, Melbourne is known for its beaches. Among the more well-known beaches are Albert Park, Brighton, Frankston, Sandringham and St Kilda.

The climate of Melbourne is unpredictable. The weather on any given day can change more than once. A popular song of the 1990s by Australian-New Zealand band Crowded House was “Four Seasons in One Day”; that could easily describe a day of weather in Melbourne. Overall, though, the summers are warm, sometimes exceedingly so. The highest recorded temperature in Melbourne was 46.4 degrees Celsius (115.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in 2009. The winters are cool but not usually freezing, although the lowest recorded temperature in the area was -2.8 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) in 1869. Rain is prevalent at all times of the year (with an average of 139 rainy days a year), as is wind; the combination of the two routinely leads to gales and severe thunderstorms.

Economy

Melbourne has strong financial and business sectors. Two of Australia’s largest banks, ANZ and National Australia Bank, have their headquarters in Melbourne. Many of Australia’s largest corporations do the same, including the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton. Both the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Business Council of Australia call Melbourne home. Well-known international companies having their Australian operations base in Melbourne, including jet manufacturer Boeing, candy maker Cadbury, truck builders Kenworth and entertainment specialist Nintendo. Biotech is represented as well, with top pharmaceutical companies CSL and Sigma basing themselves in Melbourne.

Medical industries make up a large part of the Melbourne economy. The metropolitan area has thirty public hospitals and a number of high-profile health-related research institutions, some specialising in neuroscience and other cutting-edge biotechnology fields.

The education sector is also a large employer in Melbourne, home to seven public universities, of which two of the best known are Monash University and the University of Melbourne. The city is home as well to a number of theological colleges.

Demographics

The Kulin Nation, a large Indigenous community that predates European settlement, is still represented in the area, not only by people living there but also in the names of streets and landmarks. Of the 5.35 million people who lived in Melbourne in 2024, 39 per cent were aged 20 to 44. There were 97.9 males for every 100 females, but this varied by region; in the city's south in Mornington, the ratio was 81.8 males per 100 females. The median age of Melbourne residents was 36.6, which was much younger than the median for all of Victoria, at 43.2. The city's South East had one of the nation's lowest median ages at 24.2. Only 25 per cent of the city's residents were over the age of 55, compared to 36 per cent of Victoria as a whole.

Despite its historic popularity with new immigrants to Australia, 58.8 per cent of Melbourne’s population was born in Australia, according to the 2021 Census. The next most represented country of origin, at 4.9 per cent, was India, followed by China and England. Languages other than English spoken most often in Melbourne are, in order, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Greek, Punjabi, and Arabic. Melbourne has the largest Greek-speaking population in a single city outside Greece.

In terms of employment, according to the 2021 Census, the hospital industry leads the way. The second-highest industry was cafes and restaurants. Supermarkets and grocery stores came in third in the industry list. Rounding out the top five industries were computer system design and higher education, respectively.

The city’s public transport system has been consistently rated one of the best in the world by many different entities. Travelers can take buses, trains and the world-famous trams to get around the city. The tram system covers 250 kilometres (160 miles) with twenty-four routes and 1,770 stops. The Free Tram Zone loops around the city centre and is free of charge. Despite this, however, Melbourne, with its sprawling suburbs, is dominated by automobile traffic. However, the government began plans for a rapid transit suburban connection, the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL), in the late 2010s and began construction in 2023 with a $3.6 billion contract.

Landmarks

Melbourne’s status as one of the world’s most liveable cities is characterised by its “laneways”; numbering forty in all, these short, tightly packed pedestrian lanes, dotted throughout the city centre, feature eateries, shops and street vendors. Another well-known element of the laneways is Melbourne’s street art. Queen Victoria Market, or “Queen Vic”, has operated in a connected series of halls and selling spaces since 1878. Melbourne is also a modern city boasting the Southern Hemisphere’s highest observation point, the Eureka Skydeck 88, and its largest gambling centre, the Crown Casino.

State Library Victoria is also a public museum. Opened in 1854, it is the oldest public library in the country. Other prominent historic buildings include St Patrick’s Cathedral, the National Gallery of Victoria and Old Melbourne Gaol, where the outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880. The Royal Botanic Gardens, with 38 hectares of greenspace, was founded in 1846. The Royal Exhibition Buildings and Carlton Gardens, built for the World’s Fair in 1880, continue to host expos and trade fairs. The iconic Flinders Street Station is a transport hub dating to 1899.

Melbourne Aquarium is known for its penguins, sharks and crocodile exhibits. The highlight for many visitors is the 2.2-million-litre (580,000 gallons) Mermaid Garden oceanarium, home to more than 2,000 marine creatures. The Royal Melbourne Zoological Gardens is the country’s oldest zoo, dating to 1862. Featured are animals from the Australian Outback–such as emus, echidnas, kangaroos, koalas and wombats–and from elsewhere around the world. Moonlit Sanctuary is a conservation park that specialises in night tours, particularly of nocturnal animals. Koala Conservation Centre offers treetop viewings.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground is a landmark sporting venue. The largest stadium in Australia, with 95,000 seats and spaces for 5,000 more people to stand (a total capacity of 100,024), is also home to the Australian Football League. The AFL was founded in Victoria, and more than half the league’s teams are based in that state, of which Melbourne is the capital. Melbourne is also home to other high-profile international sporting events. The Australian Open, one of professional tennis’s four Grand Slam tournaments, plays out each January. The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix takes place each March at the Albert Park Circuit. The Melbourne Cup, a horse race held at Flemington Racecourse, runs each November.

Bibliography

“About Melbourne.” City of Melbourne, www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/about-melbourne/Pages/about-melbourne.aspx. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.

“About Victoria.” Visit Melbourne, www.visitmelbourne.com/practical-information/about-victoria. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.

“Climate Statistics for Australia Locations: Melbourne.” Bureau of Meteorology, www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_086071.shtml. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.

“Things to Do in Melbourne.” Melbourne Australia.org, www.melbourneaustralia.org/things-to-do/attractions-zoos-and-amusement-parks. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.

“2021 Census All Persons Quickstats: Greater Melbourne.” Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021, www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/2GMEL. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.