Melbourne (pronounced "MEL-buhn", commonly mispronounced "MEL-borne") is the capital and largest city of the state of Victoria, and the second largest city in Australia, with a population of 3,366,542 (census 2001).
(The locals refer to themselves as 'Melburnians', curiously missing the 'o'.)
The outer North-Western suburb of Tullamarine hosts Melbourne's International Airport, from which almost all commercial flights into and out of Melbourne operate. A secondary airport is located at Avalon, to the South-West between Melbourne and Geelong. A cut price airline has recently commenced using Avalon for its flights to Sydney and Brisbane. Another secondary airport is located in Essendon, this was Melbourne's first International and Domestic Airport (the Beatles arrived at this airport when they played in Melbourne during their 1964 tour of Australia). Essendon Airport is no longer used for international or domestic flights.
While having a large and vibrant arts and cultural life (notably including the yearly Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival), Melbourne is perhaps best known as one of the most sports-obsessed cities in the world. Melbourne is home to nine of the sixteen teams in the Australian Football League, whose five Melbourne games per week attract an average 35,000 people per game. Melbourne hosts the Australian Open tennis, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments; the Melbourne Cup - the most prestigious handicap horse race in the world; a hugely popular cricket test match starting each year on Boxing Day (mid-summer - December 26 to December 30) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (a massive arena that can hold up to 100,000 spectators, locally known as the MCG or simply the "'G"); the Australian Grand PrixFormula One championship; amongst many other events attracted to the city by the readiness of spectators to attend, as well as aggressive attempts by the state government to attract them. In 2003 it also co-hosted the Rugby Union World Cup, including many pool matches as well as a quarter final - all of which were played at the Telstra Dome. The newest major sporting event to be brought to the city will be the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Melbourne has also broken new ground in the major events industry being the first city outside the United States to host the President's Cup golf tournament (in 1999); the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the World Cup Polo Championship (in 2001); the first World Police and Fire Games outside the US (in 1995); and was the only city in the Southern Hemisphere in which the Three Tenors (Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras) performed, on their world tour in 1997.
Melbourne was founded in 1834 by a group of free settlers led by John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, unlike many of Australia's capital cities which were founded as penal colonies with the exception of Adelaide. The discovery of gold in central Victoria in the 1850s - and the subsequent Victorian gold rush - Melbourne quickly grew as a port to service the necessary trade. During the 1880s, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire, and came to be known as "Marvellous Melbourne". Melbourne today is home to the largest number of surviving Victorian Era buildings of any city in the world other than London.
Melbourne continued to expand steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, particularly with the post-World War II influx of immigrants and the prestige of hosting the Olympic Games in 1956. This was the first time the Olympic Games had ever been held in the Southern Hemisphere and Australia (the only other time was when Sydney hosted the Games in 2000). Throughout the 1990s, the Victorian state government of PremierJeff Kennett (Liberal) began a campaign with aggressive development of new public buildings (such as the Crown Casino, the Melbourne Museum, and the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre) and publicising Melbourne's merits both to outsiders and Melburnians. This has continued on under the government of current Premier Steve Bracks.
Melbourne is split into various Local Government Areas each with their own Councils. One of these is the City of Melbourne - covering the central business district. The City's current Lord Mayor is John So, who was inaugurated in 2001, after the first direct election of a Lord Mayor for the city.
Melbourne is built on the land of the Kulin nation, the originial Aboriginal inhabitants of the area.
Melbourne's public transport is operated by one tram and one train company under a franchise from the State Government. The system was government-run until the late 1990s. There are many dozens of bus companies operating throughout the city.
Currently, the system is being given a second brand name, Metlink, which consists of small stickers that go next to the name of the company that runs that specific service, in the hope that people might start to believe that Melbourne suddenly has an integrated Public Transport service.
See the VicTrip website for information on using Melbourne's public transport.
Despite the city's inadequate Public Transport system, particularly its lacklustre bus network, a major road transport investment, the CityLinktollway, was completed in the past few years, supposedly to help alleviate congestion. Its effect has been much the opposite, though some congestion has been successfully shifted to less politically sensitive parts of the City.
All forms of public transport can be accessed by using a single ticket - the Metcard. Metcards come in a variety of forms, ranging from 2 hours to yearly, all using the same tickets by programming the magnetic strip. Metcards are 'validated' when entering or exiting railway stations, and getting on trams or buses. However, most suburban train stations are unstaffed and can easily be entered without a ticket, and trams no longer have conductors, making it easy to go short distances without a ticket. Ticket inspectors randomly check trains and trams, but their sometimes heavy-handed tactics have resulted in public discontent and even court cases, with at least four successful assault convictions and numerous disciplinary sackings.
The public transport system is broken up into three ticketing Zones: Zone 1 (Yellow), Zone 2 (Blue), and Zone 3 (Red). Tickets are valid within the selected Zone or Zones only (however, tickets of weekly or longer duration may be used in any Zone on weekends). A tourist would be unlikely to need more than a Zone 1 ticket, which can purchased on board trams or buses, at train stations, at most newsagents or milk bars, and the transport shop within the Melbourne Town Hall on Swanston Street, and costs (as at January2004) $5.80 AUD for an daily ticket. Avoid using ticket machines where possible, but carry coins for the tram-based ticket machines, and always insert a low value coin first in case the machine is not working properly.
In 2001, the first of 36 new Citadis and 59 new Combino low-floor trams arrived in the city. These new trams were complemented by a massive upgrade of a few city tram stops beginning in 2002. These new "super stops" significantly improve shelter, accessibility, information and safety for travellers, though much of the information conveyed is out of date and inaccurate, the shelter offered is minimal, and seating provision is often sparse at the newer super stops. Yarra Trams invariably tries to move the stops further away from the locations served, most notably moving the stop at Collins and Spencer Streets further away from Spencer Street Station, the city's main rail terminal, to a new location outside Transport House. However, the new stops do look impressive.
During 2003, Yarra Trams began a program to remove over 1/3rd of the seats from its B-class trams, with 28 out of 74 seats removed from Tram 2015, still missing to this day. A community campaign began to fight this move, led by the Public Transport Users Association, which was threatened with legal action by Yarra Trams. The move was intended to create space for more standing passengers and alleviate the need to run more services, and provide space for wheelchairs (though with no apparent means of allowing wheelchairs to climb the three steps to board the tram). They attempted to scale down the seat removals when Tram 2018 was modified in the months following. Despite a few attempts to resurrect the program, including a very short lived trial on A class tram 259, Yarra Trams appears to have given up.
The centre of Melbourne's extensive suburban rail network is Flinders Street Station. There are 16 electrified routes, radiating out of the City Loop. The City Loop contains Melbourne's two central stations, Flinders Street and Spencer Street Stations, as well as the underground stations Parliament, Melbourne Central (formerly Museum) and Flagstaff. There are 4 separate tunnels connecting these three underground stations, and an elevated viaduct between the two surface stations.
Melbourne's train fleet consists of the common Comeng trains, recently refurbished, and the older Hitachi trains, which are not air conditioned and, in the city's summer heat, despised by commuters. However, these trains will progressively be replaced by new X'Trapolis and Siemens trains.
Ironically, the Hitachi trains are the only Melbourne trains that operate reliably in hot weather. Air conditioning in the newer trains is not designed for extreme conditions, and regularly fails to operate on hot days and at any time when the train passes through an area where overhead current is inadequate (such as Heidelberg to Rosanna). The inability of Comeng and other newer trains to function reliably on hot days has led people to unfairly deduce that the older Hitachi trains are intentionally provided on the hottest days, and it is unknown whether those services could be delivered at all once they are withdrawn.
The hub of the Victorian regional rail network, operated mostly by VLine, is Spencer Street Station. This may soon be renamed to Southern Cross Station, despite the objections of many locals.
Melbourne is a sprawling metropolis, and many suburbs beyond the inner and middle metropolitan areas aren't covered by its tram or train networks. In these areas, buses theoretically do the work of linking commuters to the train network, large local shopping centress, suburban commercial and industrial districts, and other suburban destinations.
Their usefulness is negligible, save for a few routes that have maintained useful service levels since being run by the Melbourne & Metropolitan Tramways Board. These are Routes 20x, 21x, 246, 25x, 30x, 340 and 350. Some upgrades have recently taken place on Routes 571, 703, 888/889 and 896, and there is a plan to improve service on Route 700 during 2005. Most other routes may as well be discounted as nonexistent as the average service runs every 50 minutes, ceases at 6.30pm, and offers no service evenings, Saturday afternoons or Sundays.
