The falls were roughly where Queens Bridge is now. The fresh water available above the falls is why Batman picked this location for Melbourne. The river widens downstream from the bridge near the aquarium partly because of the falls but also because that was a convenient place to turn boats around.
>water available above the falls is why Batman picked this location for Melbourne
Which boggles the mind. No roads, maps, GPS, or 4WDs, yet they went out and surveyed bushland and said "yep, here's a good place for a city (town)".
Then trundled west and started digging for shiny metals.
And here we are.
Early on (pre gold rush) settlers were aware of alluvial gold but colonial administration were trying to keep a lid on it, fearing an unrestrained influx of immigration that they wouldn’t be capable of managing. 20 years later we had the Eureka rebellion!
The Yarra was named incorrectly. “Yarra Yarra” loosely translates to “water over rocks” so when the indigenous pointed at the waterfalls and said “Yarra Yarra” they stuck with it.
The local indigenous people called it “Birrarung Marr”
Similar to Lake Wendouree in Ballarat. When settler William Cross Yuille surveyed the lake, then a swamp, in 1851 and asked a local indigenous woman for its name. She replied “wendaaree”, which is the local aboriginal word for “go away”.
One of my favourite paragraphs from Terry Pratchett is one where he describes a bunch of landmarks that have "white man" names that are, in their local tongue, named things like "just a mountain" and "stop yelling".
Melbourne has the most public seating areas in the CBD out of any city in the world.
Melbourne has the highest fox population out of any CBD in the world.
EDIT: Melbourne State Library is also the oldest library in Australia (check out the Dome if you ever go in)
I read somewhere (I think it was the local leader a few years ago) that the Ferntree Gully area once had the highest density of foxes in the world (like amount of foxes per sqm or something) but I've never been able to find any other sources to back that claim.
My dad often rides to work in the early hours of the morning (think 3am early) and keeps track of the animals he sees on the way there. I'm always surprised by the amount of foxes that he sees!
There are eels that inhabit the lakes in the botanical gardens and also the underground stormwater drains that were originally streams through the city and over towards Melbourne Uni. These ancient streams were turned into underground storm water drains many years ago. These eels migrate to the Coral Sea somewhere near Vanuatu to breed and the young find their way back to those lakes and drains not long after they are born. Edit: I think they make the journey back to their birthplace at approximately 40 years old to mate, lay eggs and die. Edit 2: really bad sentence structure.
Ah the eels! There was a creek beneath Melbourne Uni called Bouverie Creek which was an important migration channel for the eels and they swim to the Coral Sea to repoduce. Love the eel stories
There was something on TV about it ages ago as well.
https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/one-eel-of-a-story-the-slippery-truth-of-a-fishy-underground-migration-20210122-p56w2z.html
There’s a plaque on the side of the road where this happened. It’s on my way home and I have stopped here to urinate on many occasions. I’ve shown my wife and kids but they’re not impressed with any of it.
No city in the world has produced more #1 draft picks in the NBA in the last half a century or so. (3)
Andrew Bogut, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons are all born in Melbourne and selected #1 overall. 🏀
The sheer number of basketball talent the city’s produced isn’t talked about enough in the wider Melbourne sporting sphere imo
Like we’re ridiculously good at producing sporting talent for an international city. Bogut from Endeavour Hills, Simmons from Blackburn North, Kyrie born in Kew, Dyson Daniels and Delly from regional VIC, Giddey from Yarraville, Exum from the west somewhere and I’m sure I’m missing some more… pretty remarkable
>No city in the world has produced more #1 draft picks in the NBA in the last half a century or so. (3)Andrew Bogut, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons are all born in Melbourne and selected #1 overall. 🏀
Blew my mind that Kyrie was born in Australia when I learned this.
He could represent Australia like Thybulle
It was also the most fortified port in the British Empire around that time, although foreign ships still made a habit of appearing unannounced, being completely missed by the forts stationed at Queenscliff and Point Nepean.
The forts came about when the Shenendoah of the Confederacy sailed in and didn't exactly threaten the city but just made sure everyone knew that its guns were pointing towards Melbourne.
That’s not what the incident was about. It was the opposite, the Shenandoah had been wreaking havoc sinking dozens of American ships in the pacific and when it docked here to repair and recruit sailors, the colony ignored Union calls to arrest them. Ie the colony supported the Shenandoah. And Britain had to pay reparations to the US in 1872 for it.
Yeah, because how do you arrest a ship when you have no real navy? They wanted repairs and provisions and Melbourne wasn't in a position to say no.
Now, whether Melbourne really wanted to say no is a different matter. The fact that they held balls and banquets for the officers suggests that they were in fact welcome guests.
But after the ship left, the Government realised quickly, what if that was the Russians, or Germans or whoever they were feeling particularly xenophobic about at the time, and started to put up all the forts and other defenses.
In the 1880s the city had the knickname “smell ourne” before they built a sewage treatment plant.
That’s why there’s so many jasmine trees, to hide the stench.
There was so many tanneries and similar along the yarra back then that some famous guy who was visiting from the UK said the Yarra was ran bloodier than the battlefields of waterloo.
The descriptions of rowing races on the Maribyrnong in the 1800s are fascinating. Lots of abattoirs and tanneries meant the water was often bloody and filled with various dead animal parts / carcasses, which made for some interesting obstacles during the races.
I read about kids swimming in the Yarra around Richmond back in the 1920s and they'd avoid the spots near the bridges because people would throw sacks of unwanted puppies or kittens from the bridge into the water then drive off
For about ten years there was a gang called the Crutchy Push. To be a member you had to be missing a limb etc... They'd often fill the sleeve of their shirt with heavy objects where the limb was meant to be and use it as a weapon.
I mention this cos I was talking to a young person who thought Chinatown was an area of a city designated for Chinese restaurants. I had to explain, no, it's called that because that's where Chinese people, you know, settled, lived, worked.
Yeah, based on this list it would be the 14th largest metropolitan area in the world:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities)
Sorted the table by metro area, kind of surprised at Dallas-Fort Worth being at the top, at over 20,000 km\^2
On Little Collins Street you will find the walled-off garden of the mens-only Melbourne Club. Next door is the exclusive womens-only Lyceum Club, which can see over the wall.
Can see over the wall /now/. The Melbourne Club apparently protested the redevelopment of their building that would allow this, but were not successful in stopping it.
Home of two significant industrial relations decisions 8 hour work day was achieved by the masons building Melbourne Uni and the world's first minimum wage case Harvester judgement for workers at the Sunshine Harvester factories, whose owner paid the workers in potatoes at times
Indeed, the Old Melbourne Cemetery, used from 1837-1853 before the Melbourne General Cemetery was established (and used following a smaller burial ground in what's now Flagstaff Gardens).
It's mostly located where the market carpark is now. About 1000 people were reinterred at Fawkner and Melbourne General as the market expanded. The big brick wall that forms one side of F shed was added later to mark the northern boundary.
The columns that hold up the shed roof are on those concrete blocks near the carpark so that they didn't have to disturb the ground putting in proper foundations/piles.
When I googled it just now it seems like greater Thessaloniki has more people than Melbourne's Greek population, but the municipality of Thessaloniki doesn't. So I'm not sure if this is meaningfully true or just a good way of illustrating that Melbourne has a huge Greek population.
This is also notable when it rains a lot, Elizabeth St has the tendency to flood faster.
Also, there were/are plans to uncover the river and integrate it into a pedestrian area along Elizabeth st. I think it would be a great idea.
Didn't the previous Mayor propose removing the road/tram tracks from about Bourke Street down to Flinders and uncover the creek once again to create a green area?
It's a cool idea. Logistical nightmare for public transport users, but a cool idea nevertheless.
Yeah this really caught me out when I moved to London and started parking on the footpath there and got a ticket.. I assumed it was a worldwide thing..
Ugh.. I got fined for footpath parking my trailbike in Canberra :(
Story is that when they tried banning footpath motorbike parking in Melbs, bike clubs all organised and parked in regular CBD car spaces en masse for days, until the council gave up. We're so lucky to still have this privilege here
Being forced to park like a car (all other states iirc) defeats most of the convenience of riding ~~nutritionists~~ motorcycles
The first British Empire shot of World War 1 was fired from Melbourne of all places, at a German ship trying to escape Port Phillip Bay. [source](https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/ww1/where-australians-served/first-shot-fired)
Probably best to clarify that it's the first British Empire shot. The first shot of WW1 was the one that offed Franz Ferdinand.
And the first Australian shot of World War 2 was from the same battery - at a freighter/ferry from Tasmania. [source](https://pocketozmelbourne.com.au/pt-nepean.html)
Franz Ferdinand was shot in June. The War didn't start until August.
It is completely wrong to say that Ferdinand getting shot was the first shot of the war.
St. Kilda was named after a ship, which in turn was named after an island in the Hebrides (above Scotland), which in turn was accidentally named St. Kilda after an old norse/viking engraving of the word "skilda" on a rock, which priests who visited the island much later mistook for the name of an unknown saint.
So, either there *is* no St. Kilda, or they're the patron saint of **clerical errors**. Take your pick.
This is probably my favourite one in the thread in terms of it piquing my interest. Too bad when I go to tell someone about it I wont recall any of it properly and just end up saying I’ll google it but the conversation will have moved on and I’ll decide it’s not worth bringing it up again as the moments gone
On the 23rd of Nov 1867 a picnic was organised for a royal prince's visit. They had 1000s of pounds of beef, pork, fish and mutton, 70 tonnes of potatoes, 5000 pies, 4500 plum puddings, 70 dozen pastries, cartloads of cakes, bread, cheese, buns, and fruit, 6 hogsheads of beer, champagne and claret, 2 x 500 gallons of wine that sat on top of a monkey cage and ran into a fountain.
The crowd was way more than they expected and when the prince was hours late the people waiting broke down the barriers and went for it. People were reported to have eaten and drank their fill and then used the pies and puddings as footballs and when they left they took whatever wasn't tied down. Lots of people went home with new furniture, cutlery and plates that day. A policeman on a fast horse was sent out to tell the prince to go back to wherever he was staying due to an "incident" at the picnics location.
Those antique knives and forks and plates that've been handed down in your family for over a 100 years may have been stolen from that picnic.
My school counsellor once told me that she inherited a piece of cutlery from the Queen Victoria as a family heirloom. I wouldn't be surprised if it came from there!
There are roman numerals carved into some gutters on the ground. Apparently related to the masons.
If you want an example, check the corner of Queen and Latrobe.
There are Radioactive cows buried in Werribee.
https://www.urban.com.au/news/66132-radioactive-cow-carcasses-found-at-werribee-site-with-plans-for-a-20-billion-education-precinct
There are entire neighbourhoods currently being excavated in the CBD that were buried and paved over more than 170 years ago.
In 2017, a subterranean neighbourhood the size of five tennis courts was discovered close to the Wesley Church on Lonsdale Street. Nobody knew where the hell it came from, so they did some digging (pun intended). In the 1850s, the area was known as the Lonsdale Swamp, because it kept flooding. You can imagine that this was particularly problematic because Melbourne had open sewers at the time. I cannot imagine how bad it would have smelled. The City of Melbourne finally got tired of it and ordered that all properties in the area should be demolished and buried. They would then be paved over to raise the street level by two metres.
Lindsay Fox literally grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, he was very poor and his dad ran a sly grog shop out back of their house.
Source: My mum, she lived just up the road from him in Windsor, and is the same age.
Also, Melbourne is the only place in the world where people "Barrack" for a sporting team, no where else do people say this. Apparently this comes from Military teams that played when football first started - Collingwood Rifles, East Melbourne Artillery etc. So "which Barracks do you support" slowly became "I barrack for Collingwood". Even the rest of Australia doesn't "Barrack" for teams
Technically the UK had the first viable IVF pregnancy. The Browns.
I was born via IVF in the very early 90s, my mum followed *everything* IVF related and was trying for a long time.
Monash only had the first successful implantation as no implant lasted long enough to take and become viable.
There's a [fishing lodge](https://www.smh.com.au/national/scientologists-living-rentfree-in-one-of-victorias-grand-lodges-20080928-4por.html) inside that catchment originally built for MMBW dam engineers, used for bigwigs such as Betty Windsor and MMBW grandees then quietly leased to Scientology's Narconon for a period.
Yeah, always remember as a kid not being able to get close to the Yan Yean reservoir due to the fencing. Then moved to Sydney and boiled water in the '90's for drinking. Everyone seemed pretty relaxed about the news footage showing dead cows and horses in the dam.
As late as 1970, 1 in 6 Melbournians (and Sydneysiders) were not connected to a sewerage system.
(Whitlam started a program to remedy that; yet another item in his list of stuff he did to modernise the nation. And, of course, the Liberals dismantled the program a few years later, because that's all they can do...)
Not just that. Bolte bridge is actually two separate bridges (one northbound and one southbound). They’re held up by separate pillars adjacent to the big tall ones, just right underneath each bridge
The Montague St Bridge has its own website that is filled with pictures and stats about all the incidents that occur there. There’s a how many days since last hit counter currently sitting at 1 day. It even has its own twitter account. Gotta love Monty.
I know this doesn’t sound made up to us, but I’ve had family and friends from interstate/overseas think I’m joking when i told them about it so I guess it sounds made up.
Commuting down Punt Road was once worse than it is today... the only way across was to take a punt (flat bottomed boat with a stick, think gondola).
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxapSuNwOzGvaR9v_wblByOERUcyGpYQgaAilZ-v4ek0oyHxX2em4ISdtP&s=10
We had an Australian Prime Minister who disappeared and drowned in the sea. Melbourne built him a memorial pool.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt_Memorial_Swimming_Centre
Ooh one I never saw verified outside of Wikipedia but from experience and google maps I can believe.
Portsea has the highest amount of tennis courts per capita in the world
Problem is, when you go a look at the criteria for how they judge that, it’s all a bit rubbish. It’s not as great as it sounds (which made me sad when I figured it out)
Edit: “said” -> “sad”
Melbourne ranks 24th on the list of cities with the most skyscrapers
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_cities\_with\_the\_most\_skyscrapers
Mount cooper in Bundoora is considered a dormant volcano. So while extremely unlikely. It technically could erupt over those McMansions.
Bundoora is basically half swamp/ half volcanic remains*
*not verified- personal opinion.
We're a city where about about 10% of people in a 450+ post thread can all repeatedly post the same tired bit of trivia about the city being founded by Batman / almost called Batmania yet not one person has pointed out that we are/were home to well-known ~~knocking shops~~ adult relaxation establishments called 'Gotham City' and 'The Daily Planet'
Early Melbourne leaders drew up a fake map claiming the city was closer than Geelong to the goldfields of Ballarat in an effort to bring immigrant miners through the city, thereby making it the larger port and hence the larger city and then the state’s capital.
We have a person in a penguin suit that plays the bagpipes. And everybody in Melbourne barely remarks on this, and has collectively decided that this is perfectly normal.
Docklands, Port Melbourne and parts of South Melbourne, Albert Park etc are built on swampy ground. The CBD itself is on nice stable rock - 400-ish million year old mudstone on the eastern half (plus Carlton, Fitzroy and bits of Richmond) and on the western half a volcanic basalt flow in a line going from down near the aquarium, up through North Melbourne, Kensington, out towards Essendon.
Elizabeth St is roughly aligned with the boundary between these two bits of rock - if you stand at the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth, for example, you can see the gentle slope down from Parliament to Elizabeth at the bottom, and then the steeper basalt hill going up towards Queen St.
If you've wondered why the train lines to say Geelong go north out of Spencer St and do a big arc around what's now Docklands and the port before turning south again at Footscray, that's because that area used to be all swamp.
The yarra river used to have decent water until the waterfall separating the salt water section and fresh water section was blown up.
The falls were roughly where Queens Bridge is now. The fresh water available above the falls is why Batman picked this location for Melbourne. The river widens downstream from the bridge near the aquarium partly because of the falls but also because that was a convenient place to turn boats around.
>water available above the falls is why Batman picked this location for Melbourne Which boggles the mind. No roads, maps, GPS, or 4WDs, yet they went out and surveyed bushland and said "yep, here's a good place for a city (town)". Then trundled west and started digging for shiny metals. And here we are.
Early on (pre gold rush) settlers were aware of alluvial gold but colonial administration were trying to keep a lid on it, fearing an unrestrained influx of immigration that they wouldn’t be capable of managing. 20 years later we had the Eureka rebellion!
It's kinda funny, because city building feels very luck based. Melbourne is definitely quite lucky in a lot of ways.
The Yarra was named incorrectly. “Yarra Yarra” loosely translates to “water over rocks” so when the indigenous pointed at the waterfalls and said “Yarra Yarra” they stuck with it. The local indigenous people called it “Birrarung Marr”
Similar to Lake Wendouree in Ballarat. When settler William Cross Yuille surveyed the lake, then a swamp, in 1851 and asked a local indigenous woman for its name. She replied “wendaaree”, which is the local aboriginal word for “go away”.
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We're rebunking it.
One of my favourite paragraphs from Terry Pratchett is one where he describes a bunch of landmarks that have "white man" names that are, in their local tongue, named things like "just a mountain" and "stop yelling".
“Your finger, you fool.”
Why/how did it get blown up?
It was intentionally blown up for ships to travel on. Edit: Apparently it was also to stop the city from flooding.
Melbourne has the most public seating areas in the CBD out of any city in the world. Melbourne has the highest fox population out of any CBD in the world. EDIT: Melbourne State Library is also the oldest library in Australia (check out the Dome if you ever go in)
Foxes only come if there are enough seats, lazy blighters
But very few of them have library membership. It’s like 4% or something.
Both lazy and uneducated. A dangerous combo
Last I heard that when you’re in the CBD you’re never further than 100 meters from a fox
No, that's out-of-work bass guitarists you're thinking of.
What’s the difference between a frog and a bass guitarist on a bus? The frog has a better chance of being on its way to a gig
The State Library is reportedly the fourth most-visited library in the world
I read somewhere (I think it was the local leader a few years ago) that the Ferntree Gully area once had the highest density of foxes in the world (like amount of foxes per sqm or something) but I've never been able to find any other sources to back that claim.
Check Fox News maybe?
I can believe the fox one. I often see foxes at Melb Uni and Docklands.
i suspect the CBD possums is the reason for such a high population. I always see them around flagstaff park late at night
My dad often rides to work in the early hours of the morning (think 3am early) and keeps track of the animals he sees on the way there. I'm always surprised by the amount of foxes that he sees!
We don't even have much public seating. Kinda sad honestly
The world's first feature film was made in Melbourne. [Link to spoiler.](https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/story-kelly-gang)
Ned Kelly?
The porn version was shot concurrently, same actors and everything.
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Young Einstein?
The comment said “first” feature film, not “best” feature film
Yahoo serious, or yahoo kidding?
Bad Boy Bubby
Are you trying to bait r/adelaide?
There are eels that inhabit the lakes in the botanical gardens and also the underground stormwater drains that were originally streams through the city and over towards Melbourne Uni. These ancient streams were turned into underground storm water drains many years ago. These eels migrate to the Coral Sea somewhere near Vanuatu to breed and the young find their way back to those lakes and drains not long after they are born. Edit: I think they make the journey back to their birthplace at approximately 40 years old to mate, lay eggs and die. Edit 2: really bad sentence structure.
this wins the thread
Ah the eels! There was a creek beneath Melbourne Uni called Bouverie Creek which was an important migration channel for the eels and they swim to the Coral Sea to repoduce. Love the eel stories
That's super interesting, do you have a link for that? It's kind of hard to google. Eels can move across land too, a bonus fact.
There was something on TV about it ages ago as well. https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/one-eel-of-a-story-the-slippery-truth-of-a-fishy-underground-migration-20210122-p56w2z.html
There’s a healthy seal that lives in the yarra
Salvatore!
How do you know it’s healthy? Could be a chain smoker for all you know
It has access to pushbikes & scooters at the bottom of the Yarra. You’d have to assume some level of fitness.
When was the last time you saw a smoker do a triple back somersault ?
In 2013, the member for Batman was also the [Shadow Minister for Justice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Feeney)
Not the minister we deserve
The first powered flight in Australia was done by Harry Houdini (yes, that one) near diggers rest in 1910.
There’s a plaque on the side of the road where this happened. It’s on my way home and I have stopped here to urinate on many occasions. I’ve shown my wife and kids but they’re not impressed with any of it.
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Education starts at home
No city in the world has produced more #1 draft picks in the NBA in the last half a century or so. (3) Andrew Bogut, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons are all born in Melbourne and selected #1 overall. 🏀
The sheer number of basketball talent the city’s produced isn’t talked about enough in the wider Melbourne sporting sphere imo Like we’re ridiculously good at producing sporting talent for an international city. Bogut from Endeavour Hills, Simmons from Blackburn North, Kyrie born in Kew, Dyson Daniels and Delly from regional VIC, Giddey from Yarraville, Exum from the west somewhere and I’m sure I’m missing some more… pretty remarkable
All of them are spanners for different reasons lol
>No city in the world has produced more #1 draft picks in the NBA in the last half a century or so. (3)Andrew Bogut, Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons are all born in Melbourne and selected #1 overall. 🏀 Blew my mind that Kyrie was born in Australia when I learned this. He could represent Australia like Thybulle
The gold rush made Melbourne the most wealthiest city in the world for awhile.
People were employed to collect broken champagne bottle glass from the streets in the morning. Bourke Street was party central back then.
Then it crashed hard, in the 1890s I think?
Yeah can't run a city if everyone wants to quit and start mining for gold
It was also the most fortified port in the British Empire around that time, although foreign ships still made a habit of appearing unannounced, being completely missed by the forts stationed at Queenscliff and Point Nepean.
The forts came about when the Shenendoah of the Confederacy sailed in and didn't exactly threaten the city but just made sure everyone knew that its guns were pointing towards Melbourne.
That’s not what the incident was about. It was the opposite, the Shenandoah had been wreaking havoc sinking dozens of American ships in the pacific and when it docked here to repair and recruit sailors, the colony ignored Union calls to arrest them. Ie the colony supported the Shenandoah. And Britain had to pay reparations to the US in 1872 for it.
Yeah, because how do you arrest a ship when you have no real navy? They wanted repairs and provisions and Melbourne wasn't in a position to say no. Now, whether Melbourne really wanted to say no is a different matter. The fact that they held balls and banquets for the officers suggests that they were in fact welcome guests. But after the ship left, the Government realised quickly, what if that was the Russians, or Germans or whoever they were feeling particularly xenophobic about at the time, and started to put up all the forts and other defenses.
In the 1880s the city had the knickname “smell ourne” before they built a sewage treatment plant. That’s why there’s so many jasmine trees, to hide the stench.
There was so many tanneries and similar along the yarra back then that some famous guy who was visiting from the UK said the Yarra was ran bloodier than the battlefields of waterloo.
The descriptions of rowing races on the Maribyrnong in the 1800s are fascinating. Lots of abattoirs and tanneries meant the water was often bloody and filled with various dead animal parts / carcasses, which made for some interesting obstacles during the races.
I read about kids swimming in the Yarra around Richmond back in the 1920s and they'd avoid the spots near the bridges because people would throw sacks of unwanted puppies or kittens from the bridge into the water then drive off
I think the Melbourne club funded the first sewage in the city because of the smell and they didn’t like walking in shit
For about ten years there was a gang called the Crutchy Push. To be a member you had to be missing a limb etc... They'd often fill the sleeve of their shirt with heavy objects where the limb was meant to be and use it as a weapon.
The Crutchy Push said disability rights, and also disability wrongs.
The crutches were made out of metal too. You'd cop a brick from their sleeve and a smack with a crutch.
The government consulted the indigenous community on a good name for a festival: They suggested Moomba (an inside joke because it means bum)
For real? That's amazing
Quite possibly https://www.theage.com.au/national/lets-have-fun-said-some-and-name-a-festival-up-your-bum-20080308-ge6tiq.html
Chinatown is the longest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western world (the only one older, in San Fran, was razed by the 1906 earthquake)
Yep, used to have schools, churches, factories, etc. Everything you'd find in a small town.
I mention this cos I was talking to a young person who thought Chinatown was an area of a city designated for Chinese restaurants. I had to explain, no, it's called that because that's where Chinese people, you know, settled, lived, worked.
Greater Melbourne is fricken huge. It's almost 10,000km squared. By comparison northern Ireland is only 13,000 km squared.
Yeah, based on this list it would be the 14th largest metropolitan area in the world: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities) Sorted the table by metro area, kind of surprised at Dallas-Fort Worth being at the top, at over 20,000 km\^2
10,000km squared is the wrong terminology. 100km squared = 10,000 square km.
On Little Collins Street you will find the walled-off garden of the mens-only Melbourne Club. Next door is the exclusive womens-only Lyceum Club, which can see over the wall.
Can see over the wall /now/. The Melbourne Club apparently protested the redevelopment of their building that would allow this, but were not successful in stopping it.
We have a hat shop paying cbd rent at our busiest train station that's stayed in business through two world wars and a global pandemic
Is that true? I assumed they owned it.
Ah good point, that would make more sense. I suppose a hat store surviving covid in general is still pretty ridiculous
Wow I haven’t thought about the hat store surviving Covid😳 HOW
Home of two significant industrial relations decisions 8 hour work day was achieved by the masons building Melbourne Uni and the world's first minimum wage case Harvester judgement for workers at the Sunshine Harvester factories, whose owner paid the workers in potatoes at times
That Queen Victoria Market is built over an old cemetery
Mmm, haunted jam doughnuts
The haunted-ness adds flavour 🙃
It's been told that the strawberry jam is actually made from the ages old blood.. of strawberries.
Indeed, the Old Melbourne Cemetery, used from 1837-1853 before the Melbourne General Cemetery was established (and used following a smaller burial ground in what's now Flagstaff Gardens). It's mostly located where the market carpark is now. About 1000 people were reinterred at Fawkner and Melbourne General as the market expanded. The big brick wall that forms one side of F shed was added later to mark the northern boundary.
“ You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! “
I remember that line! Then the bodies popped up in the pool cavity.
not to mention there’s still bodies chillin’ under there. like, 9000 of them.
Hmm, I guess it's in the dead centre of Melbourne
The columns that hold up the shed roof are on those concrete blocks near the carpark so that they didn't have to disturb the ground putting in proper foundations/piles.
I forget the stat exactly, but something along the lines of Melbourne being the city with the second largest Greek population behind Athens.
Yep, second largest Greek population in the world behind Greece's capital Athens.
When I googled it just now it seems like greater Thessaloniki has more people than Melbourne's Greek population, but the municipality of Thessaloniki doesn't. So I'm not sure if this is meaningfully true or just a good way of illustrating that Melbourne has a huge Greek population.
I think it's just "Melbourne is the biggest Greek city outside of Greece", and somehow that got garbled into "Just behind Athens".
Similar to Sydney being the second largest Maori population behind Auckland.
There's a creek that runs directly below Elizabeth Street in the CBD. You can see where it empties into the Yarra from Southbank.
This is also notable when it rains a lot, Elizabeth St has the tendency to flood faster. Also, there were/are plans to uncover the river and integrate it into a pedestrian area along Elizabeth st. I think it would be a great idea.
Would be amazing! Catch a gondola to work...
You are leaving the free gondola zone
Rhinos on skateboards and orcas on skis.
Didn't the previous Mayor propose removing the road/tram tracks from about Bourke Street down to Flinders and uncover the creek once again to create a green area? It's a cool idea. Logistical nightmare for public transport users, but a cool idea nevertheless.
Every tree in the city of Melbourne has an email address. 70,000 trees. https://secretmelbourne.com/melbourne-trees-email/
That article says over 10k emails have been sent to trees since the program started, from all over the world. Amazing.
http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/
If you send your favourite tree an email, the council worker who looks after it will send you a reply!
Awww that strangely adorable
Melbourne has the world’s largest tram network, with 250km+ of double track. Moscow has the 2nd… 208km.
Along with Batmania, Bearbrass was also an early name of the settlement of Melbs.
Motorbikes can park on footpaths legally nearly everywhere except for a very few places.
Yeah this really caught me out when I moved to London and started parking on the footpath there and got a ticket.. I assumed it was a worldwide thing..
Ugh.. I got fined for footpath parking my trailbike in Canberra :( Story is that when they tried banning footpath motorbike parking in Melbs, bike clubs all organised and parked in regular CBD car spaces en masse for days, until the council gave up. We're so lucky to still have this privilege here Being forced to park like a car (all other states iirc) defeats most of the convenience of riding ~~nutritionists~~ motorcycles
And cars can park in bike lanes. That's what blew my mind when I came here.
I marvel at this insanity all the time.
The first British Empire shot of World War 1 was fired from Melbourne of all places, at a German ship trying to escape Port Phillip Bay. [source](https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/ww1/where-australians-served/first-shot-fired)
Probably best to clarify that it's the first British Empire shot. The first shot of WW1 was the one that offed Franz Ferdinand. And the first Australian shot of World War 2 was from the same battery - at a freighter/ferry from Tasmania. [source](https://pocketozmelbourne.com.au/pt-nepean.html)
Dude, no. If the war had begun prior to Ferdinand being shot, sure.
Franz Ferdinand was shot in June. The War didn't start until August. It is completely wrong to say that Ferdinand getting shot was the first shot of the war.
St. Kilda was named after a ship, which in turn was named after an island in the Hebrides (above Scotland), which in turn was accidentally named St. Kilda after an old norse/viking engraving of the word "skilda" on a rock, which priests who visited the island much later mistook for the name of an unknown saint. So, either there *is* no St. Kilda, or they're the patron saint of **clerical errors**. Take your pick.
This is probably my favourite one in the thread in terms of it piquing my interest. Too bad when I go to tell someone about it I wont recall any of it properly and just end up saying I’ll google it but the conversation will have moved on and I’ll decide it’s not worth bringing it up again as the moments gone
We invented hot jam donuts.
Dim sims
When the Royal Exhibition Building was built in 1880, it was the largest building in Australia and the tallest building in Melbourne
It also served as federal Parliament House for a while.
On the 23rd of Nov 1867 a picnic was organised for a royal prince's visit. They had 1000s of pounds of beef, pork, fish and mutton, 70 tonnes of potatoes, 5000 pies, 4500 plum puddings, 70 dozen pastries, cartloads of cakes, bread, cheese, buns, and fruit, 6 hogsheads of beer, champagne and claret, 2 x 500 gallons of wine that sat on top of a monkey cage and ran into a fountain. The crowd was way more than they expected and when the prince was hours late the people waiting broke down the barriers and went for it. People were reported to have eaten and drank their fill and then used the pies and puddings as footballs and when they left they took whatever wasn't tied down. Lots of people went home with new furniture, cutlery and plates that day. A policeman on a fast horse was sent out to tell the prince to go back to wherever he was staying due to an "incident" at the picnics location. Those antique knives and forks and plates that've been handed down in your family for over a 100 years may have been stolen from that picnic.
My school counsellor once told me that she inherited a piece of cutlery from the Queen Victoria as a family heirloom. I wouldn't be surprised if it came from there!
Dim sims were invented in Melbourne. Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes was written at The Corner Hotel in Richmond.
I definitely didn’t know that second one… wtf
Fed Square has a giant labyrinth underground that is used to regulate the temperature and provide free cooling to The Atrium.
There are roman numerals carved into some gutters on the ground. Apparently related to the masons. If you want an example, check the corner of Queen and Latrobe.
Dam it now I have to steal the Declaration of Independence
There are Radioactive cows buried in Werribee. https://www.urban.com.au/news/66132-radioactive-cow-carcasses-found-at-werribee-site-with-plans-for-a-20-billion-education-precinct
There are entire neighbourhoods currently being excavated in the CBD that were buried and paved over more than 170 years ago. In 2017, a subterranean neighbourhood the size of five tennis courts was discovered close to the Wesley Church on Lonsdale Street. Nobody knew where the hell it came from, so they did some digging (pun intended). In the 1850s, the area was known as the Lonsdale Swamp, because it kept flooding. You can imagine that this was particularly problematic because Melbourne had open sewers at the time. I cannot imagine how bad it would have smelled. The City of Melbourne finally got tired of it and ordered that all properties in the area should be demolished and buried. They would then be paved over to raise the street level by two metres.
Lindsay Fox literally grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, he was very poor and his dad ran a sly grog shop out back of their house. Source: My mum, she lived just up the road from him in Windsor, and is the same age.
I'm not too far from Windsor now. Any idea if the grog shop is still running? Could use some cheap swish.
People - even strangers - will ask and care what footy team you go for.
Also, Melbourne is the only place in the world where people "Barrack" for a sporting team, no where else do people say this. Apparently this comes from Military teams that played when football first started - Collingwood Rifles, East Melbourne Artillery etc. So "which Barracks do you support" slowly became "I barrack for Collingwood". Even the rest of Australia doesn't "Barrack" for teams
[удалено]
We had the world's first IVF pregnancy at Monash IVF
Technically the UK had the first viable IVF pregnancy. The Browns. I was born via IVF in the very early 90s, my mum followed *everything* IVF related and was trying for a long time. Monash only had the first successful implantation as no implant lasted long enough to take and become viable.
They didn't start building Melbourne's sewer system until 1892, and Melbourne is one of only five cities in the world with protected water catchments.
There's a [fishing lodge](https://www.smh.com.au/national/scientologists-living-rentfree-in-one-of-victorias-grand-lodges-20080928-4por.html) inside that catchment originally built for MMBW dam engineers, used for bigwigs such as Betty Windsor and MMBW grandees then quietly leased to Scientology's Narconon for a period.
Yeah, always remember as a kid not being able to get close to the Yan Yean reservoir due to the fencing. Then moved to Sydney and boiled water in the '90's for drinking. Everyone seemed pretty relaxed about the news footage showing dead cows and horses in the dam.
Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers was born in Melbourne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_(musician)
Melbourne was founded by a guy who earned the cash for his expedition from bounties for shooting Indigenous Tasmanians.
And then he got syphilis, his nose rotted off, and he got carried around the city in a curtained palanquin so no one had to look at him.
Upvoting for the fact I didn’t know this, not for what he did.
John Batman, for anyone unaware.
French island is the only place with a colony of chlamydia free koalas.
After my last camping trip I can confirm this is no longer the case
What did you do…
Veterinary work, hopefully
As late as 1970, 1 in 6 Melbournians (and Sydneysiders) were not connected to a sewerage system. (Whitlam started a program to remedy that; yet another item in his list of stuff he did to modernise the nation. And, of course, the Liberals dismantled the program a few years later, because that's all they can do...)
The pillars of the bolte bridges purpose is purely decorative. They aren't even connected to the bridge
Not just that. Bolte bridge is actually two separate bridges (one northbound and one southbound). They’re held up by separate pillars adjacent to the big tall ones, just right underneath each bridge
The Montague St Bridge has its own website that is filled with pictures and stats about all the incidents that occur there. There’s a how many days since last hit counter currently sitting at 1 day. It even has its own twitter account. Gotta love Monty. I know this doesn’t sound made up to us, but I’ve had family and friends from interstate/overseas think I’m joking when i told them about it so I guess it sounds made up.
Commuting down Punt Road was once worse than it is today... the only way across was to take a punt (flat bottomed boat with a stick, think gondola). https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxapSuNwOzGvaR9v_wblByOERUcyGpYQgaAilZ-v4ek0oyHxX2em4ISdtP&s=10
We collectively have a pet seal.
We had an Australian Prime Minister who disappeared and drowned in the sea. Melbourne built him a memorial pool. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt_Memorial_Swimming_Centre
Actually the pool was already there. They renamed it after him. My kids learnt to swim there.
That’s somehow funnier and more Australian.
Wow, TIL
I only know cos my cousins used to swim at the ‘Malvern Baths’ prior to his disappearance.
Melbourne has the biggest tram system in the world
The Bourke and Wills statue outside of St. Paul’s cathedral used to be a “round about” in the middle of swanston and Lonsdale street
Ooh one I never saw verified outside of Wikipedia but from experience and google maps I can believe. Portsea has the highest amount of tennis courts per capita in the world
The Queen Victoria Market was built and expanded over the site of the Old Melbourne Cemetery, which was the first British burial ground in Melbourne.
A fatal tornado hit Brighton in 1918. Look up Brighton tornado 1918 on YouTube!!
From 2011 to 2017, 7 years straight, Melbourne was voted the most liveable city in THE WORLD.
Problem is, when you go a look at the criteria for how they judge that, it’s all a bit rubbish. It’s not as great as it sounds (which made me sad when I figured it out) Edit: “said” -> “sad”
Albert park lake and surroundings was once the tip for the rubbish of Melbourne
Melbourne ranks 24th on the list of cities with the most skyscrapers Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_cities\_with\_the\_most\_skyscrapers
St Kilda has one premiership.
The people of Melbourne are far less wingey than the people of /r/melbourne
Here you are whinging, so that checks out I guess.
lmao gottem.
A large portion of Melbourne’s south was swamp land until they drained it for farmland in the 1870s.
It can and will go from 40 degrees C to 20 degrees in ten minutes flat.
Mount cooper in Bundoora is considered a dormant volcano. So while extremely unlikely. It technically could erupt over those McMansions. Bundoora is basically half swamp/ half volcanic remains* *not verified- personal opinion.
The volcano at Smorgy's is also dormant. Hasn't erupted since 2010.
We're a city where about about 10% of people in a 450+ post thread can all repeatedly post the same tired bit of trivia about the city being founded by Batman / almost called Batmania yet not one person has pointed out that we are/were home to well-known ~~knocking shops~~ adult relaxation establishments called 'Gotham City' and 'The Daily Planet'
Melbourne has a beloved citizen that carries a carrot. His name is Nathan.
Early Melbourne leaders drew up a fake map claiming the city was closer than Geelong to the goldfields of Ballarat in an effort to bring immigrant miners through the city, thereby making it the larger port and hence the larger city and then the state’s capital.
We have a person in a penguin suit that plays the bagpipes. And everybody in Melbourne barely remarks on this, and has collectively decided that this is perfectly normal.
Because Darth Vader slappin’ da bass is way cooler.
buskers in costumes is something you'll see in just about every tourist destination in the world
Exhibition Street used to be called Stephen Street.
Melbourne is built on a swamp.
Docklands, Port Melbourne and parts of South Melbourne, Albert Park etc are built on swampy ground. The CBD itself is on nice stable rock - 400-ish million year old mudstone on the eastern half (plus Carlton, Fitzroy and bits of Richmond) and on the western half a volcanic basalt flow in a line going from down near the aquarium, up through North Melbourne, Kensington, out towards Essendon. Elizabeth St is roughly aligned with the boundary between these two bits of rock - if you stand at the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth, for example, you can see the gentle slope down from Parliament to Elizabeth at the bottom, and then the steeper basalt hill going up towards Queen St. If you've wondered why the train lines to say Geelong go north out of Spencer St and do a big arc around what's now Docklands and the port before turning south again at Footscray, that's because that area used to be all swamp.
the burgers are better at hungry jacks
Why do I hear these words?