Welcome to Melbourne Adventure Historical snapshot: 1835-1940

We’re Australia’s At the 2016 Census 28.4% of Victoria’s Melbourne’s current population Pre-European settlement of tents and huts on the banks of the At about the same time, directly across population were born overseas and stands at just over 4.5 million (2019). Yarra River and was named in honour the intersection, the foundation stone second-largest city and 49.1% of Victorians were either born We’re the fastest growing city The area around Port Phillip and the of the British Prime Minister, William was laid for the magnificent Anglican the capital of Victoria, overseas or have a parent who was in Australia and our rail network Yarra Valley, on which the city now Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In cathedral of St Paul’s. born overseas. Victorians come from needs to keep up with that growth. stands, is traditionally the land of 1837 surveyor Robert Hoddle laid out The gold rush boom continued the country’s most more than 200 countries, speak 260 That’s why we’re building the the Kulin nation. Before European his grand vision for the city, a series through the 1860s and ’70s. Despite languages and dialects and follow 135 Metro Tunnel, Victoria’s biggest ever settlement, the Kulin people, an of broad streets divided by narrower southern mainland state. the steady arrival of migrants, Victoria religious faiths. Most of the overseas- public transport infrastructure project. alliance of several language groups laneways that is now known as the continued to suffer from severe labour born Victorians came to Australia as of Indigenous Australians, had lived Hoddle Grid. The excavation site in Melbourne is one of the great But it wasn’t always this way… shortages, and this pushed up wages migrants hoping to find a better life in the area for an estimated 31,000 Archaeology Adventure, located on multicultural cities of the world until they were the highest in the for themselves and their children. to 40,000 years. For the Wurundjeri, the corner of Flinders and Swanston and a significant meeting place. world. Victoria became known as Boon Wurrung, Taungurong, streets, was the gateway to Melbourne “the working man’s paradise”. Djab Wurrung and the Wathaurung from the start. who make up the Kulin nation, Melbourne has always been Like most Australian colonies, 1890-1940 an important meeting place and the original reason for the British location for events of social, occupation of Victoria was the fear of By 1891 the gold had run out and the educational, sporting and cultural possible French settlement. The real boom ended abruptly. Banks and other significance. driver, however, was access to businesses failed in large numbers, rich and fertile farming land. Over the thousands of shareholders lost their On 6 June 1835, John Batman, a next 15 years the settler population money, placing tens of thousands of grazier, explorer and entrepreneur, of Victoria grew to around 80,000 workers out of work. Although there signed a treaty with eight Wurundjeri people, with some 20,000 living in are no reliable statistics, there was elders in which he purported to buy Melbourne. In theory, Victoria could probably 20 per cent unemployment 600,000 acres (2,400 km2) of land have remained a rural economy but the in Melbourne throughout the 1890s. around Melbourne for a group of discovery of gold changed everything. With few prospects for settlers, businessmen known as the Port Phillip immigration came to a virtual standstill. Association. Two days later, he wrote The Gold Rush By 1905 Sydney had resumed its place in his journal: “This will be the place as Australia’s largest city. for a village.” In 1851 gold was discovered at several Melbourne’s mood was also darkened locations in Victoria, most notably Batman’s Treaty is considered by the terrible sacrifices of World War I. around Ballarat and Bendigo. These significant as it was the first, and As a percentage of the total population, were some of the richest gold fields only, documented time when the number of Australian soldiers the world had ever seen. The resulting Europeans negotiated their presence killed in this conflict was among the gold rush radically transformed and occupation of Aboriginal lands highest in the world – 16,000 of the Victoria. In 1852 alone, 75,000 people directly with the traditional owners. 112,000 Victorians who enlisted lost arrived in the colony, mostly from However, the validity of Batman’s their lives. The Spanish Flu epidemic England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales Treaty has been widely disputed. Since that came shortly after the war wiped but also from America (where the neither Batman, nor the Indigenous out a further 4000 Victorians. There earlier California gold rush was already Australians spoke anything like the was a modest revival of prosperity in in decline), China and Germany. This, same language, it is almost certain the 1920s, and the population reached combined with a very high birth that they had very different ideas one million in 1930, but the Wall Street rate, led to rapid population growth. about what was happening here. The Crash in 1929 brought another period Victoria’s population reached 400,000 European system of owning property of economic depression that lasted in 1857 and 500,000 by 1860. was entirely alien to almost all until World War II. Aboriginal peoples. Gold, and the associated growth in After World War II, a new era of They almost certainly saw the treaty agriculture and manufacturing, turned increasing prosperity arrived, fuelled signing as a series of gift exchanges Melbourne into the economic centre by high prices for Victoria’s wool, and a traditional ceremony that of Australia and ushered in the era increased government spending on allowed for temporary access to known as “Marvellous Melbourne”. transport and education, and the and use of the land. The city spread east and north over stimulus of renewed high immigration. the surrounding flat grasslands, and Unlike pre-war immigration, which had south down the eastern shore of Early days been mostly from the British Isles, the Port Phillip Bay. The first city railway period immediately after World War II The city was founded on 30 August station in Australia opened at Flinders brought an influx of Europeans, among 1835 by free settlers from the Street in 1854 and plans to build the them many refugees from the conflict prison colony in Van Diemen’s Land grand terminus that stands on that in eastern and central Europe. (Tasmania). It began as a collection site today commenced in the 1882. “This is the place for a village,” John Batman. Pictorial map of the city and surroundings of Melbourne in the State of Victoria, Commonwealth of Australia, O. J Dale 1934. State Library of Victoria.