Melbourne

The land at the head of Port Phillip Bay is the country of the Kulin nations, among them the Wurundjeri of the Yarra and the Boon Wurrung of the bay shores, who gathered at the river's falls where fresh water met salt. In 1835 parties of settlers from Van Diemen's Land, led separately by John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, camped on the same stretch of river and founded a settlement that was named Melbourne in 1837 after the serving British prime minister. That year the surveyor Robert Hoddle set out the grid of wide streets and narrow lanes that still defines the centre.

Gold, found in Victoria in 1851, transformed the place within a decade. Diggers arrived from Britain, Ireland, Europe, China and America, the population multiplied, and the wealth built the boom city of the 1880s that visitors called Marvellous Melbourne, with banks, arcades, theatres, a cable tram network and the Exhibition Building. A speculative land bubble burst in 1891 and the 1890s depression was severe, but the city held its place, and the first federal parliament met in the Exhibition Building in 1901, with Melbourne serving as the seat of national government until 1927.

The 20th century brought the 1956 Olympic Games, the first held in the southern hemisphere, and a very large post-war migration from Italy, Greece, Malta, Turkey, Lebanon and later Vietnam, China and India that reshaped every inner suburb. Manufacturing that had carried the city faded from the 1980s, replaced by services, education and health; the old docks became the Docklands district, and the laneways filled with cafés and bars. Melbourne lived through some of the world's longest cumulative pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, and has grown quickly again since.

Melbourne treats culture as a competitive sport and sport as a form of culture. Coffee is the clearest marker: espresso arrived with Italian and Greek migrants in the 1950s, and the city now runs on small roasters, specific orders and a habit of long café breakfasts. Small bars hidden in basements, upstairs rooms and laneways are a local speciality, the result of licensing changes in the 1990s, and live music in pubs has produced generations of Australian bands.

Australian rules football dominates from March to September. Most residents follow a club inherited from family, suburban rivalries survive in a national competition, and the grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground comes with its own public holiday. The Australian Open, the Formula One race at Albert Park, the Boxing Day cricket Test and the spring racing carnival fill the rest of the calendar, and the city empties into its parks and stadiums for all of them.

The arts run just as deep. Melbourne was named a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008, and bookshops, small presses, writers' festivals and the state library support the claim. Street art is officially tolerated in designated lanes, and the festivals of comedy, film, fringe theatre and winter arts are among the largest in the country. Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian and East African communities each have their own precincts, newspapers and festivals, and the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung are acknowledged as traditional owners at public gatherings.

About five million people live in Greater Melbourne, spread across one of the largest urban footprints in the world, from the bayside suburbs through the inner terraces to growth corridors on the northern and western edges where new estates are still being laid out. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in Australia, a growth driven largely by overseas migration, and about two in five residents were born outside the country.

The economy runs on services — finance, health, education, professional and public sector work — with the universities and a very large international student population as major employers and earners. Car making ended in 2017, but food processing, construction, logistics and the port remain substantial. The average commute is by car in the outer suburbs and by train or tram closer in, and major rail and road projects have been under construction across the city for years.

Daily rhythm is café breakfast, a working day in the grid or a suburban office park, and evenings that spread out to local high streets rather than one centre. Weekends belong to sport, markets and the bay. The pressing issues are housing costs and rents, which have pushed younger residents further out; the pace of suburban expansion and the infrastructure to serve it; homelessness visible in the centre; and the state's debt after years of building and the pandemic.

Coffee comes first, and it is worth knowing the vocabulary — a flat white, a long black, a magic in some cafés — because the order is taken seriously. Breakfast and brunch are the meals the city has made its own, and small roasteries supply cafés from the grid to the outer suburbs. Laneways such as Degraves Street are lined with tables from morning, and bakeries queue out the door at weekends.

The migrant map is the food map. Little Bourke Street's Chinatown, settled from the gold rushes, runs to dumpling houses and late-night Cantonese and Sichuan kitchens; Lonsdale Street keeps the Greek precinct with souvlaki and honey pastries; Lygon Street in Carlton is Italian; Victoria Street in Richmond is Vietnamese; Sydney Road in Brunswick is Lebanese and Turkish; Footscray is Vietnamese and East African; and Box Hill, Springvale and Clayton in the south-east hold some of the best Chinese, Cambodian and Sri Lankan cooking in the country. Queen Victoria Market and the Prahran and South Melbourne markets supply much of it.

Local staples are humbler than the restaurant scene suggests — the dim sim, a large steamed or fried dumpling sold at football grounds, the potato cake from the fish shop, and the pub chicken parma. Drinking has broadened from beer and Yarra Valley wine to craft brewing in the inner north and a taste for natural wine in the small bars, while the city's dessert habit runs to cannoli in Carlton and cakes on Acland Street in St Kilda.