Melbourne Visitor Attractions
What to See and Do in Australia’s most diverse City
The best place to start exploring Melbourne is from the magnificent city centre near the railway station.
Flinders Street and Federation Square
Flinders Street is lined with well preserved 19th century buildings, particularly the mellow yellow brick of the Rail Terminus. But the city has continued to evolve around its Victorian architecture. Art Deco halls and the skyscrapers of the 20th and 21st centuries rise alongside the Victoriana. In a particularly daring juxtaposition, the futuristic Federation Square built in 2002 sits opposite Flinders Street Station. It was hugely controversial when it was built but it works, two icons of a modern Victorian city.
Fitzroy Gardens and Captain Cook's Cottage
Fitzroy Gardens, a short walk from the Station is a small park with sculptures, fountains, masses of tree
ferns and in the middle Captain Cook’s cottage, the only 18th century building in Melbourne. Built by his father, it was Cook’s childhood home. In 1934 it was dismantled, transported from Yorkshire to Australia in some 200 packing cases and painstakingly reassembled. Inside it is furnished as it would have been when Cook was a boy and they’ve even recreated his mother’s kitchen garden.
Royal Botanical Gardens
Victoria is called the Garden State and Melbourne probably has more gardens and open public spaces than any other Australian city. In the Royal Botanic gardens paths meander through rainforest, around lakes, across pretty bridges over streams and along an open grassy stretch beside a beautiful lily pond, absolutely crammed with blossom and buds. A cactus garden contains a large variety of strange and wonderful succulents.
Melbourne Museum and Royal Exhibition Centre
A short tram ride away is Carleton Gardens, which together with the Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage Site. This is the only survivor of the many great exhibitions of Victorian industry across the world. Most, like London’s Crystal Palace were dismantled or gradually fell into disrepair. Across the way Melbourne Museum is a striking contemporary building, with the Exhibition Hall reflected on its mirrored walls. Inside are various sections including one on the Australian rainforest and one on local Aboriginal culture. They also have the original set from the TV show ‘Neighbours’. Fans of the show and visitors can take a short location tour of ‘Ramsay Street’ and meet some of the stars at the entertaining ‘Neighbours Trivia Night’ at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow Pub in St Kilda.
Immigration Museum
But the Immigration Museum in the 19th century Customs House in Flinders Street has to be the best way to get under the skin of Mel;bourne. The huge influx of immigrants from the end of the Second World War has made this one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world and their hopes and dreams are captured in old cine films, diaries and scrapbooks. One young woman from Athens came to Melbourne for an arranged marriage, enjoyed a prosperous life supported by her husband’s café business until he died and she went back to Greece. But she soon returned to what had become her home, dying, in Melbourne, aged 100 in 2004. Another young Greek immigrant met and fell in love with an Aboriginal woman. They married, raised a family and spent the rest of their lives campaigning on behalf of Aboriginal rights. The story is told too of how these rights were mercilessly trampled upon and ignored. The Scottish landowner, Niel Black squatted on large tracts of Aboriginal land, casually slaughtering any of the natives who got in his way. It’s an emotional experience and as one visitor remarked, 'Every time I started reading someone’s story it made me want to cry.'
