50 Fun Facts About Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital of which Australian state?

Victoria became a separate colony in 1851 with Melbourne as its capital, and the city is now home to about 19% of Australia's population.

Melbourne occupies the northern and eastern shores of which bay?

Port Phillip Bay is so enclosed and shallow that its water is warmer than the open ocean in summer and colder in winter.

What are the inhabitants of Melbourne called?

Melburnians take their spelling from Melburnia, a Latin name for the city, though the variant 'Melbournian' also turns up.

Melbourne was named in 1837 after whom?

A British prime minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, lent his title to the city while he led the government from 1835 to 1841.

Melbourne's founding settlers sailed across Bass Strait from which colony?

Van Diemen's Land, renamed Tasmania in 1856, sent two rival parties of settlers, who agreed to share the site rather than dispute who arrived first.

Melbourne was Australia's interim seat of government until Parliament moved to which purpose-built capital?

Canberra was built as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, and Parliament first sat there in 1927.

Why was Melbourne's 1956 Olympic riding held abroad?

Quarantine rules for horses forced the move, so riders competed in Stockholm in June 1956, five months before the rest of the Games.

Melbourne has the world's largest urban network of what?

Trams ride free inside the city's Free Tram Zone, introduced in 2015, and heritage trams loop the centre on the free City Circle route.

What Indigenous name is used for the Melbourne area?

Naarm is the name the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung peoples use for the wider bay area around which the city grew.

Who claimed in the 1830s to have bought 2,400 km² of land from Wurundjeri elders?

John Batman paid with goods such as blankets, tomahawks, knives and flour, but the elders likely saw the exchange as a ceremony granting only temporary access.

Which colonial governor declared void the 1835 treaty through which Wurundjeri elders supposedly sold land around Melbourne?

Richard Bourke's 1835 proclamation declared such treaties void, and Melbourne's Bourke Street was later named after him.

What is the name of the 1837 street layout at the core of Melbourne's CBD?

Hoddle Grid streets were surveyed 99 feet wide, and narrow 'little' streets were added through the blocks to give rear access to the allotments.

Which comedian created Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife?

Barry Humphries first staged her in a Melbourne University revue in December 1955, as a dowdy housewife from the suburb of Moonee Ponds.

In 1851 the district around Melbourne separated from which colony?

New South Wales had governed the district, and when news of the separation came, the celebrations centred, by one early account, on a river red gum now called the Separation Tree.

What 1850s boom let Melbourne overtake Sydney as Australia's most populous city by 1865?

Gold found in 1851 set off a rush, and its wealth paid for grand stone buildings such as Parliament House.

Which 1979 action film was shot in and around Melbourne on a tiny budget?

Mad Max earned more than US$100 million worldwide and held the Guinness record for the most profitable film ever made for twenty years.

Where was Australia's first federal parliament officially opened on 9 May 1901?

The Royal Exhibition Building then swapped roles with Parliament House: while federal MPs sat in Spring Street until 1927, the state parliament met in the exhibition building.

Which Melbourne band recorded the hit 'Down Under'?

In 2010 a judge ruled that the flute riff in Men at Work's hit copied part of the song 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree'.

Which Melbourne-born pop star first found fame as mechanic Charlene in the soap opera Neighbours?

Kylie Minogue played Charlene from 1986 to 1988, and the show's Ramsay Street is a real cul-de-sac in the Melbourne suburb of Vermont South.

The construction of which 1958 building led to Melbourne's CBD height limits being lifted?

ICI House broke Melbourne's 132-foot height limit, in force since 1916, and was Australia's tallest building when it was completed.

Which city lost Formula One's Australian Grand Prix to Melbourne?

Adelaide lost the race after Premier Jeff Kennett announced in December 1993 that a contract to stage it in Melbourne had been signed.

Melbourne's Grand Prix is raced on roads circling the lake in which park?

Albert Park's lakeside roads are everyday streets for most of the year, and the state government passed a special act in 1994 to secure the race there.

In 2021 Melbourne passed which city's record for days locked down?

Buenos Aires had endured a 234-day lockdown in 2020, and Melbourne's six lockdowns eventually totalled 262 days.

Which disaster struck on Melbourne's record-hot day of 46.4 °C in 2009?

The Black Saturday bushfires of 7 February 2009 killed 173 people, Australia's highest loss of life from a bushfire.

Which phrase sums up Melbourne's famously changeable weather?

Four seasons in one day: isolated showers can pass through in minutes, repeat several times a day, and give way to calm sunshine.

In which district does Australia 108, Melbourne's tallest building as of 2025, stand?

Southbank is home to Australia 108, which topped out in 2020 and overtook the nearby Eureka Tower as Australia's tallest building by roof height.

Which champion racehorse's mounted hide is displayed at Melbourne Museum?

Phar Lap's hide stayed in Melbourne while his skeleton went to New Zealand and his heart to the National Museum of Australia; he has been the museum's star exhibit since 1933.

Which Melbourne festival is Australia's largest free community festival?

Moomba first ran in 1955, when The Age billed it as the city's rival to Pasadena's Tournament of Roses, and it still stages the Birdman Rally.

What did Melbourne's 1854 State Library pioneer?

Free entry made it one of the world's first free public libraries, open to anyone over 14 with clean hands, and its domed reading room opened in 1913.

Which 1886 novel set in Melbourne was the fastest-selling crime novel of its era?

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, self-published by Fergus Hume in 1886, came out a year before Sherlock Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet.

In 2008 Melbourne became the second UNESCO City of what?

Literature won Melbourne the title after Edinburgh, which became the first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004.

Australia's largest seated theatre, the Palais, is in which bayside suburb?

St Kilda's Palais Theatre sits beside the Luna Park amusement park and has held nearly 3,000 people since it opened in 1927.

Which French chef created peach Melba for the Melbourne soprano Nellie Melba?

Auguste Escoffier invented the dessert at London's Savoy Hotel in the early 1890s, and he also created Melba toast for her.

Which band drew an estimated 200,000 people to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 1967?

The Seekers' homecoming crowd is still cited as Australia's largest for a concert, and the group's hits included 'Georgy Girl' and 'The Carnival Is Over'.

Which Melbourne music TV show ran from 1974 to 1987?

Countdown was made at the ABC's Ripponlea studios, where talent co-ordinator Ian 'Molly' Meldrum became the face of the show.

Which art movement took its name from a Melbourne suburb where painters camped?

The Heidelberg School's 1889 '9 by 5 Impression Exhibition' showed small paintings done on cigar-box lids, most measuring 9 by 5 inches.

Which 1906 Melbourne production is recognised as the world's first feature-length narrative film?

The Story of the Kelly Gang ran for over an hour when films were usually shorts, but only about 17 minutes of it are known to survive.

Which alley is Melbourne's best-known street-art destination?

Hosier Lane opened as a street art gallery in 1998 and drew about a million visitors a year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Melbourne Cup is called the race that stops what?

The race that stops the nation earned its nickname once radio began broadcasting it in 1925, and Cup Day is a gazetted public holiday in Melbourne.

The first Test, at Melbourne in 1877, pitted Australia against which team?

England lost by 45 runs, and exactly 100 years later Australia won the 1977 Centenary Test at the same ground by the same margin.

Tom Wills's 1858 letter calling for a football club in Melbourne aimed to keep which athletes fit in winter?

Cricketers needed a winter game, and members of the Melbourne Football Club wrote the first laws of Australian rules football in 1859.

Which Melbourne team plays in the National Rugby League?

Storm, founded in 1997, play in the National Rugby League, while Victory play soccer and the Vixens play netball.

Which heritage steam railway, opened in 1900, winds through the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne?

Puffing Billy was reopened in stages by a volunteer preservation society formed in 1955, and the line reached Gembrook again in 1998.

Melbourne's main international airport is located in which suburb?

Tullamarine's airport opened to international flights in 1970 and is the home base of the airline Jetstar.

Which airport was once Melbourne's principal airport?

Essendon Airport served as Melbourne's main airport from 1921 until 1970, when international flights moved to a new airport farther out.

Which Melbourne station was reputedly the world's busiest passenger station in the 1920s?

Flinders Street, reputedly the world's busiest station in the 1920s, has a row of clocks over its entrance that gave Melbourne the saying 'I'll meet you under the clocks'.

Which Metro Tunnel station sits beside Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance?

Anzac is one of five new underground stations on Melbourne's Metro Tunnel, which opened in November 2025 with twin nine-kilometre tunnels under the city centre.

Which river, called Birrarung by the Wurundjeri people, flows through central Melbourne?

The Yarra's lower reaches are where Melbourne was founded in 1835, and its English name came from a Wurundjeri phrase that settlers misheard.

At the 2021 census, what was the most common language other than English spoken at home in Melbourne?

Mandarin led at 4.3% of residents, and Greek, at 2.1%, still ranked third, a legacy of post-war migration from southern Europe.

At the 2021 census, which country was the most common birthplace of Melbourne residents after Australia?

India accounted for 4.9% of Greater Melbourne's residents in 2021, ahead of mainland China at 3.4%.