Sights in Melbourne
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Melbourne Cricket Ground
It's one of the world's great sporting venues, and for many Australians the 'G' is considered hallowed ground. In 1858 the first game of Aussie Rules football was played where the MCG and its car parks now stand, and in 1877 it was the venue for the first Test cricket match between Australia and England. The MCG was also the central stadium for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The William Barak Bridge links it to the CBD. MCG membership is a badge of honour for Melburnians of a particular class. It involves having two members propose and second your nomination and a wait of around 20 years.
If you want to make a pilgrimage, tours take you…
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Flinders Street Station
Melbourne’s first railway station, Flinders Street was built in 1854. Two railway workers won the design tender. This might explain why the station contained such fabulous facilities for railway workers, now, sadly, in disrepair. In its heyday the building buzzed with a concert hall, a library, a crèche, meeting rooms, even a ballroom. Stretching along the Yarra for a block, the station is a city landmark. You’d be hard pressed to find a Melburnian who hasn’t uttered ‘meet me under the clocks’ at one time. On any weekday, well over 100, 000 people weave through the station’s underpasses, escalators, stairs and platforms. The grand old dame’s underground tendrils…
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Federation Square
Striking Federation Square has become the place to celebrate, protest or party. Occupying a prominent city block, the 'square' is far from square. Its undulating forecourt of Kimberley stone echoes the town squares of Europe. Here you'll find the subterranean Melbourne Visitor Centre.
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Abbotsford Convent
The convent, which dates back to 1861, is spread over nearly 7 hectares of riverside land just 4km from the CBD. The nuns are long gone – no-one is going to ask you if you've been to Mass lately – and there's now a rambling collection of creative studios and community offices. The Convent Bakery supplies impromptu picnic provisions, or Steve at the 1950s-style (no soy, no skinny, just what's on the menu) bar Handsome Steve's House of Refreshment will mix you up a Campari soda to sip on the balcony while you're overlooking the ecclesiastic architecture and listening to the footy on the radio. There's a Slow Food Marketevery fourth Saturday, and Shirt and Skirt Market…
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Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia
This houses the NGV's extensive collection of Australian paintings, decorative arts, photography, prints, drawings, sculpture, fashion, textiles and jewellery.
The gallery's Indigenous collection dominates the ground floor and seeks to challenge ideas of the 'authentic'. Upstairs there are permanent displays of colonial paintings and drawings by 19th-century Aboriginal artists. There's also the work of Heidelberg School impressionists and an extensive collection of the work of the modernist 'Angry Penguins', including Sir Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker.
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Queen Victoria Market
This site has been the market for more than 130 years, prior to which it was a burial ground. This is where Melburnians shop for fresh produce including organics and Asian specialities. There's a deli, meat and fish hall as well as a fast food and restaurant zone. On Wednesday evenings from mid-November to the end of February, a night market with hawker-style food stalls, bars and music takes over.
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Fawkner Park
This huge expanse of green is loved and used by the area’s sport folk and lapdogs alike. Walkways lined with elms, oaks and Moreton Bay fig trees provide structure to the otherwise open fields. Barbecues and charming little pavilions are available for public use.
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St Kilda Foreshore
There are palm-fringed promenades, a parkland strand and a long stretch of sand. Still, don't expect Bondi or Noosa. St Kilda's seaside appeal is more Brighton, England than Baywatch, despite 20-odd years of glitzy development. And that's the way Melburnians like it; a certain depth of character and an all-weather charm, with wild days on the bay providing for spectacular cloudscapes and terse little waves, as well as the more predictable sparkling blue of summer.
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Collins Street
The top end of Collins St (aka the 'Paris end') is lined with plane trees, grand buildings and luxe boutiques, giving it its moniker. The Block Arcade, which runs between Collins and Elizabeth Sts, was built in 1891 and features etched-glass ceilings and mosaic floors. Doing 'the Block' (walking around the block) was a popular pastime in 19th-century Melbourne, as it was the place to shop and be seen.
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Flagstaff Gardens
These small gardens with an open lawn are popular with workers taking a lunchtime break. First known as Burial Hill, this is where most of the city's early settlers ended up. The hill once provided one of the best views out to the bay, so a signalling station was set up here; when a ship was sighted arriving from Britain, a flag was raised on the flagstaff to notify the settlers (it was also significant for the Wurundjeri for the same useful vista). The gardens contain trees that are well over 100 years old including Moreton Bay fig trees, and a variety of eucalypts, including spotted and sugar gums and river red gums.
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Footscray Community Arts Centre
Borrow a beach mat from the Big Fish Cafe (09:30-16:00) to lounge on while you eat your veggie wrap or slurp your soup beside the Maribyrnong River, then stroll through Gabriel Gallery (09:30-17:00 Mon-Fri, noon-16:00 Sat & Sun), which profiles artworks by people who've recently arrived in Australia.
Both are housed in the historic former piggery of Mr Henderson, Henderson House. The complex includes the adjoining warehouse, which is a physical training area for the Women's Circus. There are also regular music and theatre programmes promoting the centre's charter of facilitating community arts in multiethnic Footscray.
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Royal Exhibition Building
Built for the International Exhibition in 1880, and winning Unesco World Heritage status in 2004, this beautiful Victorian edifice symbolises the glory days of the Industrial Revolution, Empire and 19th-century Melbourne's economic supremacy. Australia's first parliament was held here in 1901; more than a hundred years later everything from trade fairs to designer sales to dance parties take place here. Toursleave from the Melbourne Museum most days at 2pm.
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Albert Park Lake
Elegant black swans give their inimitable bottoms-up salute as you circumnavigate the 5km perimeter of this artificial lake. Jogging, cycling, walking or clamouring over play equipment is the appropriate human equivalent. Lakeside Dr was used as an international motor-racing circuit in the 1950s, and since 1996 the revamped track has been the venue for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix each March.
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Birrarung Marr
Featuring grassy knolls, river promenades and a thoughtful planting of indigenous flora, Birrarung Marr is a welcome addition to Melbourne's patchwork of parks and gardens. It houses the sculptural and musical Federation Bells, which ring according to a varying schedule.
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Johnston Collection
The collection of sharp-eyed antique dealer William Johnston is on show in this characteristic East Melbourne mansion. Rooms are decorated in an English country-house style, and also highlight specific interior-decorating fashions from last century – almost as fascinating as the pieces themselves. Visits come with a sense of mystique; for privacy reasons, you need to book a tour and be picked up from the nearby Hilton on the Park rather than just rocking up to the door. Tours depart three times daily; phone to reserve a place.
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Melbourne Museum
This confident postmodern exhibition space mixes old-style object displays with themed interactive display areas. The museum's reach is almost too broad to be cohesive, but it provides a grand sweep of Victoria's natural and cultural histories. Walk through the reconstructed laneway lives of the 1800s or become immersed in the legend of champion racehorse Phar Lap. Bunjilaka, on the ground floor, presents Indigenous stories and history told through objects and Aboriginal voices. There's also an open-air forest atrium featuring Victorian plants and animals and an Imax cinema next door.
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Old Melbourne Gaol
This forbidding monument to 19th-century justice is now a museum. It was built of bluestone in 1841, and was a prison until 1929. The tiny, bleak cells display plaster casts of some of the 130-plus people who were hanged here, a chilling 'by-product' of the era's obsession with phrenology. The last sound that legendary bushranger Ned Kelly heard was the clang of the trap here in 1880. His death mask, armour and history are on display. Book through Ticketekto join a Ghost Seekers Tour or go on the Hangman's Night Tour. Evening events are not recommended for children under 12.
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Eureka Tower
The new-in-2006 Eureka Tower epitomises Melbourne's push to live in apartments by becoming the world's tallest apartment building. It's enough to make anyone who's read JG Ballard's Highrise wide-eyed and nervous. But, the tower is good news for visitors who can scoot to the 88th-storey observation tower (compared to the Rialto's 55th) for wild views of the city and its surrounds.
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Royal Botanic Gardens
The RBG is one of Melbourne's most glorious attractions. Sprawling beside the Yarra River, the beautifully designed gardens feature a global selection of plantings as well as specific Australian gardens. Along with the abundance of plant species, there's a surprising amount of wildlife, including waterfowl, ducks, swans and child-scaring eels in and around the ornamental lake, as well as cockatoos and possums. There's also the excellent, nature-based Ian Potter Children's Garden.
The gardens are encircled by the Tan, a 4km-long former horse-exercising track, now used to exercise joggers. During the summer months, the gardens play host to the Moonlight Cinema and theatre…
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National Gallery of Victoria International
Beyond the water wall you'll find international art that runs from the ancient to the contemporary. Completed in 1967, the original NGV building – Roy Grounds' 'cranky icon' – was one of Australia's most controversial but ultimately respected Modernist masterpieces. Interior remodelling was undertaken from 1996 to 2003, overseen by Mario Bellini. Don't miss a gaze up at the Great Hall's stained-glass ceiling.
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Parliament House of Victoria
The 1856 Parliament House of Victoria is a striking monolith of a structure preceded by a grand flourish of steps. Free half-hour tours take you through both houses and the library. Fascinating design features and the symbolism underlying much of the ornamentation are illuminated by the knowledgeable guides.
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Luna Park
It opened in 1912 and still retains the feel of an old-style amusement park with creepy Mr Moon's gaping mouth swallowing you up whole on entering. There's a heritage-listed scenic railway and the full complement of gut-churning modern rides. For grown-ups, the noise and lack of greenery or shade can pall all too fast. Check website for seasonal opening hours.
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State Library of Victoria
When the library opened in 1856, people entering were required to sign the visitors' book, be over 14 years old and have clean hands. The only requirements today are that you leave your bags in the locker room ($1 to $2 for four hours) and maintain a bit of shush.
When the octagonal La Trobe Reading Room was completed in 1913, the reinforced-concrete dome was the largest of its kind in the world. The Wheeler Centre, on the Little Lonsdale St side, was started up by Lonely Planet's founders, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, in 2010, and regularly features talks by local and international writers. Refresh at Mr Tulk.
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Rod Laver Arena
A giant, versatile space used for headline concerts and the Australian Open tennis, with a huge sunroof. Not the most atmospheric of venues, but then it’s all about the spectacle. Ditto for the nearby Hisense Arena.
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Ceres Community Environment Park
The Ceres Community Environment Park has plenty of room for youngsters to chase chooks while parents can chow down on delicious organic breakfasts and lunchtime baguettes.
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