Jetstar Airways

Many of its most significant works hang in the National Gallery of Victoria, which has one of Australia's top collections of visual art, particularly early Australian western-tradition art. It was largely the work of Melbourne-based artists, and was arguably the first distinctly Australian art movement (in the Western canon, at least). The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century centered in Melbourne. Melbourne was strongly associated with the establishment of Australia's visual arts.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is highly regarded both at home and internationally. Melbourne is the home of the Australian Ballet and the second home of Opera Australia. Annuals arts celebrations include the Melbourne Arts Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and Moomba. Melbourne has a large and vibrant arts and cultural life.

Melbourne also boasts a number of community radio stations, of which the best known are 3RRR and 3PBS. 3AW is consistently the city's highest-rating commercial radio station. Melbourne has a wide range of radio stations and is the base for the Australia-wide Austereo network. There are three commercial television channels: the Seven, Nine and Ten networks — and three public channels: ABC, SBS, and a community television channel, Channel 31 Melbourne.

Melbourne has two major daily newspapers, The Age and The Herald Sun, as well as the free afternoon tabloid mX. In 2007, Melbourne will be the host of the FINA World Aquatics Championships. The 2006 Commonwealth Games will be held in Melbourne, the first time the city has hosted the event. Melbourne co-hosted the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup, including many pool matches as well as a quarter final – all of which were played at the Telstra Dome; broke new ground as the first city outside the United States to host the World Police and Fire Games in 1995, and the President's Cup golf tournament in 1999; and was the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the World Cup Polo Championship in 2001.

Since the 1956 Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, the city has hosted numerous sporting events which rotate host cities. The Wallabies, Australia's national rugby union team, usually also play at least one Test annually at Melbourne's Telstra Dome. Annually, Melbourne hosts the Australian Open tennis tournament, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments; the Melbourne Cup horse race; the 'Boxing Day' cricket test match held each year from 26-30 December at the Melbourne Cricket Ground; and the Australian Grand Prix Formula One championship. The city has hosted several major international sporting events.

The city also has two National Basketball League franchises, the Melbourne Tigers and the South Dragons (to enter the league in 2006). Olympic Park is also the home of Melbourne Victory, a team in the newly formed Australian football (soccer) competition, the A-League. Melbourne Storm, a National Rugby League team, are based at Olympic Park. It is the traditional venue for the Boxing Day cricket Test match.

The MCG was the site of many events at the 1956 Summer Olympics, including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. The AFL Grand Final, one of the biggest sporting events in Australia, is played on the last weekend in September at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), a massive arena that has held up to 120,000 spectators. The city is home to nine of the sixteen teams in the Australian Football League (AFL), whose five Melbourne games per week attract an average 35,000 people per game. Melbourne is where Australian rules football originated, and it still the most popular sport in Victoria.

A majority of the oldest schools in Melbourne belong to the Associated Public Schools of Victoria and Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria associations. From years 7 to 12 students attend high schools. Primary school consists of seven grades; a preparatory year and grades 1 to 6. Melbourne has numerous government, independent and other secondary schools.

Several other universities are also located in Melbourne, including Deakin University, La Trobe University, RMIT University, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria University of Technology and the St Patrick's campus of the Australian Catholic University. Both are also highly ranked among the best universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement. They are both members of the Group of Eight, a lobby group including the most prestigious universities in Australia. Melbourne's two most notable tertiary institutions are the University of Melbourne and Monash University.

. Melbourne Population by Year:. In recent years, Melton, Wyndham and Casey, part of the Melbourne statistical division, have recorded the highest growth rate of all local government areas in Australia. Attraction of a large proportion of overseas immigrants and interstate migration from Sydney due to more affordable housing are two recent key factors.

Although Brisbane and Perth are growing faster in percentage terms, and Victoria's net interstate migration has fluctuated, the Melbourne statistical division has grown by approximately 50,000 people a year since 2003, more than any other Australian city. The newest wave of immigrants comes from North Africa, particularly Sudan. Melbourne also boasts the largest Jewish community in Oceania (See Judaism in Australia). Refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam made Melbourne their home in the 1970s and 1980s and were joined by people from India, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Melbourne has one of the world's largest population of people with Greek ancestry outside Greece -- in fact it is 3rd only to Athens and Thessaloniki as a metropolis for Greek-speakers [4]. Large numbers from Italy and Greece arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, to become the largest groups after those from Britain and Ireland. The need for a population increase and a labour force saw many British, Yugoslav, Dutch, German, Arab and Maltese migrants arrive in 1945 after the devastation of the homelands in World War II. As a consequence property prices took decades to recover.

Much of Melbourne's population loss during the 1890s was the result of the unemployed moving west seeking gold, or, employment in the burgeoning industries stimulated by gold. During the 1890s a world economic depression hit Melbourne's overleveraged economy with particular savagery. In the following decades of the 1870s and 1880s, Melbourne was Australia's most populous city and led to a spectacular property boom, and exuberance still in evidence in the much loved late Victorian architecture. From 20,000 inhabitants in 1851, an additional 15,000 arrived almost overnight with the discovery of gold in August 1852 ^[3].

Melbourne's population exploded during the 1850s' gold rush. As the capital city, Melbourne has over time become a large urban centre and the home to around 80% of the state's population. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas and come from 233 countries, speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. Today Melbourne is one of the world's most diverse and multicultural cities.

In 2006, Melbourne will play host to the summit of G20 finance ministers. At a cost of $434 million the project involves reconstructing the old Olympic and Ponsford stands. At the centrepiece of the Commonwealth Games projects is the redevelopment project for the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium set for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games. The project is set for completion in early 2006, before the start of the Games.

Such projects include the $AUD700 million Southern Cross Station redevelopment, including a $350 million world-class transport interchange facility with $350 million also set aside for office accommodation, residential towers and hotel and also a retail plaza. Most current major infrastructure projects are generally centred on the upcoming 2006 Commonwealth Games, which are to be held in the city. Melbourne is home to Australia's largest seaport and much of Australia's automotive industry (including the engine manufacturing facility of Holden and the Ford and Toyota manufacturing facilities), in addition to many other manufacturing industries. The peak body representing workers in Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, is also headquartered in Melbourne.

Many of Australia's largest companies have their headquarters there, and many multinational corporations (approximately one-third of the 100 largest multinationals operating in Australia as of 2002), have their main Australian office there. Melbourne is a large commercial and industrial centre.
. For this reason the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, which had become a powerful semi-autonomous authority, was abolished in 1992.

Because three quarters of Victoria's population lives in Melbourne, state governments have traditionally been reluctant to allow the development of city-wide governmental bodies, which would tend to create a rival to the state government. These include public transport, main roads, traffic control, policing, education above preschool level, and planning of major infrastructure projects. Most city-wide government activities are controlled by the state government. Melbourne's overwhelming dominance of the state of Victoria's population and economy means the Victorian state government is also effectively the city government of greater Melbourne.

The councils are collectively represented by the Local Government Association of Victoria. Councils levy rates from their residents to pay for these services. These include planning, rubbish collection, beaches, parks and gardens, child-care and preschool facilities, local festivals and cultural activities, services to the elderly, supervision of public health, sanitation and similar matters. These municipalities all have elected councils and are responsible for a range of functions delegated to them by the Victorian state government.

The rest of the metropolitan area is divided into 30 municipalities, all of which are styled as cities except for five on the city's outer fringes which are styled as shires (see a list of these at Local Government Areas of Victoria). The current Lord Mayor is John So. However the head of the Melbourne City Council, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, is frequently treated as a representative of greater Melbourne (the entire metropolitan area), particularly when interstate or overseas. The Melbourne City Council governs only the City of Melbourne, which takes in the CBD and a few adjoining inner suburbs.

There are also many parks in the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne, such as in the cities of Stonnington and Booroondara, south east of the CBD. There is an abundance of parks and gardens close to the CBD with a variety of common and rare plant species amid landscaped vistas, pedestrian pathways, and majestic tree lined avenues that help make Melbourne one of the world's most livable cities. Melbourne is often referred to as Australia's garden city. The central business district (the original city) is laid out in the famous mile-by-half-a-mile Hoddle Grid, its southern edge fronting on to the Yarra.

Geologically it is built on the confluence of Quaternary lava flows to the west, Silurian mudstones to the east and Holocene sand accumulation to the southeast along Port Phillip, its suburbs sprawling to the east, following the Yarra River out to the Yarra and Dandenong Ranges, south-east to the mouth of the bay, and following the Maribyrnong River and its tributaries west and north to flat farming country. Melbourne is located in the south-eastern corner of mainland Australia, and is the southernmost mainland capital city. This has continued under the government of current Premier Steve Bracks (Labor). In the 1990s, the Victorian state government of Premier Jeff Kennett (Liberal) sought to reverse this trend with the aggressive development of new public buildings, such as the Melbourne Museum, the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre (nicknamed "Jeff's Shed"), Crown Casino, capital works (most notably the City Link tollway), the selling off state assets (the State Electricity Commission and redundant state schools), the pruning back of state services and the publicising of Melbourne's merits both to outsiders and Melburnians.

After a boom in the 1980s Melbourne experienced a largely property market and manufacturing driven slump from 1989 to 1992, with a loss of employment and a drain of population to New South Wales and Queensland. Melbourne also developed as a centre of the arts. Even after the national capital moved to Canberra, Melbourne remained Australia's business and finance capital until the 1970s, when it began to lose this primacy to Sydney. Melbourne continued to expand steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, particularly with the post-World War II influx of immigrants and the prestige of hosting the Olympic Games in 1956.

The seat of government and the national capital remained in Melbourne until 1927 when it moved to the new capital city of Canberra. The first Federal parliament was opened on 9 May of that year in the Royal Exhibition Building. Melbourne became Australia's national capital at Federation on 1 January 1901. Victorian architecture abounds in Melbourne and today the city is home to the largest number of surviving Victorian era buildings of any city in the world other than London.

During the 1880s, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire, and came to be known as "Marvellous Melbourne". Later it became Australia's leading manufacturing centre. With the discovery of gold in Victoria in the 1850s, leading to the Victorian gold rush, Melbourne quickly grew as a port and service centre. It was the capital first of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and then of the separate colony of Victoria.

Ultimately, settlement continued regardless [2]. A transaction was negotiated for 600,000 acres of land from eight of their representatives; this was later anulled by the New South Wales government (then governing all of eastern mainland Australia), who compensated the settlers in exchange. The area was already inhabited by the Kulin people, then indigenous to the area. The European settlement at Melbourne was founded in 1835 by settlers coming from Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land), where they had difficulty finding available land.

Melbourne in Derbyshire derives its name from the Old English for Mill Stream (Mylla Burne). The city was named after the British Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, whose home was near the village of Melbourne in Derbyshire. . A resident of Melbourne is referred to as a Melburnian.

It has one of the highest numbers of international students studying in its universities, after London, New York City, and Paris. Melbourne has undergone a major urban 'revival', such that it is sometimes classed as being in a second tier of "world cities"; the GaWC study group in the UK ranks Melbourne, on the basis of relative availability of specialised "advanced services," as a "minor world city" comparable to cities such as Montreal, Osaka, and Prague. The US's Utne Reader puts it thus: "Add a long tradition of civic pride, communities of new immigrants from around the world, and the best food in Australia, and you have a recipe for what many claim is the hippest city in the Southern Hemisphere" (Nov/Dec 2001). In 2005, however, it was ranked 2nd, behind Vancouver, Canada.

Melbourne has twice ranked first in a survey by The Economist of The World's Most Livable Cities on the basis of its cultural attributes, climate, cost of living, and social conditions such as crime rates and health care, once in 2002 ^[1], and again in 2004 – a year in which the Economist truly took a shine to Australian cities, with the five largest cities in Australia given rankings of 6 or better. It is also considered to be the fashion, shopping, dining and cultural capital of Australia. Melbourne is considered by most Australians to be the sporting capital of Australia, as it is home to The Melbourne Cup, Australian F1 Grand Prix, Australian Open Tennis, AFL Grand Final and MotoGP Motorcycle Grand Prix, and will host the Commonwealth Games in 2006. Melbourne was the capital city of Australia from 1901 until 1927.

The city's name is pronounced as either /ˈmel.bən/ or /ˈmæl.bən/. Melbourne is the state capital and largest city in the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-largest city in Australia (after Sydney), with a population of approximately 3.8 million (2006 estimate) in the Melbourne metropolitan area and 69,670 in the City of Melbourne (which covers only the central city area). ^  Coban, Suzie: “The immigration rush”, Special Broadcasting Service, (Unknown date). Retrieved December 14, 2005.

Melbourne and Vancouver are the world’s best cities to live in . ^  Economist Intelligence Unit (2002). Galle, Sri Lanka – 2005 (after the 2004 tsunami disaster Melbourne adopted Galle in order to fund the reconstruction of its cricket ground). Milan, Italy – 2004.

Saint Petersburg, Russia – 1989. Boston, United States – 1985. Thessaloniki, Greece – 1984. Tianjin, China (PRC) – 1980.

Osaka, Japan – 1978.