You figure out Melbourne city's Latin motto...oh okay then if you insist, I'll help. It means, for all those who did not have to conjugate Latin at school, “We gather strength as we go”.
I visited the City of Melbourne's magnificent Town Hall today and I've gotta say that I love Victorian grandeur. As we passed one evening I mentioned to Caroline that I had never seen the building on Swanston Street open so she issued a challenge to get in and off she promptly marched up the stairs. The guard rushed across, mouth full of sandwich and told us that there was a private function in progress. So instead I found out when the official tours were and went on one today.
Ken my guide was very knowledgeable and as the group was inquisitive, especially about the pipe organ (who would have thought that I would meet two Kiwi organ enthusiasts in a tour group of five?), our hour tour stretched to two.
Melbourne was founded in 1835 and by 1838, surveyor Robert Hoddle had laid out the grid plan of streets that stands today. And here's something interesting that I learned. Hoddle was determined to have 30 metre wide streets but Governor Bourke cried “Extravagant!” and beat him down to a compromise. Every second street would be a more modest 10 metres and so you have the reason for the big streets, Bourke (of course, had to have a big street named after him), Lonsdale, Collins, Flinders, interspersed with half streets, Little Bourke, da-da,da-da,da. Interesting huh? Well I thought so. Especially when you consider that the width of the streets has allowed modern Melbourne to keep its beloved trams running alongside the terrible motorcars.
But wait, there's more....that is not quite the end of the street story. The smaller streets were supposed to provide service lanes between the major ones but the gold boom brought more than just street width extravagance, it spawned building extravagance. Too many unnecessarily large buildings blocked service access along the little streets so even littler lanes were added, Degraves, Manchester, Hosier...a-ha, now you know.
Melbourne was coming along nicely as a village. John Batman's famous quote is that he spied this arable sheep grazing land and claimed; “this is the place for a village.” That was the spot under Queensbridge. Of course John slept in too late at daylight savings and three other fellas snuck in first and grabbed the title of founding fathers. Snooze you lose I'm afraid John but we didn't like him anyway because he gave the Aborigines beads and blankets for title to the land when everyone at the time knew that Crown already owned all of Australia the minute the first convict flag was shackled to a pole in Botany Bay.
What really put hair on Melbourne's adolescent chest however, was gold. When gold was discovered in Victoria in the 1850s, it bought more extravagance than Governor Bourke could have handled. The major buildings dominating still today, were built at this time in splendid Victorian copies of Classical, Italian Renaissance, Venetian, Gothic, Byzantine architecture. Ah, the joys of money and how lucky we are today for the gold leagacy.
Another interesting point that I learned is that most of the early development happened north of the Yarra River as Southbank is marshy and couldn't support the weight of enormous buildings. It sounds like a Monty Python sketch when you talk about the massive deep foundations supports required to hold up the Eureka Skydeck tower. Let's hope it's not a case of “it sank into the swamp so we built another one, that sank too so we built another on the remains of the last...” In March, I happily rode Eureka tower to the 88th floor viewing platform without a second thought. I wish I had known about it's boggy roots beforehand but I'm glad for those massive fundations.
Just one final piece, for the children's librarians out there, of amusing Melbourne Horrible Histories for today. The present city was named for English Prime Minister William Viscount Melbourne during a time when they were looking for a more suitable name for the village than BearBrass. I kid ye not. At one point in Melbourne's naming history the settlers turned to the natives and asked what they called the land. the Aborigines told them but unfortunately the settlers approximated what they heard and the mind boggling BearBrass was the result. One day son, all this will be yours, the Kingdom of BearBrass. Can you imagine the fun to be had giving your address to an officer when being breathalysed? No honesht offisher, I'm not pished I really live up a Bear's arse. Thank goodness sense prevailed.
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