The City of Melbourne

Melbourne has a diverse multi-cultural population of 3.5 million people drawn from over 140 nationalities that gives it a vibrant, cosmopolitan character. It is a safe, clean and well-organised city with a modern and efficient public transport system. It is also home of many prestigious educational institutions, almost 4,000 excellent restaurants, fine shopping precincts and high profile sporting events such as the Formula One Grand Prix, the Australian Tennis Open, Test Cricket and the Spring (Horse) Racing Carnival. Melbourne has a Mediterranean-style climate: the hottest month is January and the coldest is July.

Situated at the head of Port Phillip around the banks of the Yarra River, Melbourne, capital of the State of Victoria, is Australia's second largest city with a population of over three million people. It was founded by the Europeans in 1835; however, prior to that, hundreds of generations of the Aboriginal Kulin people - a group made up of five tribes - had lived and hunted in the Port Phillip area.

Melbourne experienced a rapid rate of growth in its first fifty or sixty years of settlement, thanks largely to the Victorian gold rush and the land boom of the 1880s and the city grew up bearing the hallmarks of the Victorian era in its ornate architecture and its for desire for order and respectability. In recent times an international survey voted Melbourne to be one of the world's most liveable cities, and many would agree.

For although the city lacks the physical impact of its beautiful northern counterpart and main rival Sydney, it does have a reputation for passionate involvement for all the things that add comfort, colour and pleasure to life, such as the arts and culture, food and wine, and of course sport.. And Melbourne does have a beauty, but it is of a subtle, and many would say European-style, with its tree-lined boulevards, rumbling trams, church spires, wide curving river and the calm, expanse of its bay.

In the last fifty years Melbourne has become a polyglot society, with the mass waves of migration from the 1940s on. It is the influence of these communities - Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, and South-East Asian among many - that have rounded out the rather withheld Anglo-Celtic character of the city, helping transform it into a bustling, cosmopolitan, metropolis.

Recent developments, including major new leisure complexes, the importation of international events, and the founding of some home-grown ones, such as the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, have further brought this magnificent city out of its elegant Victorian shell, and into the modern world, without destroying the integrity of its considerable historic heritage. Today, Melbourne has all of the comforts and facilities of a large international city and virtually none of the stress .