Melbourne history

Situated on either side of the Yarra River, Melbourne is located on the ancestral homeland of the indigenous Boonerwrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. A significant meeting place for Aborigines, the waterway also attracted British settlers, who founded the Port Phillip Settlement of the Colony of New South Wales in 1835. In 1851, a separate colony was carved out of New South Wales and named Victoria, after Queen Victoria. Melbourne, as it is now known, was named after the British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne.

That same year gold was discovered near Ballarat and Bendigo, to the west of Melbourne, and the ensuing gold rush turned the city into a powerful financial centre. As Australia’s first political capital, until Canberra was established as the national capital in 1927, Melbourne hosted the Federation of Australia in 1901.

The gold rush era brought thousands of Chinese migrants to Melbourne. Post-WWII Immigration transformed Melbourne into a thriving cultural melting pot, with some one million people emigrating from countries like Italy, Greece, and Britain.

Today, Melbourne is home to people from some 140 countries including large Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Chinese communities. Indeed, Melbourne is said to be home to the third largest Greek-speaking population in the world (after Greek cities Athens and Thessaloniki) and the Vietnamese surname “Nguyen” is said to be the second most popular after “Smith” in the Melbourne phonebook!