Melbourne City

Introduction
High culture to high streets - Melbourne has few lows. Melbourne's easy-going pace is perfect for enjoying its gracious Victorian architecture, its green wealth of parks and gardens, and its many cultural highlights. Most of the city's main sights are just a short walk or tram-hop apart, with plenty of latte pick-me-up opportunities on the way.

Multi-cultured, highly cultured, marvellously arty Melbourne. Melbourne is dubbed marvellous for a reason. Healthy hedonism masquerades as high art: Melburnians are equally passionate about football and ballet, fashion and restaurants. They are ravenous for music and hot for theatre. It's a smorgasbord of a city that you'll want to sink your teeth into.

A leafy bayside community on the 'upside-down' Yarra River, Melbourne is, by turns, cosmopolitan, suburban, cultivated, conservative and an avant-garde haven. Visitors come for its shopping, restaurants, nightlife and sporting calendar; most agree that it's one of the world's most liveable cities

'And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict.' - Mark Twain.

Melbourne's suburbs extend around the huge Port Phillip Bay, into the plains to the west and east and out to the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. This huge area of settlement has been necessitated by the dying but intractable goal of the Great Australian Dream - a detached home on a quarter-acre block, 2.5 children and a couple of cars in the driveway. The city centre is about situated about 3km (1.8mi) inland, on the north bank of the Yarra River and is a neat grid of elegant (and kitsch) 19th-century architecture and self-important skyscrapers. The main north-south artery is Swanston St, running north from Federation Square and Flinders Street Station, while Bourke (a pedestrian mall for part of its extent) and Collins Sts, which cross it, are the city's other two main thoroughfares. A series of villagey districts circle the city centre.

Destination Facts
Time zone: GMT +10
Area: 8806
Coordinates: -37.8529586792 latitude and 145.07510376 longitude
Population: 4000000
Daylight Saving: From first Sunday in October to first Sunday in April
Area codes: 03

Getting There
With the northern states taking the brunt of tourism down under, Melbourne is a best-kept secret year round. The shoulder seasons are the gems. While Melbourne's spring is a sight to behold, with multitudes of gardens in bloom and the festive Spring Racing Carnival heralding summer, any local will tell you that mid-autumn sees Melbourne at its most resplendent. A sturdy coat never goes astray at this time, but a little cold is worth bearing for the strolls through the amber and ochre parks.

Weather
Melbourne's climate has an unfortunate reputation: wet, windy, unpredictable and liable to extremes - very hot or very cold and often both on the same day! On the plus side, Melbourne's multitude of parks makes it a beautiful place to witness the changing seasons. It is rarely unbearably chilly - in winter the average temperature ranges between 6 ° C (43 ° F) and 13 ° C (55 ° F), the mercury rises above 35 ° C (95 ° F) only a few times each year and Melbourne's soggy reputation outstrips the reality - it receives only half the average rainfall of Sydney or Brisbane.