One of Melbourne’s most spectacular buildings, Newman College at the University of Melbourne, was the work chiefly of three people:
So we left the strange lonely wastes of Royal Park, crossed Royal Parade and headed along College Crescent. To the right were the residential colleges of Melbourne University, but we took a left and walked into the Melbourne General Cemetery on Princes Hill, its entrance marked with Gothic lettering.
One of the first things you encounter is the Prime Ministers’ Garden, where the political leaders of Australia – alive and dead – are commemorated. Among the memorials is one for Harold Holt, who drowned in the surf in 1967 (or, if you prefer, was taken by a shark/aliens/the Chinese/the CIA). His headstone bears the defiant inscription ‘He loved the sea’. I suppose they couldn’t really use his supposed last words ‘Prime ministers don’t drown’. Continue reading
What is Royal Park?
This hefty chunk of parkland, north of North Melbourne, west of Carlton, has an identity crisis. It’s been set aside for public use since the 1840s. But the public has never known what to do with it.
The great parks and gardens of London, Paris and New York have a clear place in their city’s psyche; everyone knows them, and if they don’t go there, at least they know what they are for. Not so Royal Park. It’s the poor cousin of the Botanical Gardens, a place we think we value (if we think of it at all) but we are unsure why.
Over the years it’s been a place for grazing, a wilderness, a car park, a military base, a zoo, emergency housing, the site of sports complexes and hospitals. It’s housed murderers, it’s been called a ‘slum’ and a ‘plague spot’, it’s been the scene of angry protests. Continue reading
Elizabeth Street marks the point on Victoria Street where you cross from North Melbourne into Carlton. As with the western section of Victoria Street, there’s a great diversity of things to see along here. I finished the last post with a reference to uncontrolled apartment construction. In contrast, on the other side of Elizabeth Street is the elegant former HQ of the Rechabites, a Victorian temperance society devoted to preventing the evils of strong drink. Continue reading
Victoria Street is one of my favourite suburban streets. It runs from west to east across the top of the city, forming the southern boundary first of North Melbourne and then Carlton, as far as Nicholson Street where it becomes Victoria Parade. A walk along this street reveals diverse architecture, intriguing ghost signs and a few good street art sites.
I picked up my walk at the western end of Victoria Street, close to Guest’s biscuit factory, just outside the old Mulcahys pub, a moderne hotel built in the 1920s which has now been converted into apartments. (I need to create a keyboard shortcut for that phrase as I blog about Melbourne, so frequently does it occur. From now on, Ctrl+A = converted into apartments.) Continue reading
Melbourne Circle: stories from the suburbs 