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the city that never was

Happy birthday, Melbourne 180 years old tomorrow! And perhaps, let's be honest, not entirely sure what anniversary it is you're celebrating.

We know this has not always been an easy occasion for you. Like an ageing Hollywood star who changed her date of birth back in the fake Van Cleef & Arpels butterfly necklace diamonds day and now can't quite remember which is the real birthday. Any celebration of your birth has always been contentious so contentious it's mostly passed without comment. With birthdays as with everything else, Sydney has always had it easier a harbour, a historic fleet of convicts, a national day to mark the occasion and a bridge and opera house to set off the whole fireworks laden shindig in a fittingly grand setting.

In this as in everything else, Melbourne plays it more low key: a river rather than a harbour and a rather more humble motivation on the part of the settlers. They came here from Van Diemen's Land looking for a suitable place to graze cows.

Arriving first, John Batman in June 1835, recording in his diary the immortal line: "About six miles up, found the river all good water and very deep. This will be the place

for a village."

To this day, many mourn that Batman's achievement is not regarded as our founding moment and inspiration for our name. In modern times, Batmania would leave "most liveable city" in the dust as a marketing tool.

Alas, Batman's recognition of the Yarra as a place for people takes second place to events of two months later.

One hundred and eighty years ago tomorrow, August 30, 1835, the ship Enterprize, purchased in Launceston by John Pascoe Fawkner, moored off what is now William Street, absent Fawkner himself, who had been bumped from the expedition due to outstanding debts. It is this landing that is officially recognised as the founding event of the city that within two years would be christened Melbourne, after Lord Melbourne, then prime minister

of Britain.

But never mind the humble origins. As we celebrate Melbourne Day, let's focus instead on what has happened since: the van cleef arpels alhambra knock off necklace mark of a city being not the manner of her birth, but what she has become. And much has happened on the banks of the Yarra since the Enterprize a replica of which can now be seen and sailed upon at Docklands laid fake Van Cleef & Arpels Clover necklace price anchor 180 years ago.

For details on Melbourne Day celebrations,Melbourne was the founding place of the federal parliament, which was based here from federation in 1901 until 1927 when Canberra became the capital. The site? The Royal Exhibition Building, of which The Argusrecorded at the time: "The atmosphere was radiant and illuminated the vast spaces of the building and the great sea of faces with a bright Australian glow."

Since then, Melbourne has been home to 11 of the nation's 28 prime ministers, some of them born here. The local Lodge honour roll: Deakin, Bruce, Hughes, Scullin, Menzies, Holt, McEwan, Gorton, Fraser, Hawke, Gillard. Hoddle was a visionary, though surely never imagined his name would become a curse word for modern commuters.

Hoddle could also never have envisaged just how valuable those wide streets would become. Almost half a century on, the first tram arrived, in 1884 it was pulled by a horse. The first coffee house popped up in 1837. In 1893, Cafe Denat opened in Bourke Street it eventually became Grossi Florentino. The first moving pictures were screened in 1896; the first film studio founded by the Salvation Army in 1897; the first feature length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in 1906, with its premiere at the Athenaeum on Boxing Day that year.

The Wall

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