12 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Melbourne

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Posted 2020-02-01 by Ian Gill ⇒ follow

There's far more to Melbourne than meets the eye, hundreds if not thousands of little known facts about the early history and development of the city. Here are just twelve of those facts to spur your interest.

The RSPCA tells us that Melbourne is the fox capital of the world with anything from 6 to 23 foxes per square kilometre in the urban area. Typically the European or Red Fox they are one of the most invasive species ever introduced into Australia.

Melbourne's tramway system is the world's 4th largest and the largest outside Europe with 493 trams servicing 24 routes with 1,763 tram stops on 250-Kilometres of track.

The world's first feature film was made in Melbourne in 1906. The film was the Story of the Ned Kelly Gang. It opened on Boxing Day 1906 at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre. The Victorian Government tried to censor the film because it portrayed the Kelly Gang sympathetically but the public flocked to screenings both around Australia and internationally.

It was originally planned to name Melbourne 'Batmania' after John Batman – in fact, the settlement was known as Batmania for two years from 1835 to 1837 prior to being officially being named Melbourne.

At the 2016 Census Melbourne exceeded the national average for the proportion of residents born overseas – 34.8% compared to the national average of 23.1%.

In 1956 Melbourne hosted the first Olympic Games ever staged outside Europe and North America.

Melbourne's most popular restaurant is, or was a tram – The Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. At the time of writing the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant is off the rails with legal action pending after Yarra Trams took all three of the companies vintage restaurant trams out of service raising safety concerns about the older vehicles.

Melbourne was the Capital of Australia from Federation in 1901 until 1927. Parliament House in Spring Street became the Parliament of Australia while the Victorian Parliament sat in the Royal Exhibition Building.

Australia's first traffic lights were installed in Melbourne in 1928 at the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets. They were manually operated by a Policeman standing on the adjacent footpath.

Melbourne's Doctor David Warren invented the Black Box flight recorder in 1958. The Black Box has proven invaluable in investigations into countless worldwide aviation disasters since.

In 1880 Melbourne was identified as the richest city in the world in the boom period following the Victorian gold rush. In that year the cities population reached 280,000. At the same time, it was the second-largest city in the British Empire after London.

Until 1966 Melbourne was home to the '6 O'clock Swill', the rush to buy last drinks before pubs were forced to close at 6 PM. Six o'clock closing was introduced in 1917 as a temporary measure, both as a wartime austerity measure and to improve public morality. The 'temporary measure' lasted for 50-years.