The City That Invented Itself

Melbourne has no obvious reason to exist. Sydney has one of the most spectacular natural harbours on earth and was founded by the British as a matter of imperial policy. Melbourne was founded in 1835 by a sheep farmer who paid a handful of trinkets to Indigenous elders for a land deal the colonial government refused to recognize — and then built a city on it anyway. Within twenty years, the Gold Rush had made it one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Within fifty, it had electrified its trams, built a free public library, and introduced the secret ballot to the world. The city essentially willed itself into existence through sheer competitive energy, and it has never entirely stopped competing with Sydney since.

What makes Melbourne genuinely distinctive is its relationship with culture as a form of civic argument. The coffee obsession — Melbourne pioneered the flat white, the single-origin espresso bar, the café as a room you sit in for two hours — is not a trend but a 30-year project. The laneway street art, which began as illegal graffiti on the walls of forgotten service lanes, is now a municipal policy: the City of Melbourne funds the walls, defends the artists from prosecution, and markets Hosier Lane to the world. The Australian Rules Football Grand Final at the MCG, watched by 100,000 people inside the ground and millions more on television, is a public holiday for the city. Everywhere you go in Melbourne, someone has turned a hobby into a religion, and the city has decided this is worth celebrating.