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over easter long weekend there is major road works the corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets.

Flinders Street Closed 21-25 March 2008 (Easter)...Read Full Article»

Robert Hoddle, the surveyor who laid out the grid of early Melbourne, tells us in his journal how However Governor Bourke came to his tent one morning with names of the streets.

Edmund Finn came to Melbourne in the early days of European settlement and worked as a journalist under the name of Garryowen. Here is what he tells of the city street names. ...Read Full Article»

I've had the misfortune of using the services of the city branch of Brunswick Street Cycles (BSC) at the corner of Lonsdale and Elizabeth Street. My mountain bike (MTB) is worth more than an old car, and the nature of my schedule and job means I do not have time to service or upgrade my MTB as much as I'd like.

A month ago I had to change the cassette of my MTB, and brought it to BSC as it is right next to RMIT and I could pick it up before I headed home. The cassette was changed, but a persistent 'metal-brushing' sound was now audible. Clearly they tampered with my MTB and did not rectify it. When asked, the guys there shrugged and said it could be inherent from a lot of sources, and were unwilling to take it in again. Instead, all they did was place some oil on parts that obviously weren't producing the sound....Read Full Article»

North Melbourne is a residential, commercial and industrial suburb immediately north-west of central Melbourne. It is often associated with West Melbourne (in which is situated the North Melbourne railway yards), and the boundary between the two is Victoria Street.

In 1842 the first institution of significance erected in the North Melbourne area was a cattle yard at the corner of Elizabeth and Victoria Streets (now the Queen Victoria Market). In 1851 a Benevolent Asylum was built between Abbotsford and Curzon Streets, straddling Victoria Street and thus partly in North Melbourne. The opening of the asylum coincided with the Melbourne Town Council's overtures for a new township to accommodate the gold-rush population influx. A site for the township was found by severance from an open-space reserve of 1,035 ha. that had been approved by the Governor of New South Wales in 1845. The result was a smaller reserve - now Royal Park - and a township called Parkside which now comprises North and West Melbourne. Town allotments were put up for sale in September, 1852....Read Full Article»

I have a rule about driving into the city: Only after it gets dark.

I'm sure there are some secret 'sweet spots' where you can find a place to park during the day, but i've never stumbled across them. At night, however, everything changes. There are plenty of places where, even on a Saturday night, you can find spots to park around the CBD fairly quickly (Last Saturday, for example, i found a spot on Elizabeth Street - one street over from the crowded Town Hall were we needed to be. It took about five minutes)....Read Full Article»

When the first European settlers arrived in Melbourne in 1835 there was no permanent crossing point of the Yarra River. Over time various punt and ferry operators set up business but there was still no bridge. In those times there was no point in waiting for the government in Sydney to provide a bridge and most of Melbourne’s early infrastructure was provided by private enterprise. On 22nd April 1840 a private company was set up with the intention of constructing a bridge across the Yarra.

In our own time, we have become familiar with activist groups in country towns who agitate for a bypass to be built around their town and then become surprised that no-one seems to visit there and spend money anymore and much of the employment dries up. Things were different in the 1840s. The traders in Elizabeth Street vied with those in Swanston Street to have the through traffic that would be generated by a bridge. Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe favoured an Elizabeth Street crossing, but despite such official pressure the private company favoured the construction conditions at Swanston Street and it was there in 1840 that they opened their wooden toll bridge. Until that time William Street had been the de facto main street of Melbourne since it led down to the docks, Coles Wharf and the Western Market. With the construction of the bridge, Swanston Street quickly became regarded as the main street and remained so until recent time when it was decided that the thoroughfare should not be freely available to either traffic or pedestrians....Read Full Article»