About Melbourne Australia
Our web design studio is located in Trentham and the nearest city is Melbourne Australia . For those of you unfamiliar with Melbourne , it is the second largest Australian city with a population of around 3 million people. Famous for the Melbourne Cup, Australian Open, and being the home of Aussie Rules Football.
I was often asked by penpals, whether I had a kangaroo or koala. In the city you don't see kangaroos or koalas unless you visit the zoo or wildlife sanctuary. In fact the beloved icon of the Australian kangaroo, is so prolific, farmer consider them pests and the koala is endangered in some areas of Australia.
Melbourne has been described as having 4 seasons in one day and the weather changes in Melbourne unpredictably. Generally, the winters aren’t so cold and the summers are tolerable, with the exception of a few stints of unbearable heat.
Melbourne has a huge sprawl of suburbs, but increasingly people have sought the city life of cafes, theatre and restaurants and the price of land goes up the closer you are to the city and certain suburbs are more sought after for their social status and because traffic on the cities roads is so congested that travelling from one suburb to another is very time consuming. Over fifty percent of Melbourne households comprise of 1 or 2 people and many families are relegated to the outer surburban fringes because the price of housing is so exuberant in Melbourne .
I grew up in Melbourne and have watched it change over the years. From a sleepy town, that was deserted in the early hours of the morning to a bustling city that never sleeps.
When I grew up in the mid nineteen eighties, you could ride the trains in the middle of the day and find them empty but now, you would struggle to find a seat. Houses were bought as homes and not as investments, and we all grew up playing with the same friends and going to the local schools. The familiarity of seeing the same faces, was something you took for granted. The same libarian at the local library, the same teachers teaching the same grades, the same neighbourhood children, and the same family working and living at the local milkbar. No-one moved house or changed jobs. Divorce was uncommon. There was a certain continuity to life.
When we grew up, one by one our parents sold our homes and bought themselves houses that were two and three times the size of the ones we grew up in. Houses separated by huge fences and neighbours that they rarely saw. But the memories of friendships of those days at school and in the suburbs; of bean bag fights, rounders and bat for ball cricket, all summer long water fights, playing tag during lessons, blackjack and street tennis. Children from many nationalities came to call Australia home. In Melbourne, mixed marriages are now common.
Melbourne has a diverse background of people, who live together in relative peace and it something very unique. It has evolved to become very much a global village. People are very transient and do not stay long in the same house or job. Moving overseas or interstate for work, is common. Change has become part of life. Melbourne has the same problems of many cities - poverty, gambling, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage suicide, theft, corruption, bribery, vandalism, violence but it is still relatively safe to travel in Melbourne during the day. You are more likely to be scammed by people who pretend to have lost their train ticket and ask you for money than you are to be mugged. Though being aware and avoiding dangerous situations and intoxicated people, is a wise thing to do.
Surrounding Melbourne is the countryside. Much of the country side was founded during the gold rush, indeed Melbourne owes much of its development to the discovery of gold in the mid 1800s. City people often believe that the country air is cleaner than the city. Unfortunately this is an urban myth. Aerial spraying of pesticides is common over crops, tree plantations and forests. Chemicals are widely used in agriculture and industry and even the humble bee has a far higher death rate in the country than its city cousin. Artificial chemicals which include pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and other toxic chemicals pollute the waterways and environment. These chemicals accumulate up the food chain and the more potent chemicals are in country areas. The myth of natural farming is just marketing. Farming relies on the bottom line, and the problem of environmental pollution is a community problem - the farmer is concerned with the economic reality that by using chemicals money can be saved on hiring labout to mechanically remove weeds. Sheep are dipped in poison, cows are feed on grass that has been doused in artificial fertilizer, pigs fed antibiotics to make them grow faster, tractors leak petrol fumes all over crops (even ones considered certified organic), forests are sprayed and poison leaches into the drinking of local towns or directly into tank water, smoke from wood fires hangs over towns because some people believe that burning a fire cold rather than hot makes the wood last longer; (oo bad about the carbon monoxide pollution) and some have not learned that burning PVC and plastic is wrong. In the city, you only have to contend with pollution from cars, noisy neighbours, toxic flouride in drinking water (and any other chemical that leached in there but is under the so called safe limit), pollution from industry and pesticides that are used in parks, public places and next door neighbours. If you are sensitive to chemicals, you are best moving to the desert (where you might only have to contend with the possibility that someone might put a nuclear waste dump in your backyard)
Country Victoria is a vastly different place to Melbourne. Melbourne is a multicultural city that has evolved from a melting pot of nationalities, but the country has largely been settled by Irish, English and Cornish settlers with small settlements of other nationalities. In the words, of one University lecturerer, the 'country is very vanilla' and many Melbournians will find that country life is similar to what Melbourne was, some 30 - 50 years ago.
Due to the history of settlement and colonisation, there are multiple levels of government that administer the law in Australia. Victorians are governed by federal law, victorian law and local councils. Australia remains part of the British commonwealth, and is ruled as a democracy. Elections are held every 3-4 years and the two major political parties are the Labor party and the Liberal party. Understanding Australian politics and law enforcement is only possible, if you understand its history. Corruption, profiteering, bribery, wheeling and dealing were part and parcel of a country that grew up isolated from the rest of the world and who owed tribute to England. In 200 or so years, very little has changed and is unlikely to change because such things are deeply rooted in the past. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/01/1083224647516.html http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21041205-601,00.html
The driving force to the development of Melbourne and Victoria was the Gold Rush in 1850s. The money from gold mining was instrumental in the development of Melbourne and the regional towns, in particular towns in Central Victoria. Though some people become very rich from the gold rush, many lived in great poverty and the government officials imposed such a high price on gold mining licenses that this lead to the popular uprising, known as the Eureka Stockade.
Due to the rising property values worldwide, Melbourne has become more attractive to immigrants and in 2008, roughly 1500 people move into Melbourne each week. The type of city Melbourne is evolving to, is perhaps not what many Melbournians would find desirable, because as Melbourne grows, it becomes just a little less personal and a little more cold. Crowded trains, conjestion on roads, water restrictions, expensive housing - all contribute to the pressure cooker effect of living in a city not built to house so many people and unfortunately, it spills over to people's attitudes to one another. It is harder to accept the way Melbourne is changing when you can still remember the way it was. Violence and drugs are more commonplace now than twenty years ago. The price of economic growth comes at a price.