Melbourne _ Australia _ 4K || Melbourne 2020 || City Explorer
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Its name refers to an urban agglomeration of 9,993 km2 (3,858 sq mi), comprising a metropolitan area with 31 municipalities, and is also the common name for its city centre.
The city occupies much of the coastline of Port Phillip bay (Kulin: Naarm) and spreads into the hinterlands towards the Dandenong and Macedon ranges, Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley. It has a population of 5 million (19% of the population of Australia), and its inhabitants are referred to as "Melburnians"
The city was founded on 30 August 1835, in the then-British colony of New South Wales, by free settlers from the colony of Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania).
It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837 and named Melbourne by Governor-General Richard Bourke on 10 April 1837 in honour of the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city, Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. In the wake of the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into one of the world's largest and wealthiest metropolises.
After the federation of Australia in 1901, it served as the interim seat of government of the new nation until Canberra became the permanent capital in 1927. Today, it is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region and ranks 15th in the Global Financial Centres Index.
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