ABSTRACT
Melbourne is widely known as Australia's second city and occasionally receives the accolade of the world's ‘most livable’ city. The weather, mild and sunny by global standards, is the butt of jokes from other Australians. Melburnians are often marked by their admiration of the weather and the often spectacular skyscape – ‘four seasons in one day’ as the Crowded House song puts it. The character of Melbourne stems from its urbanity rather than its landscape, which is generally flat and, with the exception of the bay, unremarkable. The city is located on the Yarra River, several kilometres inland from Port Philip Bay, an inlet of about fifty kilometres diameter that is entered from the southern ocean through a narrow channel. Prior to European appropriation this landscape was inhabited by a variety of Aboriginal groups collectively known as the Kulin nation. While the details of this invasion and displacement are only marginally relevant to this work, the erasure of Aboriginal rights and the repression associated with the description of this ‘settlement’ need to be acknowledged. The memory of this era has haunted much of the subsequent occupation of the site. Melbourne was first settled by Europeans in the 1830s under the aegis of British law on the legal basis that the land was uninhabited: the doctrine of terra nullius, which was overturned in 1992 by the Australian High Court. While such a judgement does not re-establish any Aboriginal rights to the city, it has served to shake the ground of belief in sovereignty and ownership, as it raises questions about rights and responsibilities towards the landscape.
