title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is home to many of Australia's best-known landmarks, such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the National Gallery of Victoria and the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building. Noted for its cultural heritage, the city gave rise to Australian rules football, Australian impressionism and Australian cinema, and has more recently been recognised as a UNESCO City of Literature and a global centre for street art, live music and theatre. It hosts major annual international events, such as the Australian Grand Prix and the Australian Open, and also hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics. Melbourne consistently ranked as the world's most liveable city for much of the 2010s.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne Airport, also known as the Tullamarine Airport, is the second-busiest airport in Australia, and the Port of Melbourne is the nation's busiest seaport. Its main metropolitan rail terminus is Flinders Street station and its main regional rail and road coach terminus is Southern Cross station. It also has Australia's most extensive freeway network and the largest urban tram network in the world.


title: Melbourne

text: Aboriginal Australians have lived in the Melbourne area for at least 40,000 years. When European settlers arrived in the 19th century, at least 20,000 Kulin people from three distinct language groups – the Wurundjeri, Bunurong and Wathaurong – resided in the area. It was an important meeting place for the clans of the Kulin nation alliance and a vital source of food and water. In June 2021, the boundaries between the land of two of the traditional owner groups, the Wurundjeri and Bunurong, were agreed after being drawn up by the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council. The borderline runs across the city from west to east, with the CBD, Richmond and Hawthorn included in Wurundjeri land, and Albert Park, St Kilda and Caulfield on Bunurong land. However, this change in boundaries is still disputed by people on both sides of the dispute including N'arweet Carolyn Briggs. The name "Narrm" is commonly used by the broader Aboriginal community to refer to the city, stemming from the traditional name recorded for the area on which the Melbourne city centre is built. The word is closely related to "Narm-narm", being the Boonwurrung word for Port Phillip Bay. Narrm means scrub in Eastern Kulin languages which reflects the Creation Story of how the Bay was filled by the creation of the Birrarung (Yarra River). Before this, the dry Melbourne region extended out into the Bay and the Bay was filled with teatree scrub where boordmul (emu) and marram (kangaroo) were hunted.


title: Melbourne

text: The first British settlement in Victoria, then part of the penal colony of New South Wales, was established by Colonel David Collins in October 1803, at Sullivan Bay, near present-day Sorrento. The following year, due to a perceived lack of resources, these settlers relocated to Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) and founded the city of Hobart. It would be 30 years before another settlement was attempted.


title: Melbourne

text: In May and June 1835, John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association in Van Diemen's Land, explored the Melbourne area, and later claimed to have negotiated a purchase of with eight Wurundjeri elders. However, the nature of the treaty has been heavily disputed, as none of the parties spoke the same language, and the elders likely perceived it as part of the gift exchanges which had taken place over the previous few days amounting to a tanderrum ceremony which allows temporary, not permanent, access to and use of the land. Batman selected a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village" before returning to Van Diemen's Land. In August 1835, another group of Vandemonian settlers arrived in the area and established a settlement at the site of the current Melbourne Immigration Museum. Batman and his group arrived the following month and the two groups ultimately agreed to share the settlement, initially known by the native name of Dootigala.


title: Melbourne

text: Batman's Treaty with the Aboriginal elders was annulled by Richard Bourke, the Governor of New South Wales (who at the time governed all of eastern mainland Australia), with compensation paid to members of the association. In 1836, Bourke declared the city the administrative capital of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales, and commissioned the first plan for its urban layout, the Hoddle Grid, in 1837. Known briefly as Batmania, the settlement was named Melbourne on 10 April 1837 by Governor Richard Bourke after the British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, whose seat was Melbourne Hall in the market town of Melbourne, Derbyshire. That year, the settlement's general post office officially opened with that name.


title: Melbourne

text: Between 1836 and 1842, Victorian Aboriginal groups were largely dispossessed of their land by European settlers. By January 1844, there were said to be 675 Aborigines resident in squalid camps in Melbourne. The British Colonial Office appointed five Aboriginal Protectors for the Aborigines of Victoria, in 1839, however, their work was nullified by a land policy that favoured squatters who took possession of Aboriginal lands. By 1845, fewer than 240 wealthy Europeans held all the pastoral licences then issued in Victoria and became a powerful political and economic force in Victoria for generations to come.


title: Melbourne

text: Letters patent of Queen Victoria, issued on 25 June 1847, declared Melbourne a city. On 1 July 1851, the Port Phillip District separated from New South Wales to become the Colony of Victoria, with Melbourne as its capital.


title: Melbourne

text: The discovery of gold in Victoria in mid-1851 sparked a gold rush, and Melbourne, the colony's major port, experienced rapid growth. Within months, the city's population had nearly doubled from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. Exponential growth ensued, and by 1865 Melbourne had overtaken Sydney as Australia's most populous city.


title: Melbourne

text: An influx of intercolonial and international migrants, particularly from Europe and China, saw the establishment of slums, including Chinatown and a temporary "tent city" on the southern banks of the Yarra. In the aftermath of the 1854 Eureka Rebellion, mass public support for the plight of the miners resulted in major political changes to the colony, including improvements in working conditions across mining, agriculture, manufacturing and other local industries. At least twenty nationalities took part in the rebellion, giving some indication of immigration flows at the time.


title: Melbourne

text: With the wealth brought in from the gold rush and the subsequent need for public buildings, a program of grand civic construction soon began. The 1850s and 1860s saw the commencement of Parliament House, the Treasury Building, the Old Melbourne Gaol, Victoria Barracks, the State Library, University of Melbourne, General Post Office, Customs House, the Melbourne Town Hall, St Patrick's cathedral, though many remained uncompleted for decades, with some still not finished .


title: Melbourne

text: The layout of the inner suburbs on a largely one-mile grid pattern, cut through by wide radial boulevards and parklands surrounding the central city, was largely established in the 1850s and 1860s. These areas rapidly filled with the ubiquitous terrace houses, as well as with detached houses and grand mansions, while some of the major roads developed as shopping streets. Melbourne quickly became a major finance centre, home to several banks, the Royal Mint, and (in 1861) Australia's first stock exchange.


title: Melbourne

text: In 1855, the Melbourne Cricket Club secured possession of its now famous ground, the MCG. Members of the Melbourne Football Club codified Australian football in 1859, and in 1861, the first Melbourne Cup race was held. Melbourne acquired its first public monument, the Burke and Wills statue, in 1864.


title: Melbourne

text: With the gold rush largely over by 1860, Melbourne continued to grow on the back of continuing gold-mining, as the major port for exporting the agricultural products of Victoria (especially wool) and with a developing manufacturing sector protected by high tariffs. An extensive radial railway network spread into the countryside from the late 1850s. Construction started on further major public buildings in the 1860s and 1870s, such as the Supreme Court, Government House, and the Queen Victoria Market. The central city filled up with shops and offices, workshops, and warehouses. Large banks and hotels faced the main streets, with fine townhouses in the east end of Collins Street, contrasting with tiny cottages down laneways within the blocks. The Aboriginal population continued to decline, with an estimated 80% total decrease by 1863, due primarily to introduced diseases (particularly smallpox), frontier violence and dispossession of their lands.


title: Melbourne

text: The 1880s saw extraordinary growth: consumer confidence, easy access to credit, and steep increases in land prices led to an enormous amount of construction. During this "land boom", Melbourne reputedly became the richest city in the world, and the second-largest (after London) in the British Empire.


title: Melbourne

text: The decade began with the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880, held in the large purpose-built Exhibition Building. A telephone exchange was established that year, and the foundations of St Paul's were laid. In 1881, electric light was installed in the Eastern Market, and a generating station capable of supplying 2,000 incandescent lamps was in operation by 1882. The Melbourne cable tramway system opened in 1885 and became one of the world's most extensive systems by 1890.


title: Melbourne

text: In 1885, visiting English journalist George Augustus Henry Sala coined the phrase "Marvellous Melbourne", which stuck long into the twentieth century and has come to refer to the opulence and energy of the 1880s, during which time large commercial buildings, grand hotels, banks, coffee palaces, terrace housing and palatial mansions proliferated in the city. The establishment of a hydraulic facility in 1887 allowed for the local manufacture of elevators, resulting in the first construction of high-rise buildings. This period also saw the expansion of a major radial rail-based transport network.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne's land-boom peaked in 1888, the year it hosted the Centennial Exhibition. A brash boosterism that had typified Melbourne during this time ended in the early 1890s with a severe economic depression, sending the local finance- and property-industries into a period of chaos. Sixteen small "land banks" and building societies collapsed, and 133 limited companies went into liquidation. The Melbourne financial crisis was a contributing factor in the Australian economic depression of the 1890s and in the Australian banking crisis of 1893. The effects of the depression on the city were profound, with virtually no new construction until the late 1890s.


title: Melbourne

text: At the time of Australia's federation on 1 January 1901 Melbourne became the seat of government of the federated Commonwealth of Australia. The first federal parliament convened on 9 May 1901 in the Royal Exhibition Building, subsequently moving to the Victorian Parliament House, where it sat until it moved to Canberra in 1927. The Governor-General of Australia resided at Government House in Melbourne until 1930, and many major national institutions remained in Melbourne well into the twentieth century.


title: Melbourne

text: During World War II the city hosted American military forces who were fighting the Empire of Japan, and the government requisitioned the Melbourne Cricket Ground for military use.


title: Melbourne

text: In the immediate years after World War II, Melbourne expanded rapidly, its growth boosted by post-war immigration to Australia, primarily from Southern Europe and the Mediterranean. While the "Paris End" of Collins Street began Melbourne's boutique shopping and open air cafe cultures, the city centre was seen by many as stale—the dreary domain of office workers—something expressed by John Brack in his famous painting "Collins St., 5 pm" (1955). Up until the 21st century, Melbourne was considered Australia's "industrial heartland".


title: Melbourne

text: Height limits in the CBD were lifted in 1958, after the construction of ICI House, transforming the city's skyline with the introduction of skyscrapers. Suburban expansion then intensified, served by new indoor malls beginning with Chadstone Shopping Centre. The post-war period also saw a major renewal of the CBD and St Kilda Road which significantly modernised the city. New fire regulations and redevelopment saw most of the taller pre-war CBD buildings either demolished or partially retained through a policy of facadism. Many of the larger suburban mansions from the boom era were also either demolished or subdivided.


title: Melbourne

text: To counter the trend towards low-density suburban residential growth, the government began a series of controversial public housing projects in the inner city by the Housing Commission of Victoria, which resulted in the demolition of many neighbourhoods and a proliferation of high-rise towers. In later years, with the rapid rise of motor vehicle ownership, the investment in freeway and highway developments greatly accelerated the outward suburban sprawl and declining inner-city population. The Bolte government sought to rapidly accelerate the modernisation of Melbourne. Major road projects including the remodelling of St Kilda Junction, the widening of Hoddle Street and then the extensive 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan changed the face of the city into a car-dominated environment.


title: Melbourne

text: Australia's financial and mining booms during 1969 and 1970 resulted in establishment of the headquarters of many major companies (BHP and Rio Tinto, among others) in the city. Nauru's then booming economy resulted in several ambitious investments in Melbourne, such as Nauru House. Melbourne remained Australia's main business and financial centre until the late 1970s, when it began to lose this primacy to Sydney.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne experienced an economic downturn between 1989 and 1992, following the collapse of several local financial institutions. In 1992, the newly elected Kennett government began a campaign to revive the economy with an aggressive development campaign of public works coupled with the promotion of the city as a tourist destination with a focus on major events and sports tourism. During this period the Australian Grand Prix moved to Melbourne from Adelaide. Major projects included the construction of a new facility for the Melbourne Museum, Federation Square, the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Crown Casino and the CityLink tollway. Other strategies included the privatisation of some of Melbourne's services, including power and public transport, and a reduction in funding to public services such as health, education and public transport infrastructure.


title: Melbourne

text: Since the mid-1990s, Melbourne has maintained significant population and employment growth. There has been substantial international investment in the city's industries and property market. Major inner-city urban renewal has occurred in areas such as Southbank, Port Melbourne, Melbourne Docklands and more recently, South Wharf. Melbourne sustained the highest population increase and economic growth rate of any Australian capital city from 2001 to 2004.


title: Melbourne

text: From 2006, the growth of the city extended into "green wedges" and beyond the city's urban growth boundary. Predictions of the city's population reaching 5 million people pushed the state government to review the growth boundary in 2008 as part of its Melbourne @ Five Million strategy. In 2009, Melbourne was less affected by the late-2000s financial crisis in comparison to other Australian cities. At this time, more new jobs were created in Melbourne than any other Australian city—almost as many as the next two fastest growing cities, Brisbane and Perth, combined, and Melbourne's property market remained highly priced, resulting in historically high property prices and widespread rent increases. In 2020, Melbourne was classified as an Alpha city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Out of all major Australian cities, Melbourne was the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and spent a long time under lockdown restrictions, with Melbourne experiencing six lockdowns totalling 262 days.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is in the southeastern part of mainland Australia, within the state of Victoria. Geologically, it is built on the confluence of Quaternary lava flows to the west, Silurian mudstones to the east, and Holocene sand accumulation to the southeast along Port Phillip. The southeastern suburbs are situated on the Selwyn fault, which transects Mount Martha and Cranbourne. The western portion of the metropolitan area lies within the Victorian Volcanic Plain grasslands vegetation community, and the southeast falls in the Gippsland Plains Grassy Woodland zone.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne extends along the Yarra River towards the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges to the east. It extends northward through the undulating bushland valleys of the Yarra's tributaries—Moonee Ponds Creek (toward Tullamarine Airport), Merri Creek, Darebin Creek and Plenty River—to the outer suburban growth corridors of Craigieburn and Whittlesea.


title: Melbourne

text: The city reaches southeast through Dandenong to the growth corridor of Pakenham towards West Gippsland, and southward through the Dandenong Creek valley and the city of Frankston. In the west, it extends along the Maribyrnong River and its tributaries north towards Sunbury and the foothills of the Macedon Ranges, and along the flat volcanic plain country towards Melton in the west, Werribee at the foothills of the You Yangs granite ridge southwest of the CBD. The Little River, and the township of the same name, marks the border between Melbourne and neighbouring Geelong city.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne's major bayside beaches are in the various suburbs along the shores of Port Phillip Bay, in areas like Port Melbourne, Albert Park, St Kilda, Elwood, Brighton, Sandringham, Mentone, Frankston, Altona, Williamstown and Werribee South. The nearest surf beaches are south of the Melbourne CBD in the back-beaches of Rye, Sorrento and Portsea.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfb"), bordering on a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfa"), with warm summers and cool winters. Melbourne is well known for its changeable weather conditions, mainly due to it being located on the boundary of hot inland areas and the cool southern ocean. This temperature differential is most pronounced in the spring and summer months and can cause strong cold fronts to form. These cold fronts can be responsible for varied forms of severe weather from gales to thunderstorms and hail, large temperature drops and heavy rain. Winters, however, are usually very stable, but rather damp and often cloudy—though not as cloudy as inland areas or places farther west like Warrnambool due to Melbourne's downwind placement relative to the prevailing westerlies, as evident by its dry winters by southern Victorian standards. The city, however, is exposed to southerly and southwesterly systems as manifested by the overcast, drizzly winters.


title: Melbourne

text: Port Phillip is often warmer than the surrounding oceans and/or the land mass, particularly in spring and autumn; this can set up a "bay effect", similar to the "lake effect" seen in colder climates, where showers are intensified leeward of the bay. Relatively narrow streams of heavy showers can often affect the same places (usually the eastern suburbs) for an extended period, while the rest of Melbourne and surrounds stays dry. Overall, the area around Melbourne is, owing to the rain shadow of the Otway Ranges, nonetheless drier than average for southern Victoria. Within the city and surrounds, rainfall varies widely, from around at Little River to on the eastern fringe at Gembrook. Melbourne receives 48.6 clear days annually. Dewpoint temperatures in the summer range from .


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is also prone to isolated convective showers forming when a cold pool crosses the state, especially if there is considerable daytime heating. These showers are often heavy and can include hail, squalls, and significant drops in temperature, but they often pass through very quickly with a rapid clearing trend to sunny and relatively calm weather and the temperature rising back to what it was before the shower. This can occur in the space of minutes and can be repeated many times a day, giving Melbourne a reputation for having "four seasons in one day", a phrase that is part of local popular culture. The lowest temperature on record is , on 21 July 1869. The highest temperature recorded in Melbourne city was , on 7 February 2009. While snow is occasionally seen at higher elevations in the outskirts of the city, it has not been recorded in the Central Business District since 1986.


title: Melbourne

text: The average temperature of the sea ranges from in September to in February; at Port Melbourne, the average sea temperature range is the same.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne's urban area is approximately 2,453 km, slightly larger than that of London and Mexico City, while its metropolitan area is 9,993 km (3,858 sq mi)—larger than Jakarta (at 7,063 km), but smaller than New York City (at 11,875 km). The Hoddle Grid, a grid of streets measuring approximately , forms the nucleus of Melbourne's central business district (CBD). The grid's southern edge fronts onto the Yarra River. More recent office, commercial and public developments in the adjoining districts of Southbank and Docklands have made these areas into extensions of the CBD in all but name. A byproduct of the CBD's layout is its network of lanes and arcades, such as Block Arcade and Royal Arcade.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has become Australia's most densely populated area, with approximately 19,500 residents per square kilometre, and is home to more skyscrapers than any other Australian city, the tallest being Australia 108, situated in Southbank. Melbourne's newest planned skyscraper, Southbank By Beulah (also known as "Green Spine"), has recently been approved for construction and will be the tallest structure in Australia by 2025.


title: Melbourne

text: The CBD and surrounds also contain many significant historic buildings such as the Royal Exhibition Building, the Melbourne Town Hall and Parliament House.


title: Melbourne

text: Although the area is described as the "centre", it is not actually the demographic centre of Melbourne at all, due to an urban sprawl to the southeast, the demographic centre being located at Glen Iris.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is typical of Australian capital cities in that after the turn of the 20th century, it expanded with the underlying notion of a 'quarter acre home and garden' for every family, often referred to locally as the Australian Dream. This, coupled with the popularity of the private automobile after 1945, led to the auto-centric urban structure now present today in the middle and outer suburbs. Much of metropolitan Melbourne is accordingly characterised by low-density sprawl, whilst its inner-city areas feature predominantly medium-density, transit-oriented urban forms. The city centre, Docklands, St. Kilda Road and Southbank areas feature high-density forms.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is often referred to as Australia's garden city, and the state of Victoria was once known as "the garden state". There is an abundance of parks and gardens in Melbourne, many close to the CBD with a variety of common and rare plant species amid landscaped vistas, pedestrian pathways and tree-lined avenues. Melbourne's parks are often considered the best public parks in all of Australia's major cities. There are also many parks in the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne, such as in the municipalities of Stonnington, Boroondara and Port Phillip, southeast of the central business district. Several national parks have been designated around the urban area of Melbourne, including the Mornington Peninsula National Park, Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park and Point Nepean National Park in the southeast, Organ Pipes National Park to the north and Dandenong Ranges National Park to the east. There are also a number of significant state parks just outside Melbourne. The extensive area covered by urban Melbourne is formally divided into hundreds of suburbs (for addressing and postal purposes), and administered as local government areas 31 of which are located within the metropolitan area.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has minimal public housing and high demand for rental housing, which is becoming unaffordable for some. Public housing is managed and provided by the Victorian Government's Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, and operates within the framework of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, by which both federal and state governments provide funding for housing.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is experiencing high population growth, generating high demand for housing. This housing boom has increased house prices and rents, as well as the availability of all types of housing. Subdivision regularly occurs in the outer areas of Melbourne, with numerous developers offering house and land packages. However, since the release of Melbourne 2030 in 2002, planning policies have encouraged medium-density and high-density development in existing areas with good access to public transport and other services. As a result of this, Melbourne's middle and outer-ring suburbs have seen significant brownfields redevelopment.


title: Melbourne

text: On the back of the 1850s gold rush and 1880s land boom, Melbourne became renowned as one of the world's great Victorian-era cities, a reputation that persists due to its diverse range of Victorian architecture. High concentrations of well-preserved Victorian-era buildings can be found in the inner suburbs, such as Carlton, East Melbourne and South Melbourne. Outstanding examples of Melbourne's built Victorian heritage include the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building (1880), the General Post Office (1867), Hotel Windsor (1884) and the Block Arcade (1891). Comparatively little remains of Melbourne's pre-gold rush architecture; St James Old Cathedral (1839) and St Francis' Church (1845) are among the few examples left in the CBD. Many of the CBD's Victorian boom-time landmarks were also demolished in the decades after World War II, including the Federal Coffee Palace (1888) and the APA Building (1889), one of the tallest early skyscrapers upon completion. Heritage listings and heritage overlays have since been introduced in an effort to prevent further losses of the city's historic fabric.


title: Melbourne

text: In line with the city's expansion during the early 20th century, suburbs such as Hawthorn and Camberwell are defined largely by Federation and Edwardian architectural styles. The City Baths, built in 1903, are a prominent example of the latter style in the CBD. The 1926 Nicholas Building is the city's grandest example of the Chicago School style, while the influence of Art Deco is apparent in the Manchester Unity Building, completed in 1932.


title: Melbourne

text: The city also features the Shrine of Remembrance, which was built as a memorial to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I and is now a memorial to all Australians who have served in war.


title: Melbourne

text: Residential architecture is not defined by a single architectural style, but rather an eclectic mix of large McMansion-style houses (particularly in areas of urban sprawl), apartment buildings, condominiums, and townhouses which generally characterise the medium-density inner-city neighbourhoods. Freestanding dwellings with relatively large gardens are perhaps the most common type of housing outside inner city Melbourne. Victorian terrace housing, townhouses and historic Italianate, Tudor revival and Neo-Georgian mansions are all common in inner-city neighbourhoods such as Carlton, Fitzroy and further into suburban enclaves like Toorak.


title: Melbourne

text: Often referred to as Australia's cultural capital, Melbourne is recognised globally as a centre of sport, music, theatre, comedy, art, literature, film and television. For much of the 2010s, it held the top position in "The Economist Intelligence Unit" list of the world's most liveable cities, partly due to its cultural attributes.


title: Melbourne

text: The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events and festivals of all types, including the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival and Moomba, Australia's largest free community festival.


title: Melbourne

text: The State Library of Victoria, founded in 1854, is one of the world's oldest free public libraries and, as of 2018, the fourth most-visited library globally. Between the gold rush and the crash of 1890, Melbourne was Australia's literary capital, famously referred to by Henry Kendall as "that wild bleak Bohemia south of the Murray". At this time, Melbourne-based writers and poets Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Rolf Boldrewood produced classic visions of colonial life. Fergus Hume's "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" (1886), the fastest-selling crime novel of the era, is set in Melbourne, as is Australia's best-selling book of poetry, C. J. Dennis' "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke" (1915). Contemporary Melbourne authors who have written award-winning books set in the city include Peter Carey, Helen Garner and Christos Tsiolkas. Melbourne has Australia's widest range of bookstores, as well as the nation's largest publishing sector. The city is also home to the Melbourne Writers Festival and hosts the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. In 2008, it became the second city to be named a UNESCO City of Literature.


title: Melbourne

text: Ray Lawler's play "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" is set in Carlton and debuted in 1955, the same year that Edna Everage, Barry Humphries' Moonee Ponds housewife character, first appeared on stage, both sparking international interest in Australian theatre. Melbourne's East End Theatre District is known for its Victorian era theatres, such as the Athenaeum, Her Majesty's and the Princess, as well as the Forum and the Regent. Other heritage-listed theatres include the art deco landmarks The Capitol and St Kilda's Palais Theatre, Australia's largest seated theatre with a capacity of 3,000 people. The Arts Precinct in Southbank is home to Arts Centre Melbourne (which includes the State Theatre and Hamer Hall), as well as the Melbourne Recital Centre and Southbank Theatre, home of the Melbourne Theatre Company, Australia's oldest professional theatre company. The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are also based in the precinct.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has been called "the live music capital of the world"; one study found it has more music venues per capita than any other world city sampled, with 17.5 million patron visits to 553 venues in 2016. The Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Kings Domain hosted the largest crowd ever for a music concert in Australia when an estimated 200,000 attendees saw Melbourne band The Seekers in 1967. Airing between 1974 and 1987, Melbourne's "Countdown" helped launch the careers of Crowded House, Men at Work and Kylie Minogue, among other local acts. Several distinct post-punk scenes flourished in Melbourne during the late 1970s, including the Fitzroy-based Little Band scene and the St Kilda scene centred at the Crystal Ballroom, which gave rise to Dead Can Dance and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, respectively. More recent independent acts from Melbourne to achieve global recognition include The Avalanches, Gotye and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Melbourne is also regarded as a centre of EDM, and lends its name to the Melbourne Bounce genre and the Melbourne Shuffle dance style, both of which emerged from the city's underground rave scene.


title: Melbourne

text: Established in 1861, the National Gallery of Victoria is Australia's oldest and largest art museum. Several art movements originated in Melbourne, most famously the Heidelberg School of impressionists, named after a suburb where they camped to paint "en plein air" in the 1880s. The Australian tonalists followed, some of whom founded Montsalvat, Australia's oldest surviving art colony. During World War II, the Angry Penguins, a group of avant-garde artists, convened at a Bulleen dairy farm, now the Heide Museum of Modern Art. The city is also home to the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. In the 2000s, Melbourne street art became globally renowned and a major tourist drawcard, with "laneway galleries" such as Hosier Lane attracting more Instagram hashtags than some of the city's traditional attractions, such as the Melbourne Zoo.


title: Melbourne

text: A quarter century after bushranger Ned Kelly's execution at Old Melbourne Gaol, the Melbourne-produced "The Story of the Kelly Gang" (1906), the world's first feature-length narrative film, premiered at the above-named Athenaeum, spurring Australia's first cinematic boom. Melbourne remained a world leader in filmmaking until the mid-1910s, when several factors, including a ban on bushranger films, contributed to a decades-long decline of the industry. A notable film shot and set in Melbourne during this lull was "On the Beach" (1959). Melbourne filmmakers led the Australian Film Revival with ocker comedies such as "Stork" (1971) and "Alvin Purple" (1973). Other films shot and set in Melbourne include "Mad Max" (1979), "Romper Stomper" (1992), "Chopper" (2000) and "Animal Kingdom" (2010). The Melbourne International Film Festival began in 1952 and is one of the world's oldest film festivals. The AACTA Awards, Australia's top screen awards, were inaugurated by the festival in 1958. Melbourne is also home to Docklands Studios Melbourne (the city's largest film and television studio complex), the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the headquarters of Village Roadshow Pictures, Australia's largest film production company.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has long been regarded as Australia's sporting capital due to the role it has played in the development of Australian sport, the range and quality of its sporting events and venues, and its high rates of spectatorship and participation. The city is also home to 27 professional sports teams competing at the national level, the most of any Australian city. Melbourne's sporting reputation was recognised in 2016 when, after being ranked as the world's top sports city three times biennially, the Ultimate Sports City Awards in Switzerland named it 'Sports City of the Decade'.


title: Melbourne

text: The city has hosted a number of major international sporting events, most notably the 1956 Summer Olympics, the first Olympic Games held outside Europe and the United States. Melbourne also hosted the 2006 Commonwealth Games, will host the 2026 Commonwealth Games along with a number a number of regional areas of Victoria, and is home to several major annual international events, including the Australian Open, the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. First held in 1861 and declared a public holiday for all Melburnians in 1873, the Melbourne Cup is the world's richest handicap horse race, and is known as "the race that stops a nation". The Formula One Australian Grand Prix has been held at the Albert Park Circuit since 1996.


title: Melbourne

text: Cricket was one of the first sports to become organised in Melbourne with the Melbourne Cricket Club forming within three years of settlement. The club manages one of the world's largest stadiums, the 100,000 capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Established in 1853, the MCG is notable for hosting the first Test match and the first One Day International, played between Australia and England in 1877 and 1971, respectively. It is also the home of the National Sports Museum, and serves as the home ground of the Victoria cricket team. At Twenty20 level, the Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades compete in the Big Bash League.


title: Melbourne

text: Australian rules football, Australia's most popular spectator sport, traces its origins to matches played in parklands next to the MCG in 1858. Its first laws were codified the following year by the Melbourne Football Club, also a founding member, in 1896, of the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite professional competition. Headquartered at Docklands Stadium, the AFL fields a further eight Melbourne-based clubs: Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Richmond, St Kilda, and the Western Bulldogs. The city hosts up to five AFL matches per round during the home and away season, attracting an average of 40,000 spectators per game. The AFL Grand Final, traditionally held at the MCG, is the highest attended club championship event in the world.


title: Melbourne

text: In soccer, Melbourne is represented in the A-League by Melbourne Victory, Melbourne City FC and Western United FC. The rugby league team Melbourne Storm plays in the National Rugby League, and in rugby union, the Melbourne Rebels and Melbourne Rising compete in the Super Rugby and National Rugby Championship competitions, respectively. North American sports have also gained popularity in Melbourne: basketball sides South East Melbourne Phoenix and Melbourne United play in the NBL; Melbourne Ice and Melbourne Mustangs play in the Australian Ice Hockey League; and Melbourne Aces plays in the Australian Baseball League. Rowing also forms part of Melbourne's sporting identity, with a number of clubs located on the Yarra River, out of which many Australian Olympians trained.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has a highly diversified economy with particular strengths in finance, manufacturing, research, IT, education, logistics, transportation and tourism. Melbourne houses the headquarters of many of Australia's largest corporations, including five of the ten largest in the country (based on revenue), and five of the largest seven in the country (based on market capitalisation) ANZ, BHP, the National Australia Bank, CSL and Telstra, as well as such representative bodies and think tanks as the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Melbourne's suburbs also have the head offices of Coles Group (owner of Coles Supermarkets) and Wesfarmers companies Bunnings, Target, K-Mart and Officeworks. The city is home to Australia's second busiest seaport, after Port Botany in Sydney. Melbourne Airport provides an entry point for national and international visitors, and is Australia's second busiest airport.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is also an important financial centre. In the 2022 Global Financial Centres Index, Melbourne was ranked as having the 32nd most competitive financial centre in the world. Two of the big four banks, the ANZ and National Australia Bank, are headquartered in Melbourne. The city has carved out a niche as Australia's leading centre for superannuation (pension) funds, with 40% of the total, and 65% of industry super-funds including the AU$109 billion-dollar Federal Government Future Fund. The city was rated 41st within the top 50 financial cities as surveyed by the MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index (2008), second only to Sydney (12th) in Australia. Melbourne is Australia's second-largest industrial centre.


title: Melbourne

text: CSL, one of the world's top five biotech companies, and Sigma Pharmaceuticals have their headquarters in Melbourne. The two are the largest listed Australian pharmaceutical companies. Melbourne has an important ICT industry that employs over 60,000 people (one third of Australia's ICT workforce), with a turnover of AU$19.8 billion and export revenues of AU615 million. In addition, tourism also plays an important role in Melbourne's economy, with about 7.6 million domestic visitors and 1.88 million international visitors in 2004. Melbourne has been attracting an increasing share of domestic and international conference markets. Construction began in February 2006 of an AU$1 billion 5000-seat international convention centre, Hilton Hotel and commercial precinct adjacent to the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre to link development along the Yarra River with the Southbank precinct and multibillion-dollar Docklands redevelopment.


title: Melbourne

text: The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Melbourne as the fourth most expensive city in the world to live in according to its worldwide cost of living index in 2013.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne is the second most visited city in Australia and the seventy-third most visited city in the world. In 2018, 10.8 million domestic overnight tourists and 2.9 million international overnight tourists visited Melbourne. The most visited attractions are Federation Square, Queen Victoria Market, Crown Casino, Southbank, Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne Aquarium, Docklands, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Museum, Melbourne Observation Deck, Arts Centre Melbourne, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Luna Park, a theme park modelled on New York's Coney Island and Seattle's Luna Park, is also a popular destination for visitors. In its annual survey of readers, the Condé Nast Traveler magazine found that both Melbourne and Auckland were considered the world's friendliest cities in 2014. The magazine highlighted the connection the city inhabitants have to public art and the many parks across the city. Its high liveability rankings make it one of the safest world cities for travellers.


title: Melbourne

text: Although Victoria's net interstate migration has fluctuated, the population of the Melbourne statistical division has grown by about 70,000 people a year since 2005. Melbourne has now attracted the largest proportion of international overseas immigrants (48,000) finding it outpacing Sydney's international migrant intake on percentage, as well as having strong interstate migration from Sydney and other capitals due to more affordable housing and cost of living.


title: Melbourne

text: In recent years, Melton, Wyndham and Casey, part of the Melbourne statistical division, have recorded the highest growth rate of all local government areas in Australia. Melbourne is on track to overtake Sydney in population between 2028 and 2030.


title: Melbourne

text: After a trend of declining population density since World War II, the city has seen increased density in the inner and western suburbs, aided in part by Victorian Government planning, such as Postcode 3000 and Melbourne 2030, which have aimed to curtail urban sprawl. , the CBD is the most densely populated area in Australia with more than 19,000 residents per square kilometre, and the inner city suburbs of Carlton, South Yarra, Fitzroy and Collingwood make up Victoria's top five.


title: Melbourne

text: At the 2021 census, 0.7% of Melbourne's population identified as being Indigenous — Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has the 10th largest immigrant population among world metropolitan areas. In Greater Melbourne at the 2021 census, 59.9% of residents were born in Australia. The other most common countries of birth were India (4.9%), Mainland China (3.4%), England (2.7%), Vietnam (1.8%) and New Zealand (1.7%).


title: Melbourne

text: At the time of the 2021 census, 61.1% of Melburnians speak only English at home. Mandarin (4.3%), Vietnamese (2.3%), Greek (2.1%), Punjabi (2%), and Arabic (1.8%) were the most common foreign languages spoken at home by residents of Melbourne.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has a wide range of religious faiths, the most widely held of which is Christianity. This is signified by the city's two large cathedrals—St Patrick's (Roman Catholic), and St Paul's (Anglican). Both were built in the Victorian era and are of considerable heritage significance as major landmarks of the city. In recent years, Greater Melbourne's irreligious community has grown to be one of the largest in Australia.


title: Melbourne

text: According to the 2021 Census, persons stating that they had no religion constituted 36.9% of the population. Christianity was the most popular religious affiliation at 40.1%. The largest Christian denominations were Catholicism (20.8%) and Anglicanism (5.5%). The most popular non-Christian religious affiliations were Islam (5.3%), Hinduism (4.1%), Buddhism (3.9%), Sikhism (1.7%) and Judaism (0.9%).


title: Melbourne

text: Over 180,000 Muslims live in Melbourne. Muslim religious life in Melbourne is centred on about 25 mosques and a number of prayer rooms at university campuses, workplaces and other venues.


title: Melbourne

text: , Melbourne had the largest population of Polish Jews in Australia. The city was also home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors of any Australian city, indeed the highest per capita outside Israel itself. Reflecting this community, Melbourne has a number of Jewish cultural, religious and educational institutions, including over 40 synagogues and 7 full-time parochial day schools, along with a local Jewish newspaper.


title: Melbourne

text: Some of Australia's most prominent and well-known schools are based in Melbourne. Of the top twenty high schools in Australia according to the My Choice Schools Ranking, five are in Melbourne. There has also been a rapid increase in the number of International students studying in the city. Furthermore, Melbourne was ranked the world's fourth top university city in 2008 after London, Boston and Tokyo in a poll commissioned by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Eight public universities operate in Melbourne: the University of Melbourne, Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology, Deakin University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), La Trobe University, Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Victoria University (VU).


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne universities have campuses all over Australia and some internationally. Swinburne University and Monash University have campuses in Malaysia, while Monash has a research centre based in Prato, Italy. The University of Melbourne, the second oldest university in Australia, was ranked first among Australian universities in the 2016 THES international rankings. In 2018 Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne the 32nd best university in the world which is higher than the rankings in 2016 and 2017, Monash University was ranked 80th best. Both are members of the Group of Eight, a coalition of leading Australian tertiary institutions offering comprehensive and leading education.


title: Melbourne

text: As of 2017 RMIT University is ranked 17th in the world in art & design, and 28th in architecture. The Swinburne University of Technology, based in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, was as of 2014 ranked 76th–100th in the world for physics by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Deakin University maintains two major campuses in Melbourne and Geelong, and is the third largest university in Victoria. In recent years, the number of international students at Melbourne's universities has risen rapidly, a result of an increasing number of places being made available for them. Education in Melbourne is overseen by the Victorian Department of Education (DET), whose role is to 'provide policy and planning advice for the delivery of education'.


title: Melbourne

text: Three daily newspapers serve Melbourne: the "Herald Sun" (tabloid), "The Age" (compact) and "The Australian" (national broadsheet). There are six primary free-to-air digital television stations operating in Greater Melbourne and Geelong: ABC Victoria, (ABV), SBS Victoria (SBS), Seven Melbourne (HSV), Nine Melbourne (GTV), Ten Melbourne (ATV), C31 Melbourne (MGV) – community television. Each station (excluding C31) broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels. Some digital media companies such as Broadsheet are based in and primarily serve Melbourne.


title: Melbourne

text: Many AM and FM radio stations broadcast to greater Melbourne. These include public (i.e., state-owned ABC and SBS) and community stations. Many commercial stations are networked-owned: Nova Entertainment owns Nova 100 and Smooth; ARN controls Gold 104.3 and KIIS 101.1; and Southern Cross Austereo runs both Fox and Triple M. Youth stations include ABC Triple J and youth-run SYN. Triple J, and community stations PBS and Triple R, strive to play under represented music. JOY 94.9 caters for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender audiences. 3MBS and ABC Classic FM play classical music. Light FM is a contemporary Christian station. AM stations include ABC: 774, Radio National, and News Radio; also Nine Entertainment affiliates 3AW (talk) and Magic (easy listening). SEN 1116 broadcasts sports coverage. Melbourne has many community run stations that serve alternative interests, such as 3CR and 3KND (Indigenous). Many suburbs have low powered community run stations serving local audiences.


title: Melbourne

text: The governance of Melbourne is split between the government of Victoria and the 27 cities and four shires that make up the metropolitan area. There is no ceremonial or political head of Melbourne, but the Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne often fulfils such a role as a first among equals.


title: Melbourne

text: The local councils are responsible for providing the functions set out in the "Local Government Act" 1989 such as urban planning and waste management. Most other government services are provided or regulated by the Victorian state government, which governs from Parliament House in Spring Street. These include services associated with local government in other countries and include public transport, main roads, traffic control, policing, education above preschool level, health and planning of major infrastructure projects.


title: Melbourne

text: The Victorian Government's Department of Health oversees about 30 public hospitals in the Melbourne metropolitan region and 13 health services organisations.


title: Melbourne

text: Major medical, neuroscience and biotechnology research institutions located in Melbourne include the St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research, Australian Stem Cell Centre, the Burnet Institute, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Victorian Institute of Chemical Sciences, Brain Research Institute, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, and the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre. The headquarters of Australian pharmaceutical company CSL Limited is located in the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct in Parkville, which contains over 40 biomedical and research institutions. It was announced in 2021 that a new Australian Institute for Infectious Disease would also be built in Parkville.


title: Melbourne

text: Other institutions include the Howard Florey Institute, the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, and the Australian Synchrotron. Many of these institutions are associated with and located near to universities. Melbourne is also home to the Royal Children's Hospital and the Monash Children's Hospital.


title: Melbourne

text: Among Australian capital cities, Melbourne ties with Canberra in first place for the highest male life expectancy (80.0 years) and ranks second behind Perth in female life expectancy (84.1 years).


title: Melbourne

text: Like many Australian cities, Melbourne has a high dependency on the automobile for transport, particularly in the outer suburban areas where the largest number of cars are bought, with a total of 3.6 million private vehicles using of road, and one of the highest lengths of road per capita in the world. The early 20th century saw an increase in popularity of automobiles, resulting in large-scale suburban expansion and a tendency towards the development of urban sprawl—like all Australian cities, inhabitants would live in the suburbs and commute to the city for work. By the mid-1950s there was just under 200 passenger vehicles per 1000 people, and by 2013 there was 600 passenger vehicles per 1000 people.


title: Melbourne

text: The road network in Victoria is managed by Vicroads, as part of the Department of Transport, who oversee the planning and integration. Maintenance of roads is undertaken by different bodies, depending on the road. Local roads are maintained by local councils, while secondary and main roads are the responsibility of Vicroads. Major national freeways and roads integral to national trade are overseen by the Federal Government.


title: Melbourne

text: Today Melbourne has an extensive network of freeways and arterial roadways. These are used by private vehicles, including road freight vehicles, as well as road-based public transport modes like buses and taxis. Major highways feeding into the city include the Eastern Freeway, Monash Freeway and West Gate Freeway (which spans the large West Gate Bridge). Other freeways include the Calder Freeway, Tullamarine Freeway, which is the main airport link, and the Hume Freeway, which connects Melbourne to Canberra and Sydney. Melbourne's middle suburbs are connected via an orbital freeway, the M80 Ring Road, which will be completed when the North East Link opens.


title: Melbourne

text: Out of Melbourne’s 20 declared freeways open or under construction, 6 are electronic toll roads. This includes the M1 and M2 CityLink (which includes the large Bolte Bridge), Eastlink, North East Link, and the West Gate Tunnel. Apart from Eastlink which is owned and operated by ConnectEast, the toll roads in Melbourne are run by Transurban. In Melbourne, tollways have blue and yellow signage compared to the green signs used for free roads.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has an integrated public transport system based around extensive train, tram, bus and taxi systems. Flinders Street station was the world's busiest passenger station in 1927 and Melbourne's tram network overtook Sydney's to become the world's largest in the 1940s. From the 1940s, public transport use in Melbourne declined due to a rapid expansion of the road and freeway network, with the largest declines in tram and bus usage. This decline quickened in the early 1990s due to large public transport service cuts. The operations of Melbourne's public transport system was privatised in 1999 through a franchising model, with operational responsibilities for the train, tram and bus networks licensed to private companies. After 1996 there was a rapid increase in public transport patronage due to growth in employment in central Melbourne, with the mode share for commuters increasing to 14.8% and 8.4% of all trips. A target of 20% public transport mode share for Melbourne by 2020 was set by the state government in 2006. Since 2006 public transport patronage has grown by over 20% and a number of projects have commenced aimed at expanding public transport usage.


title: Melbourne

text: The Melbourne metropolitan rail network dates back to the 1850s gold rush era, and today consists of 222 suburban stations on 16 lines which radiate from the City Loop, a mostly-underground subway system around the CBD. Flinders Street station, one of Australia's busiest rail hubs, serves the entire network, and remains a prominent Melbourne landmark and meeting place. The city has rail connections with regional Victorian cities run by V/Line, as well as direct interstate rail services which depart from Melbourne's other major rail terminus, Southern Cross station, in Docklands. "The Overland" to Adelaide departs twice a week, while the XPT to Sydney departs twice daily. In the 2017–2018 financial year, the Melbourne metropolitan rail network recorded 240.9 million passenger trips, the highest ridership in its history. Many rail lines, along with dedicated lines and rail yards, are also used for freight.


title: Melbourne

text: An assortment of new railways are under construction in Melbourne. A new heavy rail corridor through the inner city, the Metro Tunnel, is set to open by 2025, and will reduce congestion on the City Loop. The ongoing Level Crossing Removal Project is grade separating much of the network, and rebuilding many older stations. In June 2022, early works commenced on the Suburban Rail Loop, a 90-kilometre underground automated orbital loop line through Melbourne's middle suburbs. An airport rail connection is currently in the planning phase.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne's tram network dates from the 1880s land boom and, as of 2021, consists of of double track, 475 trams, 25 routes, and 1,763 tram stops, making it the largest in the world. In 2017–2018, 206.3 million passenger trips were made by tram. Around 75 per cent of Melbourne's tram network shares road space with other vehicles, while the rest of the network is separated or are light rail routes. Melbourne's trams are recognised as iconic cultural assets and a tourist attraction. Heritage trams operate on the free City Circle route around the CBD. Trams are free within the central city Free Tram Zone and run 24-hours on weekends.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne's bus network consists of almost 300 routes which mainly service the outer suburbs and fill the gaps in the network between rail and tram services. 127.6 million passenger trips were recorded on Melbourne's buses in 2013–2014, an increase of 10.2 percent on the previous year.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has four airports. Melbourne Airport, at Tullamarine, is the city's main international and domestic gateway and second busiest in Australia. The airport, which comprises four terminals, is home base for passenger airline Jetstar and cargo airlines Australian airExpress and Toll Priority, and is a major hub for Qantas and Virgin Australia. Avalon Airport, located between Melbourne and Geelong, is a secondary hub of Jetstar. It is also used as a freight and maintenance facility. Buses and taxis are the only forms of public transport to and from the city's main airports. A rail link to Tullamarine is planned to open by 2029. Air Ambulance facilities are available for domestic and international transportation of patients. Melbourne also has a significant general aviation airport, Moorabbin Airport in the city's southeast that also handles a small number of passenger flights. Essendon Airport, which was once the city's main airport also handles passenger flights, general aviation and some cargo flights.


title: Melbourne

text: Ship transport is an important component of Melbourne's transport system. The Port of Melbourne is Australia's largest container and general cargo port and also its busiest. The port handled two million shipping containers in a 12-month period during 2007, making it one of the top five ports in the Southern Hemisphere. Station Pier on Port Phillip Bay is the main passenger ship terminal with cruise ships and the Spirit of Tasmania ferries which cross Bass Strait to Devonport, Tasmania docking there. Ferries and water taxis run from berths along the Yarra River as far upstream as South Yarra and across Port Phillip Bay.


title: Melbourne

text: Water storage and supply for Melbourne is managed by Melbourne Water, which is owned by the Victorian Government. The organisation is also responsible for management of sewerage and the major water catchments in the region as well as the Wonthaggi desalination plant and North–South Pipeline. Water is stored in a series of reservoirs located within and outside the Greater Melbourne area. The largest dam, the Thomson River Dam, located in the Victorian Alps, is capable of holding around 60% of Melbourne's water capacity, while smaller dams such as the Upper Yarra Dam, Yan Yean Reservoir, and the Cardinia Reservoir carry secondary supplies.


title: Melbourne

text: Numerous telecommunications companies provide Melbourne with terrestrial and mobile telecommunications services and wireless internet services and at least since 2016 Melbourne offers a free public WiFi which allows for up to 250 MB per device in some areas of the city.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne has a moderately low crime rate, ranking 18th for Personal Security and 9th in the overall Safe City Index in "The Economist" 2021 Safe Cities Index, placing it in the second best category of "high safety" level. Reports of crime in Victoria fell by 13 per cent in 2021 to its lowest in three years, with 5,358.1 cases per 100,000 people and a total of 496,260 offences. Melbourne's city centre (CBD) reported the highest incident rate of local government areas in Victoria, followed by Latrobe and Yarra.


title: Jacob Elordi

text: Jacob Elordi (born 26 June 1997) is an Australian actor. He is known for his roles as Noah Flynn in Netflix's "The Kissing Booth" teen film franchise and Nate Jacobs in the HBO series "Euphoria".


title: Jacob Elordi

text: Elordi was born on 26 June 1997, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia to John and Melissa Elordi. His father emigrated from the Basque Country at the age of eight. He has three older sisters. He attended the Catholic secondary schools of St. Kevin's College, Melbourne and of St Joseph's College, Nudgee in Brisbane.


title: Jacob Elordi

text: Elordi's first experience on a Hollywood film set was in "" as an extra. His first acting role was on the Australian film "Swinging Safari" in 2018, playing the role of Rooster. Elordi came to fame starring as Noah Flynn in the Netflix romantic comedy film "The Kissing Booth", which premiered in May 2018. He reprised the role in the sequel "The Kissing Booth 2", which filmed in mid-2019 in Cape Town and was released in July 2020. He also starred in the third film in the series, "The Kissing Booth 3", which was released on Netflix on 11 August 2021.


title: Jacob Elordi

text: In 2019, Elordi starred in the horror film "The Mortuary Collection" and began playing Nate Jacobs in the HBO television series "Euphoria".


title: Jacob Elordi

text: Elordi is set to star in Emerald Fennell's upcoming thriller "Saltburn" and in cinematographer Sean Price Williams' "The Sweet East".


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Edward Lodewijk Van Halen ( , ; January 26, 1955 – October 6, 2020) was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, keyboardist, backing vocalist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded alongside his brother Alex Van Halen in 1972.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players in rock history, and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on January 26, 1955, the son of Jan van Halen and Eugenia (née van Beers). His father was a Dutch jazz pianist, clarinettist, and saxophonist, while his mother was an Indo (Eurasian) woman from Rangkasbitung on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The family eventually settled in Nijmegen, Netherlands.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: After experiencing mistreatment for their mixed-race relationship in the 1950s, the parents moved the family to the U.S. in 1962. They settled near other family members in Pasadena, California, where Eddie and his brother Alex attended a segregated elementary school. Since the boys did not speak English as a first language, they were considered "minority" students and experienced bullying by white students. They began learning the piano at age six, commuting from Pasadena to San Pedro, Los Angeles, to study with an elderly piano teacher, Stasys Kalvaitis.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen was never taught to read music; instead, he watched recitals of Bach or Mozart repertoire and improvised. Between 1964 and 1967, he won first place in the annual piano competition at Long Beach City College. His parents wanted the boys to be classical pianists, but Van Halen gravitated towards rock music, and was greatly influenced by 1960's British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. Consequently, when Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drum kit; however, after he heard Alex's performance of the Surfaris' drum solo on the song "Wipe Out", he gave Alex the drums and began learning the electric guitar. According to him, as a teen he often practiced while walking around at home with his guitar strapped on, or sitting in his room for hours with the door locked.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Eddie and Alex formed their first band with three other boys, called themselves "The Broken Combs", and performed at lunchtime at Hamilton Elementary School in Pasadena when he was in the fourth grade. He later cited this performance as key to his desire to become a professional musician. He described supergroup Cream's "I'm So Glad" on the album "Goodbye" as "mind-blowing". He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream note for note. "I've always said Eric Clapton was my main influence," he said, "but Jimmy Page was actually more the way I am, in a reckless-abandon kind of way." Speaking at an event at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 2015, Van Halen discussed his life and the American Dream, saying "We came here with approximately $50 and a piano, and we didn't speak the language. Now look where we are. If that's not the American dream, what is?"


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Eddie and his brother Alex formed the band Mammoth in 1972. Two years later, David Lee Roth joined Mammoth as lead singer and Mammoth officially changed its name to Van Halen and became a staple of the Los Angeles music scene, playing at well-known clubs like the Whisky a Go Go.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: At a 1976 concert at The Starwood in California, the band opened for UFO. Kiss bassist Gene Simmons saw the performance, and said, "I was waiting backstage by the third song." He asked the band about their plans, and they said, "There is a yogurt manufacturer that is going to invest in us." Gene begged them not to go that route and invited them to record some demos at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village in New York City. Gene then signed them to his company and the band recorded early demos of their songs, including "Runnin' with the Devil". Excited about the band, Gene approached Kiss manager Bill Aucoin and Kiss frontman Paul Stanley about them, but they dismissed his desire to sign them to Aucoin's management fold. Stanley later said he "rejected Van Halen to protect Kiss", and that they made an effort to make Gene drop the band to "keep Gene in check". The discouraging words caused Gene to rip up the contract, and he “let them go” after feeling he may have held the band back.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Eddie remained on good terms with Gene. It was rumored that Eddie nearly replaced guitarist Ace Frehley after his departure from Kiss in 1982, but that Gene talked him out of leaving Van Halen. However, neither Paul Stanley nor Eddie Van Halen remember this happening. Stanley does remember Eddie coming down to the studio, being "blown away" by their song "Creatures of the Night", and telling Stanley he wanted to get into playing keyboards. Stanley was confused at Eddie's interest in keyboards, but his interest resulted in the creation of "Jump".


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: The band's 1978 album "Van Halen" reached #19 on the "Billboard" pop music charts and was one of rock's most commercially successful debuts, highly regarded as both a heavy metal and hard rock album. By the early 1980s, Van Halen was one of the most successful rock acts of the time.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Eddie recorded the solo on the Michael Jackson song "Beat It" when The Who guitarist Pete Townshend became unavailable and recommended him. Eddie met with Quincy Jones and Jackson. Unsure of what he could add to a pop song, he played along with the song and ended up restructuring it and adding the classic solo. In a 2012 CNN interview, he said, "I listened to the song, and I immediately go, 'Can I change some parts?' I turned to the engineer and I go, 'OK, from the breakdown, chop in this part, go to this piece, pre-chorus, to the chorus, out.' Took him maybe 10 minutes to put it together. And I proceeded to improvise two solos over it." He added, "I was just finishing the second solo when Michael walked in. And you know artists are kind of crazy people. We're all a little bit strange. I didn't know how he would react to what I was doing. So I warned him before he listened. I said, 'Look, I changed the middle section of your song.' Now in my mind, he's either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he's going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, 'Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better." Eddie was so pleased he refused payment for his work. Ironically, Jackson's "Thriller" went to the #1 spot on the charts, pushing Van Halen's album, "1984", to #2. "1984" went five-times Platinum a year after its release. Its lead single "Jump" became the band's first and only #1 pop hit and brought them a Grammy nomination.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: The band won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocals for the album "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge". In 2019, the band ranked 20th on the RIAA list of best-selling artists, with 56 million album sales in the United States and more than 100 million worldwide. Additionally, Van Halen charted 13 number-one hits in the history of "Billboard"s Mainstream Rock chart; meanwhile, VH1 ranked the band seventh on a list of the top 100 hard rock artists of all time, and, in 2007, Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Individually, Van Halen received acclaim for his guitar work in the band.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen engaged in several projects outside of his eponymous band, including solo work and partnerships with his brother on film soundtracks (such as "The Wild Life", "Twister", and "Sacred Sin") as well as musical collaborations with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, singer/songwriter Nicolette Larson, Queen guitarist Brian May, Sammy Hagar, Black Sabbath, Roger Waters, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, and LL Cool J. In 1982, he contributed the guitar solo to "Beat It", for Michael Jackson's "Thriller", which became the biggest selling album of all time. In addition, Van Halen made cameo appearances in the music video for Frank Sinatra's "L.A. Is My Lady", an episode of "Café Americain" starring his then-wife Valerie Bertinelli, and an episode of "Two and a Half Men".


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: His first guitar, purchased as a child from Sears and Roebuck, was a Teisco Del Ray. He played the guitar in his elementary school band, The Broken Combs.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen was an inveterate tinkerer, and played many custom-built and heavily modified guitars, especially early in his career. Upon embarking on his professional music career, he purchased a Gibson Les Paul, for which he replaced the original P90 pickup on the bridge with a humbucker in order to sound like Eric Clapton. He later bought and briefly used a Gibson ES-335, also because of its association with Clapton, though he damaged the body while modifying it and it later became canibalized for parts on numerous other home-build guitar projects. He also owned an Ibanez Destroyer that was used extensively on the debut "Van Halen" album. Originally used in its natural wood finish, he later painted it white and made several modifications to the electronics. After recording the album, he used a chainsaw to drastically modify the body shape, cutting a deep V into the bottom of the guitar, and painting it in a similar way to his later, more famous, Frankenstrat. Inset into the V, he hand carved teeth and set two eyehooks and chains; the new distinctive shape led to it being nicknamed "The Shark". He only played it for a short time in this state, however, as the modifications changed the tone of the guitar in an unsatisfactory way; he did retain the guitar for the rest of his life, remaining in his collection until his death. The final state of the Shark can be seen on the cover of "Women and Children First", where he posed with the guitar.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: He is most associated with the Frankenstrat, a custom guitar he built from parts. The maple neck cost $80, while the ash body was bought for $50 as the wood had a knot in it. The tremolo arm was originally taken from a 1958 Fender Stratocaster, and was later replaced with a Floyd Rose arm. He frequently replaced the neck on the guitar, going through a number of different ones through the years, and the pickup configuration was also frequently changed. In its most commonly used configuration, the guitar had a single functional pickup, a Gibson PAF (patent applied for) bridge pickup from his ES-335, which he enclosed with paraffin wax to prevent feedback. The middle pickup was removed and in its place he had stuffed a non-functional selector switch and random wires, while the neck pickup slot was replaced with a red single-coil pickup, that was also non-functional. The original selector switches and tone knobs were removed, and the volume knob was replaced with a knob labeled "TONE". The Frankenstrat, as shown on the cover of Van Halen I, was originally painted black, but was recoated with Schwinn red bicycle paint in 1979.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Before and during the recording of Van Halen II, he built a second "partscaster" guitar painted in a distinctive black-and-yellow striped paint job that earned it the moniker "The Bumblebee Guitar". That guitar was later donated to Rita Haney, the longtime partner of Dimebag Darrell Abbott, shortly after his death; it was placed in his casket and buried along with him.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Eddie Van Halen used a mini-Les Paul guitar for "Little Guitars" (Diver Down). This is the only Van Halen recording that the guitar was used for. The mini-Les Paul was made by Nashville luthier David Petschulat and was pitched and sold to him during a tour stop in Nashville, Tennessee. He later purchased a second mini-LP guitar, built to slightly different specs, the first being a honey-sunburst with mini-humbuckers, and the second being dark wine-red with a thicker body and full-size humbuckers. In 1982, Van Halen made his first guitar endorsement by launching the 5150 Baretta model with Kramer. This partnership lasted a decade. In the mid 1980s, he purchased a Steinberger GL2T guitar. Its distinctive switch-operated vibrato system can be heard on the "5150" album. In 1991, Van Halen began working with Ernie Ball / Music Man, developing the Music Man EVH model guitar — a partnership that lasted until 1995. In 1996, Van Halen teamed up with Peavey, where they developed the Peavey EVH Wolfgang; this relationship lasted until 2004, when Van Halen joined forces with Fender, initially releasing the Edward-endorsed Art Series guitars under Fender's Charvel brand and later developing the EVH brand. In 2006, Fender created the "Frank 2", a near-perfect production replica of the original Frankenstrat; Van Halen later claimed that when presented the two guitars in a blind comparison, he had some trouble picking out the original home-made guitar from Fender's production replica.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: For Van Halen's 2012 tour, and early 2015 television appearances, he used a Wolfgang USA guitar with a black finish and ebony fretboard. For the 2015 tour, he used a white Wolfgang USA guitar designed by Chip Ellis, featuring a custom kill switch.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen's first string endorsement deal happened around 1989 when Ernie Ball launched the 5150 EVH line of guitar strings. The gauge of the strings differed slightly from typical electric guitar strings at the time, which were 9, 11, 16, 24, 32 and 42 (in thousandths of an inch) - the EVH Ernie Ball strings measured 9, 11, 15, 24, 32 and 40. After this endorsement deal ended, guitar strings became part of the Fender EVH line and are now sold as EVH Premium Strings.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen used a variety of pickups, including 1970s Mighty Mites, which were made by Seymour Duncan and were copies of DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups. He also used Gibson PAFs, one of which was rewound by Seymour Duncan in 1978.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In an interview with "Guitar World" in 1985, Van Halen stated that his guitar sound style which he called "brown sound" is "...basically a tone, a feeling that I'm always working at ... It comes from the person. If the person doesn't even know what that type of tone I'm talking about is, they can't really work towards it, can they?" In an interview with "Billboard" magazine in June 2015, he stated that with the expression "brown sound" he actually tried to describe the sound of his brother Alex's snare drum, which he thought "...sounds like he’s beating on a log. It’s very organic. So it wasn’t my brown sound. It was Alex's."


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: The first recorded keyboard work by Van Halen is "And the Cradle Will Rock...", written and performed on a Wurlitzer electric piano through a Marshall amp. The riff for "Dancing in the Street" (on "Diver Down") was written and performed on Minimoog. "Jump" and "I'll Wait" were written and performed on Oberheim OB-Xa, while "Dreams", "Why Can't This Be Love" and "Love Walks In" are with Oberheim OB-8. Eddie also wrote "When It's Love" and "Right Now" on keyboards.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: During the 5150 and OU812 tours, Eddie Van Halen would play keyboard parts live while Hagar played the guitar. From the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge tour, Van Halen played guitar throughout the concerts, while the keyboards were played backstage by touring keyboardist Alan Fitzgerald up through 2004, a fact kept low-key in the press.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In 1993, Van Halen collaborated with Peavey Electronics to develop a series of amplifiers and cabinets, collectively called the 5150 series, which ended in 2004. Van Halen then began work with Fender, developing the EVH products and brand.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In 2007, the first EVH branded amplifiers were produced by Fender, followed shortly after by a limited-edition "Frankenstrat" inspired guitar.  In 2009, they continued to press forward on the guitar front by releasing the Wolfgang-inspired EVH guitar line. The brand has since expanded to include additional guitars and accessories.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen was awarded three patents related to guitars: a folding prop to support a guitar in a flat position, a tension-adjusting tailpiece, and an ornamental design for a headstock.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen's 1978 instrumental solo "Eruption", which was voted number 2 in "Guitar World"s readers poll of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos", showcased the tapping technique, which uses both left and right hands on the guitar neck. Although he popularized tapping, he did not invent the technique. According to MusicRadar, Steve Hackettlead guitarist with Genesis in the 1970sis "widely credited with inventing two-handed tapping" and was an influence on Van Halen. When asked about this, Hackett said, "Eddie and I have never spoken about it, but yes, he has credited me with tapping... Eddie is a fine player, of course, and he's the one who named the technique."


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: George Lynch said in an interview that he and Van Halen saw Harvey Mandel tap at the Starwood in the 1970s. Van Halen named Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin as an influence, saying in one interview with "Guitar World":


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Until it expired in 2005, Van Halen held a patent for a flip-out support device that attaches to the rear of the electric guitar. This device enables the user to employ the tapping technique by playing the guitar in a manner similar to the piano with the face of the guitar oriented upward instead of forward.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In 1980, Van Halen met actress Valerie Bertinelli at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana. They married in California eight months later on April 11, 1981, and had one son, Wolfgang, in 1991. In 2005, Bertinelli filed for divorce in Los Angeles after four years of separation. The divorce was finalized in 2007.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: The following year, Eddie proposed to his girlfriend, Janie Liszewski, an actress and stuntwoman who was Van Halen's publicist at the time. The two married in 2009 at his Studio City estate, with his son Wolfgang and ex-wife Bertinelli in attendance. His brother Alex Van Halen is an ordained minister, and he officiated Eddie's 2009 wedding and that of his former sister-in-law, Valerie Bertinelli, when she remarried in 2011.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Van Halen struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He began smoking and drinking at the age of 12, and he stated that he eventually needed alcohol to function. He entered rehabilitation in 2007, and later shared in a 2015 interview that he had been sober since 2008.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: Suffering from lingering injuries from past, high-risk, acrobatic stage performances and crashes, Eddie underwent hip replacement surgery in 1999, after his chronic avascular necrosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1995, became unbearable. He began receiving treatment for tongue cancer in 2000. The subsequent surgery removed roughly a third of his tongue. He was declared cancer-free in 2002. He blamed the tongue cancer on his habit of holding guitar picks in his mouth, stating in 2015: "I used metal picks – they're brass and copper – which I always held in my mouth, in the exact place where I got the tongue cancer. ... I mean, I was smoking and doing a lot of drugs and a lot of everything. But at the same time, my lungs are totally clear. This is just my own theory, but the doctors say it's possible."


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In 2012, Van Halen underwent emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis. Recovery time required due to the surgery led to postponement of Van Halen tour dates scheduled in Japan. Van Halen was later hospitalized in 2019 after battling throat cancer over the previous five years, and his ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli also mentioned a battle with lung cancer in an Instagram post shortly after his death. He died of a stroke at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on October 6, 2020, at the age of 65, surrounded by his wife, Janie; son and current (at the time) bassist of Van Halen, Wolfgang; ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli; and brother and co-founder/drummer of Van Halen, Alex. His son, Wolfgang, confirmed his death on social media later that same day. Some of Van Halen's childhood landmarks in Pasadena became memorials where fans could pay their respects.


title: Eddie Van Halen

text: In February 2017, Van Halen donated 75 guitars from his personal collection to The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, a program that provides musical instruments to students in low-income schools. At the 2020 Billboard Music Awards, Eddie Van Halen was honored by several former musicians he worked with. Jack White from The White Stripes, G. E. Smith, Charlie Benante from Anthrax, and Dierks Bentley gave speeches as a tribute to his career. Wolfgang Van Halen also shared several personal photos between him and his father. On October 10, 2020, "Saturday Night Live" paid tribute by playing a clip of him performing with G. E. Smith from a February 1987 show, which was hosted by Valerie Bertinelli. In 2020, the Pasadena Library, located in Pasadena, California, offered several archives and documents related to Eddie Van Halen. The collection included several albums, along with photographs by Neil Zlozower, and several CDs. The library also uploaded Van Halen's albums to Hoopla. On November 16, 2020, his son Wolfgang Van Halen announced on "The Howard Stern Show" that Van Halen would not continue as a band, saying "You can't have Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen". The Red Hot Chili Peppers paid tribute to Van Halen on their song "Eddie" from their 2022 album "Return of the Dream Canteen".


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Ronnie Dean Coleman (born May 13, 1964) is an American retired professional bodybuilder. The winner of the Mr. Olympia title for eight consecutive years, he is widely regarded as either 'the greatest' or one of the two greatest bodybuilders of all time along-with Arnold Schwarzenegger and as the most dominant bodybuilding physique ever to grace the stage. Winner of 26 IFBB professional titles, he is also renowned for his combination of size and conditioning, dominant body-parts and extremely heavy workouts, making him the strongest bodybuilder and Mr. Olympia of all time.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Ronnie Dean Coleman was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on May 13, 1964. He graduated cum laude from Grambling State University in 1984 with a BSc in accounting. While there, he played football as a middle linebacker with the GSU Tigers under coach Eddie Robinson. After graduation, he failed to find work as an accountant and instead went to work at Domino's Pizza, where he would eat the complimentary pizza every day due to being so poor that he could barely afford to eat outside of work. He then became a police officer in Arlington, Texas, serving as an officer from 1989 to 2000 and a reserve officer until 2003.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Coleman's fellow officer Gustavo Arlotta suggested he attend the Metroflex gym, owned by amateur bodybuilder Brian Dobson. Dobson offered Coleman a free lifetime membership if he allowed Dobson to train him for the upcoming 1990 Mr. Texas bodybuilding competition. After training for Mr. Texas, Coleman won first place in both the heavyweight and overall categories. He also defeated Dobson himself. Coleman won his first competition as a professional, the Canada Pro Cup, in 1995. The following year, he won the contest again, then went on to win the 1997 Russian Grand Prix. He also participated in powerlifting competitions in the mid-1990s.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: His rise at the top in the professional circuit of bodybuilding was relatively slow: for his first participation at the Mr. Olympia contest (the most prestigious worldwide) in 1992, he wasn't ranked; then in 1994 he placed 15th, then 10th in 1995, 6th in 1996, and 9th in 1997 when Dorian Yates won his sixth and last title before retiring. The following year, Kenneth Wheeler was favored to become the 10th individual Mr. Olympia titleholder, with predominant competition coming from Nasser El Sonbaty, Kevin Levrone, and Shawn Ray. However, Coleman—whose Night of Champions victory earlier in the year had considerably elevated his esteem in the bodybuilding world—brought substantial improvements to the stage and went on to defeat Wheeler by three points for his first Mr. Olympia win. Coleman defended his title all the way through the 2005 contest, earning a total of eight consecutive victories and tying Lee Haney as the most successful Mr. Olympia in history. In 2001, he became the first man to win both the Arnold Classic and the Mr. Olympia titles the same year (only Dexter Jackson has repeated this feat, in 2008). Coleman's reign as Mr. Olympia came to an end in 2006 when Jay Cutler, the three-time consecutive runner-up heading into the contest, finally earned his first win. It was only the second time in contest history that a reigning multi-champion Mr. Olympia had lost his title (as opposed to retiring). The previous instance occurred when Arnold Schwarzenegger defeated Sergio Oliva in 1970. Coleman made his final Mr. Olympia appearance in 2007, placing 4th.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Coleman's success as a professional bodybuilder has led to many product endorsements and other opportunities in his career, which he has traveled the world to promote. He has made many guest appearances at gym openings around the U.S. When training, he preferred to use free weights rather than machines in order to maximize his flexibility and range of motion. He has made three training videos: "The Unbelievable", "The Cost of Redemption", and "On the Road". In these videos, he gives tips for more experienced weightlifters, while warning against overexertion and improper form.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Coleman supports the Inner City Games, an organization co-founded by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1991. He was the recipient of the 2001 Admiral in the Texas Navy Certificate Award from Texas Governor Rick Perry for outstanding achievements in bodybuilding and for the promotion of physical fitness. In 2011, he launched Ronnie Coleman Signature Series, a company that provides sports nutrition and wellness products for bodybuilders and other athletes.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: The extreme weights Coleman used over the course of his career competing as a powerlifter and bodybuilder, such as squats and deadlifts with 800 lbs, took a toll on his body and he has undergone numerous surgeries since 2007. These include two hip replacements and various attempts at alleviating chronic pain from damaged intervertebral discs. He has continued to train despite his deteriorated condition, but can only use light weights now, to try to prevent muscle loss as of 2018, and some of his surgeries (each one costing between $300,000 and $500,000) had such poor outcomes that he may never be able to walk unassisted again. Coleman uses a wheelchair if he has to travel long distances. However, he has said that he does not regret his choices and admits that he was determined to be the best bodybuilder at any cost; he said that, if anything, he regrets not having done even more to consolidate his legacy.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: In 2018, Vlad Yudin documented Coleman's life and career in the Netflix documentary "Ronnie Coleman: The King". For the film's credits, rapper Quan made a song called "Flexin' on Them (Ronnie Coleman)" inspired by Coleman's bodybuilding career.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: With his trademark high-pitched voice, some of the vocal gimmicks Coleman popularized in his training videos have become commonplace in the global bodybuilding community, especially after the advent of viral videos. The most popular of these, which he regularly shouted to himself as a form of self-encouragement, include "Yeah buddy!", "Light weight, baby!", and "Ain't nothin' but a peanut!"


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: Coleman is a devout Christian. He met French-Lebanese personal trainer Rouaida Christine Achkar at a sports exposition in Paris in March 1998, and they were married in Beirut on December 28, 2007. They divorced soon after. Coleman married American personal trainer Susan Williamson on April 11, 2016. They reside in Arlington, Texas, and have four children together.


title: Ronnie Coleman

text: In June 2020, Coleman revealed that he can no longer walk unassisted due to botched surgical procedures. Saying that he may never walk again, Coleman blamed his problems on questionable surgeries and noted that his last 3 surgeries cost a total of $2 million.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex performed on the vulva or vagina, while fellatio is oral sex performed on the penis. Anilingus, another form of oral sex, is oral stimulation of the anus.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex may be performed as foreplay to incite sexual arousal before other sexual activities (such as vaginal or anal intercourse), or as an erotic and physically intimate act in its own right. Like most forms of sexual activity, oral sex can pose a risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs/STDs). However, the transmission risk for oral sex, especially HIV transmission, is significantly lower than for vaginal or anal sex.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex is often regarded as taboo, but most countries do not have laws which ban the practice. Commonly, people do not regard oral sex as affecting the virginity of either partner, though opinions on the matter vary. People may also have negative feelings or sexual inhibitions about giving or receiving oral sex, or may flatly refuse to engage in the practice.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth or throat, and may take various forms. During facesitting the receiver sits on the giver's face and pushes into it with his or her genitals. Oral sex can also be performed by both partners at the same time in the so-called "sixty-nine" position. Spitting and/or swallowing of the ejaculatory fluids or giving a pearl necklace may cause different sexual stimulations. Autofellatio is a possible but rare variant; autocunnilingus may also be possible for women with extremely flexible spines.


title: Oral sex

text: An act of group sex restricted to one woman giving oral sex to several men is referred to as a "gangsuck", "blowbang" or "lineup", all derivatives of the slang term "gang bang" for group sex. Bukkake and gokkun may also involve oral sex.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex may be practised to preserve virginity, especially among heterosexual pairings; this is sometimes termed "technical virginity" (which may include anal sex, mutual masturbation and other non-penetrative sex acts, but excludes penile-vaginal sex). The concept of "technical virginity" or sexual abstinence through oral sex is popular among teenagers.


title: Oral sex

text: Gay males who regard oral sex as a way of maintaining their virginities view penile-anal penetration as resulting in virginity loss, while other gay males may define oral sex as their main form of sexual activity. By contrast, lesbian pairings commonly view oral sex or fingering as resulting in virginity loss, though definitions of virginity loss vary among lesbians as well.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex alone does not result in pregnancy and heterosexual couples may engage in oral sex for contraception reasons. For conception to take place, sperm from the penis must enter the uterus and fallopian tubes and fertilize the female's egg. In humans, there is no connection between the gastrointestinal system and the reproductive system, and sperm ingested by the woman would be killed and broken down by acids in her stomach and proteins in the small intestine. The breakdown products are then absorbed as a negligible quantity of nutrients. However, there is a potential risk of pregnancy if semen comes in contact with the vaginal area in some way, such as semen in the ejaculate finding its way onto fingers, hands, or other body parts, which then comes in contact with the vaginal area.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex is not necessarily an effective method of preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), although some forms of STIs are believed to be less commonly spread in this way, and oral sex has been recommended as a form of safe sex. In the United States, no barrier methods for use during oral sex have been evaluated as effective by the Food and Drug Administration. However, a barrier protection like a condom for fellatio or dental dam for cunnilingus can offer some protection from contact when practicing oral sex.


title: Oral sex

text: Oral sex should be limited to the protected areas. A makeshift dental dam can be made out of a condom or a latex or nitrile glove, but using a real dental dam is seen as preferable; this is because real dental dams cover a larger area, avoid accidents caused by "slipping" outside the covered area, and avoid the risk that makeshift versions may be accidentally damaged or poked with the scissors during the cutting procedure. Plastic wrap may also be used as a barrier during oral sex, but there exists no conclusive scientific research regarding how effective it may or may not be at preventing disease transmission. Certain kinds of plastic wrap are manufactured to be microwaveable and are designed to have pores that open when heated, but there also exists no scientific research on what effect, if any, this has on disease transmission when used during oral sex. Some people complain that the thickness of the plastic dulls sensation.


title: Oral sex

text: A report issued by the National Center for Health Statistics in 2005 was the basis of an article in the 26 September 2005 issue of "Time" magazine. The report comes from the results of a computer-administered survey of over 12,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 44, and states that over half the teenagers questioned have had oral sex. While some headlines have interpreted this as evidence that oral sex among teenagers is "on the rise", this was the first comprehensive study of its kind to examine the matter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in 2009: "Studies indicate that oral sex is commonly practiced by sexually active male-female and same-gender couples of various ages, including adolescents." Research also indicates that "males are more likely than females to have received oral sex, whereas equal proportions of men and women have given oral sex."


title: Oral sex

text: Some sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such as Chlamydia and human papillomavirus (HPV), can be transmitted through oral sex. Any sexual exchange of bodily fluids with a person infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, poses a risk of infection. Risk of STI infection, however, is generally considered significantly lower for oral sex than for vaginal or anal sex, with HIV transmission considered the lowest risk with regard to oral sex.