Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

If you ever find yourself in the Southern hemisphere and landing in the second largest city of Australia, it might be helpful to know that this city’s name is pronounced closer to Mel-bin, as opposed to Mel-born, a mistake travelers might easily make, considering the spelling of the city’s name: Melbourne.  I recently made the same mistake myself when speaking to an Australian resident.  He assured me there was no “born” in Melbourne, in one of those quirks of pronounciations that tend to confuse visitors, somewhat in the same way New Orleans, if you’re in Louisiana, is usually pronounced N’awlins.

Of course, like many world class cities, it wasn’t always known by the same name.  The settlement was first known as Bearbrass, but by 1837, the name changed to honor the 2nd Viscount Melbourne, William Lamb.  Ten years after that, Melbourne officially became a city, declared by Queen Victoria, and it became the capital city of the Victoria colony.  Like California on the opposite side of the world, in the 1850s, Melborne experienced a gold rush, known as the Victorian gold rush, and it was this period that molded Melbourne into one of the great cities of the world.  When nation of Australia was createad in 1901, Melbourne was its first center of government.  Today, if you find yourself in a Melbourne luxury hotel, outside your door, you will find a city that is now a center for a whole range of entertainments:  Here is the city in which Australian film and televison was born; it’s where the Heidelberg School of art (the impressionist art movement) began.  From film to dance to music to sports, the city well deserves its title as Australia’s cultural capital.

In another recent talk, I learned that four million residents of Melbourne are also called Melburnians.  Why not Melbinians?  I’m not sure.  Looks like I’m going to have to go back to my friend from Australian with even more questions.

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Filed by Herbert Jones at 1:31 pm under Art,Travel
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