A Birthday

I thought I should post about a little date of local note.

Today (30 August 2010) is my adoptive city Melbourne’s 175th birthday.

So on this day in 1835 settlers who had sailed from Tasmania (now our smallest state, back then the second British colony in Australia) came ashore from the schooner Enterprize and began clearing for vegetable gardens and buildings.

Since then Melbourne has grown to a city of 4,000,000 souls.

One of Melbourne’s icons is the tram system, featuring modern and not so modern trams.Melbourne is a mix of old buildings and new.

In any area you can see a palimpsest of old and new.
The old is valued for its own sake and there are strict heritage laws to protect buildings of cultural or historical value.Of course sometimes this can cause problems for developers. For example this old factory (a shot tower) was where a developer wanted to build a new shopping centre.But then again, with a little creativity you build around the old (without harming it) and end up with something interesting.