Melbourne Map

• In 2006, 35.8% of Melbourne's population was born overseas, exceeding the national average of 23.1%. In concordance with national data, Britain is the most commonly reported overseas place of birth, with 4.7%, followed by Italy (2.1%), Vietnam (1.6%), China (1.5%), and New Zealand (1.5%). Melbourne has the world's third largest Greek-speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki (Melbourne's Greek sister city), and the Vietnamese surname Nguyen is the second most common in Melbourne's phone book. The city also features substantial Indian, Sri Lankan, and Malaysian-born communities, in addition to recent South African and Sudanese influxes. The cultural diversity is reflected in the city's restaurants serving various international cuisines.

• Over two-thirds of Melburnians speak only English at home (68.1%). Chinese (mainly Cantonese and Mandarin) is the second most common language spoken at home (3.6%), with Greek third, Italian fourth and Vietnamese fifth, each with over 100,000 speakers. Although Victoria's net interstate migration has fluctuated, the Melbourne statistical division has grown by approximately 50,000 people a year since 2003. Melbourne has now attracted the largest proportion of international overseas immigrants (48,000) finding it outpacing Sydney's international migrant intake, along with having strong interstate migration from Sydney and other capitals due to more affordable housing and cost of living, which have been two recent key factors driving Melbourne's growth.

• 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. Despite a demographic study stating that Melbourne could overtake Sydney in population by 2028, the ABS has projected in two scenarios that Sydney will remain larger than Melbourne beyond 2056, albeit by a margin of less than 3% compared to a margin of 12% today. However, the first scenario projects that Melbourne's population overtakes Sydney in 2039, primarily due to larger levels of internal migration losses assumed for Sydney.

• 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 blueprints, such as Postcode 3000 and Melbourne 2030 which have aimed to curtail the urban sprawl.

• 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. Melbourne survived the financial crisis of 2007–2010 better than any other Australian city. In 2009, more new jobs were created in Melbourne than any other Australian capital – almost as many as the next two fastest growing cities, Brisbane and Perth, combined. and Melbourne's property market remained strong, resulting in historically high property prices and widespread rent increases.

• Three daily newspapers serve Melbourne: the Herald Sun (tabloid), The Age (broadsheet) and The Australian (national broadsheet). The free mX is also distributed weekday afternoon at railway stations and on the streets of central Melbourne. Five television networks and a community television station serve Melbourne: HSV-7, which broadcasts from the Melbourne Docklands precinct; GTV-9, which broadcasts from their new Docklands studios; and ATV-10, which broadcasts from the Como Complex in South Yarra. National stations that broadcast into Melbourne include ABV-2 (branded ABC1) from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The ABC has two studios, one at Ripponlea and another at Southbank. SBS One from the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), broadcasts from their studios at Federation Square in central Melbourne.

• New digital-only channels available in addition to ABC1, HSV-7 (Seven), GTV-9 (Nine), ATV-10 (Ten) and SBS One include One HD, Eleven, ABC2, ABC3, ABC News 24, SBS Two, 7Two, 7mate, GEM HD and GO!. C31 Melbourne is the only local community television station in Melbourne, and its broadcast range also branches out to regional centre Geelong. Melbourne also receives Pay TV, largely through cable and satellite services. Foxtel and Optus are the main Pay TV providers. Various television programs are produced in Melbourne, notably Neighbours, Kath & Kim, Hey Hey It's Saturday, Blue Heelers, Rush and Underbelly.

• A long list of AM and FM radio stations broadcast to greater Melbourne. These include 'public' (i.e. state owned ABC & SBS) and community stations. Many commercial stations are networked-owned: DMG has Nova 100 and Classic Rock; ARN controls Gold and Mix; and Austereo runs both Fox and Triple M. Stations from towns in regional Victoria may also be heard (e.g. 93.9 Bay FM, Geelong ). Youth alternatives include ABC Triple J and youth run SYN. Triple J, and similarly PBS and Triple R, strive to play under represented music. JOY caters for gay and lesbian audiences. For fans of classical music there are 3MBS and ABC Classic FM. AM stations include ABC: 774, Radio National, and News Radio; and also Fairfax affiliates 3AW (talk) and Magic (easy listening). For sport fans and enthusiasts there is SEN 1116. 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.

• Melbourne has a moderate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) and is well known for its changeable weather conditions. This is mainly due to Melbourne's location situated on the boundary of the very hot inland areas and the cold southern ocean. This temperature differential is most pronounced in the spring and summer months and can cause very strong cold fronts to form. These cold fronts can be responsible for all sorts of severe weather from gales to severe thunderstorms and hail, large temperature drops, and heavy rain.

• Port Phillip is often warmer than the surrounding oceans and/or the land mass, particularly in spring and autumn; this can set up a kind of "bay effect" similar to the "lake effect" seen in the United States 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 of time, whilst the rest of Melbourne and surrounds stays dry.

• 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 contain hail and squalls and significant drops in temperature, but they pass through very quickly at times with a rapid clearing trend to sunny and relatively calm weather and the temperature rising back to what it was before the shower. This occurs often in the space of minutes and can be repeated many times in a day, giving Melbourne a reputation for having "four seasons in one day", a phrase that is part of local popular culture and familiar to many visitors to the city.

• Melbourne is colder than other mainland Australian state capital cities in the winter. The lowest temperature on record is −2.8 °C (27.0 °F), on 4 July 1901. However, snowfalls are rare: the most recent occurrence of sleet in the CBD was on 25 July 1986 and the most recent snowfalls in the outer eastern suburbs and Mount Dandenong were on 10 August 2005. More commonly, Melbourne experiences frosts and fog in winter. Melbourne summers are notable for occasional days of extreme heat. The highest temperature recorded was 46.4 °C (115.5 °F), on 7 February 2009.

• The economic boom of the Victorian gold rush peaked during the 1880s and Melbourne had become the richest city in the world and the largest city after London in the British Empire. Melbourne hosted two international exhibitions at the large purpose-built Exhibition Building between 1880 and 1890, spurring the construction of several prestigious hotels including the Menzies, Federal and the Grand (Windsor).

• During an 1885 visit, English journalist George Augustus Henry Sala coined the phrase "Marvellous Melbourne", which stuck long into the twentieth century and is still used today by Melburnians. Growing building activity culminated in a "land boom" which, in 1888, reached a peak of speculative development fuelled by consumer confidence and escalating land value. As a result of the boom, large commercial buildings, 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; most notably 1889's APA (The Australian) Building, the world's tallest office building upon completion and Melbourne's tallest for over half a century. This period also saw the expansion of a major radial rail-based transport network.

• A brash boosterism that had typified Melbourne during this time ended in 1891 with a severe depression of the city's economy, sending the local finance and property industries into a period of chaos during which 16 small 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 the Australian banking crisis of 1893. The effects of the depression on the city were profound, although it recovered enough to grow slowly during the early twentieth century.