Interpretation

Twentieth century walking tour

Twentieth century walking tour

The 20th century saw many aesthetic, engineering and technological developments in architecture. Throughout Melbourne there are many wonderful examples of the innovation and beauty of modern architecture.

Twentieth century walking tour of the Melbourne's Central Business District (CBD).

Gardens of the Goldfields

Who would dare plan an English country garden, in the goldfields in 1857?

The gold miners. Only a few short years after the rushes commenced, the miners at Ballarat and Bendigo and the townspeople at Malmsbury dreamt of shady trees, green lawns, lakes and ducks, flowers beds and bandstands...

Gardens of the Goldfields (PDF 630 kb)

See Yup temple, South Melbourne

Many Chinese people came to Victoria during the 1850s for the Gold Rush. The See Yup (four districts) people came from the Pearl River delta in the Guangdong Province to seek their fortune.

To care for their fellow members’ material and spiritual needs, the See Yup community built a modest clubhouse and temple in 1856.

The See Yup temple is on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Bendigo pottery

In the 1880s,the Pottery was a giant success story - referred to as Bendigo’s “second great industry” after gold.

Bendigo pottery (PDF 737 KB)

Tanswell's Hotel

Beechworth is a Gold Rush town, and Tanswell’s Commercial Hotel is a Gold Rush pub. In the wake of the Rush, Beechworth became the administrative and legal centre for north-east Victoria, and an important coaching and trade stop on the route connecting Melbourne and Sydney.

Essendon Incinerator

The Incinerator is an industrial building designed to be beautiful as well as functional.

The American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Griffin championed an inventive approach to industrial architecture, designed to integrate into the surrounding environment.

Coop's Shot Tower

Towering over the surrounding buildings until the 1980s, the shot tower stood as a loved Melbourne city landmark.

Woodlands, Greenvale

The Woodlands homestead and outbuildings (main stables, tutor's cottage, a stables/piggery, external toilet block, men's quarters, chicken coops, two tank sheds, and a garage) are located in the 646 acre Woodlands Historic Park.

Woodlands (PDF 206 KB)

Rupertswood Mansion, Sunbury

Rupertswood Mansion, built for Sir William Clarke at Sunbury in 1874-76, was one of the largest houses built in Victoria in the nineteenth century.

Malmsbury Botanic Gardens

The design of the Malmsbury Botanic Gardens takes advantage of natural features, including the topography and a billabong of the Coliban River floodplain, transforming it into a group of ornamental lakes, one with two islands.

Garfield Water Wheel

Quartz reefs near the site of the Garfield wheel were being worked as early as 1856. By the mid-1880s the reefs were being mined by the Garfield Company and in 1887, the company relocated its 23-head quartz crushing battery, replacing its steam boilers with a 70ft diameter waterwheel.

Castlemaine National Heritage Park

The Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park envelopes a goldfield which was the catalyst for the Victorian gold rush of the early 1850s.

Castlemaine Market

The Castlemaine Market originally contained 22 shops for the sale of local fresh foods and products. It was one of three market buildings arranged geometrically around an arcaded water tank built over the town well in Market Square, in the centre of Castlemaine. The two earliest red brick market buildings, known as East and West Markets, were erected in 1858 to the design of Edmund Spencer, the town surveyor.

Castlemaine Market (PDF 257 KB)

Buda

Buda is a single storey 1863 Italianate villa with a grand 1890s Classical Baroque front entrance and octagonal additions, complemented by three acres of mature dry climate garden. The garden is designed in a series of picturesque compartments, some containing oriental inspired garden structures such as the bird aviary, pergola walk and tennis pavilion.

Archbold's

The Archbold (Chewton) Gold Treatment Works was erected c.1884 by Jeremiah Archbold who operated an assay and metallurgical business specialising in the treatment of gold-bearing ore.

88 St Vincent Place

88 St. Vincent Place is one of a pair of terraces at the south west end of St. Vincent Place, Victoria’s largest residential “square”. The precinct is on the Victorian Heritage Register (H1291) for its aesthetic, historical, architectural and social significance to the State.

88 St Vincent Place (PDF 1.2 MB)

Commonwealth Games Village

Where the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village now stands, Melbourne’s Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital stood for nearly 100 years. The red brick buildings of the ‘heritage precinct’ are what remains of the original complex of hospital buildings.

Glenard Estate

The Glenard estate and its parks are very different from most suburban developments of its time. The Estate was pioneered by architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.