Melbourne is the second most populous city in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 3.8 million (2007 estimate). Located around Port Phillip Bay in Australia's south-east, Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria. A person from Melbourne is called a Melburnian. Melbourne is a major centre of commerce, industry and cultural activity. The city is often referred to as Australia's 'sporting and cultural capital' and it is home to many of the nation's most significant cultural and sporting events and institutions. It has been recognised as a gamma world city by the Loughborough University group's 1999 inventory. Melbourne is notable for its mix of Victorian and contemporary architecture, its extensive tram network and Victorian parks and gardens, as well as its diverse, multicultural society. It was the host city of the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games. In 2006, the city hosted the G20 Summit, in which the leaders of the world's nineteen largest economies met. Melbourne was founded by free settlers in 1835, 47 years after the first European settlement of Australia, as a pastoral settlement situated around the Yarra River. Transformed rapidly into a major metropolis by the Victorian gold rush in the 1850s, 'Marvellous Melbourne' became Australia's largest and most important city by 1865, but was overtaken by Sydney as the largest city in Australia during the early 20th century. Melbourne is set to become Australia's largest city again in the year 2020.
Culture: Melbourne is widely known as the Australian cultural and sport capital. It has thrice shared top position in a survey by The Economist of the World's Most Livable Cities on the basis of its cultural attributes, climate, cost of living, and social conditions such as crime rates and health care, in 2002, 2004 and 2005. The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events, performing arts and architecture. Melbourne is also considered to be Australia's live music capital with a large proportion of successful Australian artists emerging from the Melbourne live music scene. Melbourne has become popular for its street art with the lonely planet guides listing it as a major attraction. The city is also admired as one of the great cities of the Victorian Age (1837-1901) and a vigorous city life intersects with an impressive range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buildings. In recent years, the city has claimed the SportsBusiness title "World's Ultimate Sports City". The city is home to the National Sports Museum, which until 2006 was located outside the members pavilion at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and reopened in 2008 in the Great Northern Stand. Melbourne is considered the spiritual home of Australian cricket and Australian rules football - the most popular sports in Australia. The Australian Football League is headquartered at the Telstra Dome and ten of its teams are based in the Melbourne metropolitan area and collectively average over 35,000 spectators to each game. The first ever official cricket Test match in Australia was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877. The city is also home to a Rugby League and Soccer team; the Melbourne Storm, who play in the NRL competition, Melbourne Victory who play in the A-league, netball team Melbourne Vixens who play in the trans-Tasman trophy ANZ Championship and basketball team Melbourne Tigers who play in the National Basketball League. Annually, the city hosts the AFL Grand Final, as well as the international sporting events of the Australian Open tennis, Melbourne Cup and the Australian Grand Prix.
Demographics: Today Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. Melbourne has the second largest Asian population in Australia, which includes the largest Vietnamese, Indian and Sri Lankan communities in the country. Overall, citizens of Asian heritage represent approximately 18% of Melbournes population, compared to 7% of Australia's population. The earliest inhabitants of the broad area that later became Melbourne were Indigenous Australians — specifically, the Bunurong, Wurundjeri and Wathaurong peoples. Melbourne is still a centre of Aboriginal life — consisting of local groups and indigenes from other parts of Australia — with the Aboriginal community in the city numbering over 20,000 persons (0.6 per cent of the population). The first European settlers in Melbourne were British and Irish. These two groups accounted for nearly all arrivals before the gold rush, and supplied the predominant number of immigrants to the city until the Second World War. Melbourne was transformed by the 1850s gold rush; within months of the discovery of gold in August 1852, the city's population had increased by nearly three-quarters, from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. Thereafter, growth was exponential and by 1865, Melbourne had overtaken Sydney as Australia's most populous city. Large numbers of Chinese, German and United States nationals were to be found on the goldfields and subsequently in Melbourne. The various nationalities involved in the Eureka Stockade revolt nearby give some indication of the migration flows in the second half of the nineteenth century.