Marvellous Melbourne Photo Quiz | Mixed Australia

Answer: Gold

Inspired by reports of the 1849 California gold rush, settlers in Australia started searching for gold. There were a number of small discoveries, but the discovery of what is now known as the Mount Alexander goldfield, northeast of Ballarat, really set things alight. Between 1850 and 1900, the field produced over four million ounces of gold. Prospectors came from around the world, landing in Melbourne to gather equipment and head inland to the gold fields. During 1851, the population of Victoria grew by nearly 100,000, and Melbourne was well on the way to deserving the nickname it gained in the 1880s, which was used as the title of this quiz.

Answer: Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly was born in 1854, the third child of a father who had been transported after being convicted of stealing two pigs. John "Red" Kelly saw himself and his family as victims of the rich and powerful, and his incarceration because he had meat in the house whose provenance could not be established (in other words, presumed to have been from a stolen animal) and did not have enough money to pay his fine was pretty much the last straw.

After his release, Red drank himself to death, leaving 12-year-old Ned as the head of the family.

A lengthy career of relatively petty criminal activity ensued, which reached its climax at Stringybark Creek in late 1878. Ned, his brother Dan, and two friends named Steve Hart and Joe Byrne were on the run, following an incident in which Ned allegedly shot a police constable who was trying to arrest Dan on a warrant for horse theft. Four policemen cornered the so-called Kelly Gang, with the result that Sergeant Kennedy, Constable Lonigan and Constable Scanlon were shot and killed; Constable Thomas McIntyre, who had surrendered before the shooting began, escaped.

The manhunt escalated dramatically, and the final capture of Ned Kelly happened in the town of Glenrowan, on 28 June 1880. It was at this confrontation that Ned Kelly wore the home-made armour with which his name is associated; unfortunately, it didn't cover his legs, so shooting them left him unable to continue fighting or to run.

Answer: The Heidelberg School

The Heidelberg School was a group of impressionists who focused on the distinct Australian landscape (unlike many earlier European painters, whose paintings focused on making things look more European). To facilitate this, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts set up an artists' camp in Heidelberg - then well out in the country, now a suburb about 20 km northeast of the centre of Melbourne.

The paintings of the Heidelberg School produced what have become iconic images of Australian life - the artists and most of their audience were urban, viewing the pastoral life through a romantic lens.

Answer: Royal Exhibition Building

The Exhibition Building was built to accommodate the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, one of over 50 exhibitions held around the world between 1850 and 1915. This was the eighth of them, and was followed in 1888 by the Centennial Exhibition, celebrating the first century of European colonisation. The building, sitting in Carlton Gardens on the northeast corner of the Melbourne CBD, has suffered some damage over the years, but the Great Hall remains. In 2004 it became the first Australian building added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901, and the first elections were held at the end of March. The opening of the first Australian Parliament was a big deal, with Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York (the future King George V) making the official declaration in front of 14,000 guests on 9 May. The Exhibition Building was the only place that could accommodate the crowd. Once parliament got down to work, however, it moved to take over the state parliament's building, and the Victorian parliament perched in the Exhibition Building until 1927, when the federal parliament relocated to Canberra.

Answer: Bourke Street

In the late 1970s malls were all the rage. Blocking of one or more blocks of a city to traffic, so that shoppers could wander at will around the place, was seen as a way of attracting more people into the CBD. In Melbourne, the mall still has a tramline running through it, so some caution is still needed, but the lack of vehicles and their exhausts has certainly made street-side cafes more enjoyable.

The block that was selected for closure (between Swanston Street and Elizabeth Street) features a number of Melbourne's arcades, as well as the main stores for several major department store chains, including Myers and David Jones. Traffic was blocked starting on 13 February 1978, and the pedestrian mall was officially opened in 1983 by Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Answer: Birrarung Marr

The park is located on the northern bank of the Yarra River, immediately to the southeast of Melbourne's CBD. In 1856, the government of the colony of Victoria announced that the marshy area was to be made into a park, but there were already some buildings there, and rail lines arrived shortly afterwards, so the plans were abandoned.

In the 1990s the railyards were cleared, the main road through the area was diverted, and Birrarung Marr was created. The Victorian government intended to incorporate the space into its strategy for attracting major sporting events into the city, while the city's government envisioned a place that could be used for a wide range of vibrant cultural activities.

The park is constructed as three terraces, designed to emphasise the other sites of interest in the area, and shaped to reflect the billabongs originally found there. Birrarung Marr was officially opened on 26 January (Australia Day) in 2002, and subsequently became the venue for many of the activities associated with Moomba, a three-day free community festival held on the first weekend in March.

Answer: Moonee Ponds

Barry Humphries created the character of Edna Everage (originally Mrs. Norm Everage) as a satire on Australian suburban life in the 1950s. She grew over time from a dull woman chatting onstage about her drab life as if it was exciting into an outlandishly flamboyant character, designated Housewife and Superstar, and instantly recognisable from her mauve hair, passion for gladioli and dramatic sparkly glasses.

In the 1970s she became Dame Edna, and moved to television, as well as touring the world's stages.

The show involved "chats" with audience members (onstage) or celebrities (on television), as well as with her best friend and companion Madge (who never spoke, and was often the target of rather gleefully malicious comments), portrayed between 1987 and 2003 by Emily Perry. Madge left the show when Emily retired.

Answer: Flinders Street Station

Flinders Street Station has its main entrance at the intersection of Flinders Street and Swanston Street, and it extends for more than two blocks (from east of Swanston Street west to Market Street along the southern side of Flinders Street). The main platform is the fourth longest railway platform in the world, and the longest in Australia.

The original station was built as the terminus of Australia's first railway line, which carried passengers from Port Melbourne to the centre of the city. The current Edwardian structure was opened in 1909.

Its main entrance has an array of clocks displaying when the next train will be departing along each of the train lines, hence meeting 'under the clocks' has become a common reference.

Answer: Neighbours

'Neighbours' first aired on Seven in March of 1985, planning to be a realistic portrayal of teenagers and adults in their home and professional lives. The fictional Ramsay Street, where the Ramsays, Robinsons and Clarkes were neighbours, was located in the fictional suburb of Erinsborough. The show attracted a decent audience in Melbourne, but not in Sydney, and was cancelled after only a few months. The Ten network snapped it up, rebuilt the sets and started screening the show in January of 1986. 'Neighbours' has since become Australia's longest-running drama series, and an even bigger success in the United Kingdom. Over the years, families (almost always with teenaged children) have moved in and out, allowing for storylines that are getting tired to just be dropped as we move on to the new family. This also means that there are new roles coming up on a regular basis, which has helped the show be seen as a training ground for several generations of Australian performers - who remembers watching Charlene Mitchell (Kylie Minogue) and Scott Robinson (Jason Donovan) getting married in 1987, before they left the show to pursue overseas careers?

The outdoor scenes are filmed in Pin Oak Court, where the residents oblige by letting the film crews invade their yards as necessary, and put up with the tourists who want to get pictures of themselves with a "real" resident. For a long time the show did not specify the city of which Erinsborough is a suburb, but it has been explicitly stated to be Melbourne, and on occasion characters can be seen around the actual city, away from the neighbourhood.

Answer: Princess Theatre

All four of these options can be found in Melbourne's East End, the centre for commercial theatre (as opposed to the publicly-funded theatre venues in the Southbank precinct). The Princess Theatre, which seats over 1400 people, is the latest in a series of theatres on the site. The first one was Astley's Ampitheatre, which opened in 1854. A group led by J C Williamson opened the Princess Theatre in 1886, with (for the time) state-of-the-art facilities. Then came the New Princess Theatre, opening in 1922. In 1986 David Marriner undertook extensive renovations, and opened 'Les Misérables' in 1989, which was followed by 'The Phantom of the Opera'. In February 2019 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' opened, for a run that was interrupted by COVID-19 restrictions, and restarted in February of 2021.

As well as its performance history, the Princess Theatre is known for its ghost. On 3 March 1888 a singer known onstage as Frederick Federici had a heart attack and died immediately after a dramatic stage exit via a trap door at the end of the opera 'Faust'. Ever since, there have been reported sightings of his ghost - starting with the cast on that very night, some of whom said that he had taken his curtain call with the rest of them, despite the fact that he had already died. Multiple reports of a mysterious figure in evening dress have been made over the years.