Melbourne

Melbourne Aquarium is a Southern Ocean and Antarctic aquarium in central Melbourne, Australia. It is located on the banks of the Yarra River beside... and under the Flinders Street Viaduct and the King Street Bridge. Built between February 1998 and December 1999, the building was designed by Peddle Thorp architects to resemble a ship moored to the river, and opened in January 2000. The depth of the building however was designed not to be imposing at street level, and extends 7 metres below the surface. At its centre is a world first, 2.2 million litre 'oceanarium in the round' where the spectators become the spectacle to the marine life swimming around them. Soon after opening, the building had a legionnaires disease outbreak that resulted in 2 deaths and another 60 people being affected. Those affected had visited the aquarium between 11 and 27 April 2000. A damages action was brought in May 2000, ending in February 2004. The Melbourne Aquarium recently underwent a significant expansion, also designed by Peddle Thorp, and now extends from the Yarra River to Flinders Street. A new entrance was built on the corner of Flinders and King Streets.
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La Trobe’s Cottage is a historic cottage in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, built in 1839 for the first superintendent of the Port Phillip... District of New South Wales, Charles La Trobe, and his family. The cottage was constructed out of prefabricated materials imported from England on 50,000 square metres of land at Jolimont, near where the Melbourne Cricket Ground now stands. When the colony achieved independence from New South Wales in 1851, La Trobe, was made the first Lieutenant-governor of Victoria and reserved from sale the area of Kings Domain as a site for a future Government House, but remained living with his family in this cottage at Jolimont until their departure for England in 1854. The house is listed on the Victorian heritage list for its historical, social and architectural significance. It is one of the few surviving examples still standing of prefabricated houses from this period of history and gives an insight into early colonial domestic architecture and living arrangements. Personal effects of La Trobe and his family are still contained in the house.
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The Old Melbourne Gaol is a museum and former prison located in Russell Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It consists of a bluestone building... and courtyard, and is located next to the old City Police Watch House and City Courts buildings. It was first constructed starting in 1839, and during its operation as a prison between 1845 and 1924, it held and executed some of Australia's most notorious criminals, including bushranger Ned Kelly and serial killer Frederick Bailey Deeming. In total, 135 people were executed by hanging. Though it was used briefly during World War II, it formally ceased operating as a prison in 1924; with parts of the gaol being incorporated into the RMIT University, and the rest becoming a museum. The three-storey museum displays information and memorabilia of the prisoners and staff, including death masks of the executed criminals. At one time the museum displayed Ned Kelly's skull, before it was stolen in 1978; as well as the pencil used by wrongly convicted Colin Campbell Ross to protest his innocence in writing, before being executed.
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The former Melbourne Maritime Museum, now Polly Woodside, managed by the National Trust of Australia, is situated in South Wharf on the Yarra River... in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is home to the Polly Woodside Barque, the now restored cargo vessel launched in 1885. The Polly Woodside vessel resides in an original wooden-walled dry dock. The dry dock was used for the repair and service of ships for over 100 years. Historic buildings on the site include a pump house and boiler room for use in pumping water from the dry dock. Shed 2 is home to displays, artefacts and models of Polly Woodside and those relating to her life as a working vessel. The museum is a popular attraction for school children and offers extensive education programs. Facilities on the site include the interactive gallery, a souvenir shop and children's play areas. Regular events include Story time on Tuesdays at 11am, and Priate Sundays - the first Sunday of every month. For more information see Polly Woodside or visit www.pollywoodside.com.
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Melbourne Museum is located in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia, adjacent the Royal Exhibition Building. It is the largest museum in the... Southern Hemisphere, and is a venue of Museum Victoria, which also operates the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks Museum. The museum has seven main galleries, a Children's Gallery and a temporary exhibit gallery on three levels, Upper, Ground and Lower Level and was constructed by Baulderstone Hornibrook. The Touring Hall is where temporary exhibits are displayed. Past exhibits include mummies from Egypt and dinosaurs from China. The Big Box is part of the Children's Gallery. In addition, the museum has other facilities such as the Sidney Myer Amphitheatre and The Age Theatre. The Discovery Centre, on the Lower Level, is a free public research centre. The museum also has a cafe and a souvenir shop. The IMAX Theatre, which is situated on the Lower Level is also part of the museum complex. It shows movies, usually documentary films, in 3-D format. The museum had its earliest beginnings in the Government Assay Office which on 9 March 1854, opened some displays in La Trobe Street.
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Hugo Wallace Weaving is an English-Australian film actor and voice artist. He is best known for his roles as Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy,... Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "V" in V for Vendetta, and performances in numerous Australian character dramas. Weaving was born at the University Teaching Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria, to English parents Anne , a tour guide and former teacher, and Wallace Weaving, a seismologist. His maternal grandmother was Belgian. A year after his birth, his family returned to England, living in Bedford and Brighton before relocating to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, Johannesburg in South Africa, and then returning to England again. While in England, he attended the independent boarding school Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. His family moved back to Australia in 1976, where he attended another private school, Sydney's Knox Grammar School. He later graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1981. Weaving's first major role was in the 1984 Australian television series Bodyline, as the English cricket captain Douglas Jardine.
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Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award,... a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the foundation President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. He is the 2012 Australian of the Year. Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, to Merle , a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. His parents divorced when he was five and his mother subsequently took him to live with her parents in suburban Brisbane. Before he began his acting career, Rush attended Everton Park State High School. He also has an arts degree from the University of Queensland. While at university, he was talent-spotted by Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane. Rush began his career with QTC in 1971, appearing in 17 productions.
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Guy Edward Pearce is an English-born Australian actor and musician, known for his roles as Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan's Memento, Lieutenant... Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential, a drag queen in the The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Mike Young in the Australian television series Neighbours and King Edward VIII in The King's Speech. Pearce was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire. His mother, Anne Cocking , was a County Durham-born schoolteacher specialising in needlework and home economics, and his father, Stuart Pearce, was a New Zealand-born air force test pilot who died when Pearce was nine. When he was three years old, Pearce moved to Geelong, Australia, where his mother ran a deer farm. He attended the Geelong College, a local private school, and was a member of the GSODA Junior Players. From the age of 15 to 22, he was a competitive amateur bodybuilder, leading to the title of Junior Mr. Victoria. He also partook in fencing. He lived in Box Hill North, Victoria in the late 1980s while working on the Australian drama series Neighbours.
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Rachel Anne Griffiths is an Australian film and television actress who came to prominence in the 1994 film Muriel's Wedding and her Academy Award... nominated performance in the 1997 film Hilary and Jackie. Among her other notable roles, she is particularly well known for her portrayal of Brenda Chenowith in the TV series Six Feet Under and Sarah Walker on the ABC primetime drama Brothers & Sisters. Her work in film and television has earned her many awards, most notably a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Australian Film Institute Awards. Griffiths was born in Melbourne, but spent her early childhood on the Gold Coast. She is the daughter of Anna, an art teacher and arts/education consultant, and Edward Griffiths. She moved to Melbourne at the age of 5, with her mother and two older brothers . After earning a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance at Victoria College, Rusden, she began her career as a member of Woolly Jumpers, a community theatre group.
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Paul McDermott is an Australian comedian, actor, writer, director, singer, artist and television host. He currently hosts the satirical news-based... 'Good News World' a follow up to quiz show Good News Week which airs in Australia on Network Ten. As a comedian, he is best known both for Good News Week and for his role as a member of the musical comedy group the Doug Anthony All Stars, which disbanded in 1994; he has also performed individually and as a part of GUD. He has frequently appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and taken part in its two major televised productions, the Comedy Festival Gala and the Great Debate. He has also hosted two other ABC programs and briefly featured on Triple J as a morning radio presenter between 1996 and 1997. McDermott is a published author, having released several books both in collaboration with the Doug Anthony All Stars and individually. He has written as a columnist for a number of Australian newspapers and a selection of his columns have been compiled into a book, The Forgetting of Wisdom.
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Ian Alexander "Molly" Meldrum AM is an Australian popular music critic, journalist, record producer and musical entrepreneur. He was the talent... co-ordinator, on-air interviewer and music news presenter on the former popular music program Countdown and is widely recognised for his trademark Stetson hat, which he has regularly worn in public since the 1980s . On 15 December 2011, Meldrum had a life-threatening fall from a ladder in the backyard of his Melbourne home. He was placed under intensive care in a critical condition at the Alfred Hospital and had surgery for his head and spinal injuries. Meldrum has featured on the Australian music scene since the mid-1960s first with his writing for Go-Set , a weekly teen newspaper, then his tenure with Countdown and subsequent media contributions. He produced top ten hits for Russell Morris , Ronnie Burns , Colleen Hewett , Supernaut and The Ferrets .
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Paul Newell Hester was an Australian musician and television personality; he was the drummer for the related bands Split Enz and Crowded House.... Hester was the older of two children from Melbourne, Australia. At an early age, he was encouraged by his mother, Anne, to learn to play drums, as she was a jazz drummer. Hester attempted various jobs before starting a musical career. He spent most of his teen years living in the Dandenong Ranges, with the family home on the edge of Sherbrooke Forest at the Sherbrooke/Kallista boundary. Some of his early bands in the late 1970s, which gigged around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, included: Thunder 1976–1977 and then Soft Edges 1977–1978. In 1980 he co-founded a Melbourne-based band called Cheks , which also had Cathy McQuade, Ken Campbell and John Clifforth. Hester was living with Deborah Conway of Do-Ré-Mi during the early 1980s, while also playing regularly in Love Party. Hester later worked with Conway in Rose Amongst Thorns and Ultrasound .
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Graham Cyril Kennedy, AO was an Australian radio, television and film performer, often called Gra Gra and The King of Australian television.... Kennedy was born in Camden Street, Balaclava to Cyril William Kennedy and Mary Austen Kennedy . His mother, who was 18 years old at the time of his birth, was employed at a local picture theatre. His father worked variously as an engineer and handyman, mowed lawns and washed cars, and in 1939 joined the RAAF as an air gunner. His first home was a "small, crowded duplex" at 32 Nelson Street, Balaclava. A 20 cm diameter plaque was placed on the property by the City of Port Phillip, coincidentally in the week of Kennedy's death. When Kennedy was two years old, his parents moved to Carlisle Street, St Kilda for two years. His parents divorced shortly before World War II, and Kennedy was largely raised by his grandparents, "Pop" Kennedy and "Grandma Scott", to whom he remained particularly close until her death. Kennedy later said that he had: "often wished his mother and father had never married.
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Peter Philip Smith OAM is an Australian radio and television voice-over artist. He is primarily known for his work with GTV-9 Melbourne as their... announcer, including being the announcer on the nationally screened Sale of the Century for twenty-one years. Peter was educated at Wesley College, Melbourne. Upon leaving school, Smith joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a messenger boy before progressing through the ranks to an announcer on the home service and Radio Australia. On radio in the 1960s, Pete worked with radio station 3AK as a "Good Guy" with Bert Newton on the Greater 3UZ as it was known during the seventies. From 1995 to 1998, he was a regular voice-over announcer on the national drive-time show Martin/Molloy alongside comedians Tony Martin and Mick Molloy. Since this time he has made guest appearances on comedy-based radio programmes, including Get This with Tony Martin and Tough Love with Mick Molloy, both aired on Triple M. As television was introduced into Australia, Smith performed the role of announcer and host for the weekly ABC TV television program Sports View Hit Parade, broadcast on Saturday afternoons.
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Jiordan Anna Tolli is an Australian actress, best known for playing the role of Louise Carpenter in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. She played... the role from being two months old in 1994 until 2001, when her parents and the producers felt she should concentrate on her studies. More recently, she has appeared in numerous adverts and has done some modelling work. Her cousin, Fabian Tolli, was married to her former Neighbours co-star Kym Valentine, who played Libby Kennedy. In her spare time she enjoys swimming, dancing, going to music classes and riding her bike. She enjoys having sleepovers with her friends. When she is older she would like to be a lolly maker or a scientist. Tolli was born in Melbourne, Australia. The character of Louise returned to Neighbours in 2007, but Adelaide Kane played her.
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Eric Bana is an Australian film and television actor. He began his career as a comedian in the sketch comedy series Full Frontal before gaining... critical recognition in the biopic Chopper . After a decade of roles in Australian TV shows and films, Bana gained Hollywood's attention by playing the role of American Delta Force Sergeant Norm "Hoot" Hooten in Black Hawk Down , the lead role as Bruce Banner in the Ang Lee directed film Hulk , Hector in the movie Troy , the lead in Steven Spielberg's Munich , and the villain Nero in the science-fiction film Star Trek . An accomplished dramatic actor and comedian, he received Australia's highest film and television awards for his performances in Chopper, Full Frontal and Romulus, My Father. Bana has performed across a wide spectrum of leading roles in a variety of low-budget and major studio films, ranging from romantic comedies and drama to science fiction and action thrillers. Eric Bana was born Eric Banadinović in Melbourne, Victoria, the younger of two children; he has a brother, Anthony. He is of Croatian ancestry on his father's side.
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Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE  — often known simply as Kylie — is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, showgirl, and... actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a recording artist in 1987. Her first single, "Locomotion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart and became the highest selling single of the decade. This led to a contract with songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her debut album, Kylie , and the single "I Should Be So Lucky", each reached number one in the United Kingdom, and over the next two years, her first 13 singles reached the British top ten. Her debut film, The Delinquents was a box-office hit in Australia and the UK despite negative reviews. Initially presented as a "girl next door", Minogue attempted to convey a more mature style in her music and public image.
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