AUSTRALIA - City

Melbourne

Melbourne is the second largest metropolitan area in Australia after Sydney. It had 4,250,000 inhabitants in 2012. Near the Port Phillip Bay, south- east of Australia, Melbourne is the capital of Victoria. In English these people are called Malburnians. Melbourne is an important commercial center for the country. This city is often referred to as the sporting and cultural capital of Australia because it hosts many events and cultural institutions and among the largest ones in the country.

Melbourne was founded by the British colonists in 1835, 47 years after the installation of the first European colony in Sydney, as an area of ​​agricultural development around the Yarra River. The settlemnt quickly turned into a city during a rush to Victoria in 1850s and became the “marvelous Melbourne”. It became the largest city in Australia in 1865 but was overtaken by Sydney and in the early twentieth century, Melbourne saw several of its federal seats move to the new city of Canberra in 1927 marking the end of a period when Australia had no capital.

The Australian open

The Australian Open was created in 1905, it had 102 editions. It is part of the grand slam competition for professional tennis players.
It takes place every year in Melbourne, Australia and is held in January.
The tournament was first played on grass from 1905 to 1987 and then on a synthetic hard surface.
The Australian Open is one of four tournaments that are in the Grand Slam. The other three are the « Internationaux de France de Tennis » in Roland Garros in Paris, Wimbledon in London and the U.S. Open Tournaments. These four are the most important tennis tournaments circuit. Organized in recent years during the second half of January, the Australian Open is chronologically the first big event of the tennis season. As Wimbledon, this tournament has a central court equipped with a sliding roof used in case of bad weather or high temperatures.

Dylan & Clément