The Rise and Fall of Australia's Most Corrupt Boomtown: Marvellous Melbourne

The Rise and Fall of Australia's Most Corrupt Boomtown: Marvellous Melbourne In 1835 there was nothing here but a muddy river and open grassland. Fifty-five years later, Melbourne was the richest city in the world — and one of the most corrupt. This is the story of Marvellous Melbourne: how a frontier sheep camp on the far edge of the Australian continent became the second city of the British Empire in a single lifetime, built the tallest tower on earth, ran the largest cable tram network in the world, and drew visitors from every corner of the globe to see a city that seemed to have sprung from nowhere. And it is the story of what was rotting underneath. The men who ran the banks also ran the government. The politicians who wrote the laws owned the land companies that broke them. A temperance-preaching Premier built a palace on borrowed money and fled the country when it came due. And when the boom finally collapsed in the crash of 1893, the men who caused it walked away rich while the people who trusted them lost everything. From the gold rush to the land boom, from champagne in the streets to soup kitchens and shuttered banks, this is the complete rise and fall of the most marvellous, and most crooked, city Australia ever built. Sources 📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING History of Melbourne — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... Marvellous Melbourne — State Library Victoria https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-dis... Australian Banking Crisis of 1893 — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austral... James Munro, Premier of Victoria — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M...) Who Was James Munro? — sarahcraze.com https://www.sarahcraze.com/post/who-w... The Federal Coffee Palace — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal... The APA (Australian) Building — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_Bui... Sir Matthew Davies — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew... W.L. Baillieu — Public Record Office Victoria https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-colle... Michael Cannon, 'The Land Boomers' (1966) — Obituaries Australia, ANU https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/cannon...