Melbourne

Melbourne, the capital of the colony, and then the state of Victoria, developed rapidly after the discovery of gold in and about Ballarat and Bendigo, and quickly became Australia’s largest city, overtaking Sydney in the 1880s. A port city, built around Port Philip Bay, it became the national financial centre for banking and insurance. While Sydney overtook Melbourne in population in the 1890s, when Melbourne suffered a severe real estate recession, it continued to dominate many aspects of the new federation.