How We Govern Ourselves
Spring Street, the eight-hour day, and the arguments that built a democracy.
Most cities tell their civic story as architecture. Melbourne's is louder than that. Parliament House — the building that hosted the federal parliament for the first twenty-six years of the Commonwealth while Canberra was still a paddock. The Old Treasury, with vaults built for the gold the colony didn't know what to do with. The Eight Hour Day monument at the corner of Russell and Victoria streets, marking the moment in 1856 when Melbourne's stonemasons walked off the job and won the working day Australians still keep. The Supreme Court library, the Princess Theatre steps where suffragists gathered, the City Square that's been built, demolished and rebuilt around every argument the city has had with itself. A walk through the institutions and the protests that made — and keep remaking — how Victoria governs itself.
Narration, anchors, accessibility and refreshments are pre-set from the editorial defaults — tap to change.