Urban Australia 97 



minutes by walking, and to that station every 

 suburb sends frequent trains. The double line 

 of tramways running along the centre of each 

 street leaves a way for the traffic on either 

 side as wide as streets were made in olden 

 cities. In his square mile of city, the Melbourne 

 man finds everything Houses of Parliament, 

 town hall, post-office, museum, theatres, banks, 

 churches, newspaper offices, Stock Exchange, res- 

 taurants, libraries, and shops. Beyond the city 

 area, the suburbs stretch for eight miles in every 

 direction, but the business of the city, and prac- 

 tically of the whole state, is transacted in that 

 square mile of city. The public buildings are on 

 an ambitious scale. Most of them were planned 

 at a time when Melbourne possessed a sanguine 

 statistician, who published a calculation showing 

 that the population of Australia would be thirty- 

 three millions in 1951, and one hundred and 

 eighty-nine millions in 2001 . He based his figures 

 on the rate at which the population was then in- 

 creasing, but unfortunately that rate has not been 

 maintained. Nevertheless, the public buildings 

 are there in anticipation of the time when the 

 population of Melbourne shall be as great as that 

 of lyondon at the present day. The front of the 

 Parliament House is already complete, and when 

 the dome has been added, the building will be a 

 noble one. The governor's residence is a gigantic 

 palace, and of the public offices, some one has un- 

 kindly written that they look as if they had been 



