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This historical and picturesque walk takes visitors on a self-guided tour around the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens World Heritage Site. It provides an insight into the Melbourne of 130 years ago, a period of immense optimism, enthusiasm and energy.
The Victorian gold rush of the 1850’s led to Melbourne rapidly developing from a scattering of wooden houses to a marvellous modern city. This period of wealth and optimism was short lived, as a major economic depression hit in the 1890’s. This walk will reveal features in both the Gardens and the surrounding suburbs of Fitzroy and Carlton that highlight this unique period in Melbourne’s history.
For a history and timeline of the The Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens please refer to the PDF brochure.
1 World Heritage sign
Begin your walk at the World Heritage sign at the Royal Exhibition Building’s northern entrance. The Exhibition Building was designed by Joseph Reed and built by David Mitchell for the Melbourne International Exhibition, 1880-81. The building and its associated gardens are a rare intact reminder of the 19th century International Exhibitions movement.
2 Colonial Square
Colonial Square is an installation of carved stonework from the former Colonial Mutual Life building built in 1896 and demolished in 1960. Many of the solid buildings of 19th century Marvellous Melbourne have not survived.
3 The Obelisk
The Obelisk of Victorian Sandstone was erected by a Member of Parliament John Woods, as a protest against the use of New South Wales sandstone to extend Parliament House. He stated that the stone from his electorate was just as durable.
4 French Fountain
This circular forecourt contains the French Fountain featuring bronzed winged children. The fountain was purchased and erected here at the end of the 1880 exhibition.
5 The Westgarth Fountain
The Westgarth Fountain featuring kangaroos smoothly carved in Aberdeen granite was a gift to the people of Melbourne by pioneer settler William Westgarth in 1888. It was designed to cater for the whole family with water spouts for adults at the top, children in the middle, and a trough for the dog at the bottom.
6 Royal Terrace
Royal Terrace (1853-58) just over the road is one of Melbourne’s finest examples of Regency style terrace housing. It is one of the oldest and largest terraces in Victoria.
7 Interpretive sign
Joseph Reed who designed the Exhibition Building was possibly the most influential Victorian era architect in Melbourne. His other grand buildings include the Royal Society of Victoria building, Trades Hall, Ormond College, the State Library and the Melbourne Town Hall. The builder David Mitchell (father of Dame Nellie Melba), was also a major figure and responsible for building the Customs House, now the Immigration Museum, Scots Church and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
8 Cable Tram Engine House
In the red brick Cable Tram Engine House (1886-87) on Nicholson Street, heavy machinery turned the cables which ran underground pulling cable trams around the city. Cable trams ferried visitors to the 1888 Exhibition from the city centre. They operated on some routes until 1940.
9 Osborne House
Osborne House (1850) has operated as a boarding house since 1888, and is one of the oldest boarding houses in Victoria.
10 Morton Bay Fig Trees
Prior to the development of Melbourne, this area was used by the Woiworung people, one of the groups which make up the Kulin Nation. From early last century Fitzroy became home to many Aboriginal groups. Koories (local Aboriginals) regularly met and socialised under these trees. Archie Roach, popular aboriginal singer/songwriter wrote ‘Beggerman’ and ‘Charcoal Lane’ which depict his life in this area.
11 The Lake
The Lake formerly a small quarry, is one of two in the southern Gardens created for the 1880 exhibition. It is possible to see the building reflected in the water in the right weather conditions. Rides in a gondola were available during the 1888 exhibition.
12 Possum tree guards
12 You’ll notice many of the trees have circular metal bands or possum tree guards, to limit the damage to trees from the native brush tailed possums which live here.
13 Axial paths radiating from the fountain
As you walk through the gardens observe the axial paths radiating from the fountain. These join a series of serpentine pathways around the garden’s perimeter, remnants of an earlier garden layout. While the design and planning of the Southern gardens is attributed to Reed, they were laid out and planted by well known horticulturalist William Sangster.
14 Sangster’s avenue plantings
Sangster’s avenue plantings are more informal often exhibiting alternating tree species as exhibited here with a mixture of oaks (Quercus sp.) and hoop pines (Araucaria bidwilli).
15 The ‘Grand Allee’
Leading from Victoria Street to the Exhibition Building’s southern entrance is a perfect contrast to Sangster’s informal planting. This avenue of plane trees (Platanus sp.) imitated the ceremonial walk at the Royal Palace of Versailles in France and produces a landscape effect possibly unique in Australia. During the 1930s, a homeless men’s shelter was erected in the centre of this ceremonial avenue, a respite for those living in the nearby rooming houses.
16 Hochgurtel fountain
At the top of this ceremonial avenue is the Hochgurtel fountain, taking its name from the designer who won the competition to build it for the 1880 exhibition. It includes symbols of trade, commerce, industry science and art: key themes in the International Exhibition of 1880.
17 Interpretive sign
The Royal Exhibition Building was erected as a ‘Palace of Industry’. It displayed the technologies and achievements of the mechanised age. Its huge temporary halls housed exhibits from more than thirty nations. Pianos, typewriters, lawnmowers, electric lights, carriages and decorative homewares were all on display. The 1880 exhibition was the greatest show the city had ever seen, and attracted over one million visitors; it changed public taste in Melbourne.
18 Interpretive sign
Ornamental flower beds have been a regular feature of the Carlton Gardens since the first exhibitions. An elaborate series of parterre (meaning pattern) garden beds ran across the southern face of the building. The layout of the beds were reconstructed by What's on Melbourne in 2008 and now feature a more drought tolerant planning scheme.
19 Ornamental lake
As we walk south west you’ll pass another ornamental lake. This lake was the inspiration for a poem, “The Poor Shall Feed The Birds”, by Australian poet John Shaw Neilson. During the 1920s while working in the Exhibition Annexes he wrote to a friend:
“it is always the poor people who feed the birds. No well dressed people come – I suppose they are away motoring or entertaining their friends.”
20 The Royal Society of Victoria building
At the end of this path, across Victoria Parade is The Royal Society of Victoria building (1859), also designed by Joseph Reed. This Society, another symbol of the high aspirations of this young city, initiated the explorations of Burke and Wills to northern Australia, and expeditions to Antarctica.
21 Rathdowne Street
Now follow the pathway north, parallel to Rathdowne Street, the extension of Exhibition Street, so named because it led visitors from central Melbourne to the exhibitions.
22 Interpretive sign
The Exhibition Building was the setting for the opening of the first Federal parliament on 9 May 1901. Over 12,000 people were invited to attend the event in Australia’s largest building. On 3 September 1901, the new Australian flag was first unveiled and flown here. Federal Parliament took over Victoria’s Parliament House, and Victorian politicians met in the Exhibition Western Annexe until 1927.
23 The West Forecourt
The West Forecourt was known as the German Circle during the 1880 Exhibition, and featured a circular garden bed. It retained its broad form until 1956 when asphalt was laid for car parking. The circle will be re-instated in 2010.
A little further along you’ll pass the ‘Garden of Unity’, commissioned in 2001 as part of the celebration of the Centenary of Federation which took place in this building. Adjacent is a huge sugar gum (Eucalyptus cladocalyx) believed to have been planted by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York when they opened Australia’s first Federal Parliament.
Passing the Children’s Museum you’ll enter the north gardens, re-constructed after the 1888 Exhibition in simple avenue style. The trees used for avenue plantings include elms, planes, poplars, oaks and eucalypts.
24 Sacred Heart Church
On Rathdowne Street, the imposing red brick Sacred Heart Church, (1897-99), was also designed by Joseph Reed and is one of the finest ‘full blown’ Baroque churches in Victoria.
25 Carlton Gardens Primary School
Adjacent is the Carlton Gardens Primary School (1883-84), a Victorian building with external Gothic Revival features. In 1901, children from this and other local Carlton Primary Schools planted pepper trees (Schinus molle) in the Gardens for Arbor Day. A pepper tree of about that age can be seen here.
26 Carlton Gardens Playground
A lake, part of Clement Hodginson’s 1870’s design, once occupied the site of this modern playground. Surviving the 1880 and the 1888 exhibitions, the lake was later paved to form a wading pool then drained to make way for the Children’s Traffic School in the 1960s.
27 Temporary garden fencing
On your right you’ll pass some of the last remaining sections of temporary garden fencing once used to keep visitors to the paths in the 19th century.
28 The Curators Cottage
The Curators Cottage was built in 1891, and was first occupied by John Guilfoyle, the curator of parks and gardens in Melbourne from 1892. It still houses garden staff today.
29 Elaborate fence and gates
On the north boundary of the cottage in Carlton Street is a remnant of the elaborate fence and gates which was installed around the whole of the Gardens for the 1880s exhibition. It was mounted on a bluestone plinth which can still be seen around the perimeter of the Gardens. The cast iron was removed in the 1920s.
30 Gordon Terrace
On the northern side of Carlton Street is Gordon Terrace (1883-85) numbers 90 to 100. With its cast iron veranda and fence it is typical of boom style domestic architecture of the Exhibition period: a distinctive feature of inner suburban Melbourne.
31 The Elm Path
The Elm Path is near the northern boundary of the temporary annex buildings built for the 1888 exhibition. These elms (Ulmus sp.) were probably planted in the 1870s and are likely to be the oldest trees in the Gardens. Once a common tree in the parks around inner Melbourne, elms are now rare world-wide, due to the effects of Dutch Elm Disease, which decimated elm tree populations in Europe and America in the 1970s.
32 Tennis courts and pavilion
Follow the plane tree path to the Tennis courts and pavilion, built in 1924 to provide for recreational activity in the Gardens, and still very much in use today.
33 No. 122 Nicholson Street
Beyond the tennis courts you can see another grand Victorian mansion, on the corner at No. 122 Nicholson Street initially built in plain sandstone and brick in 1862 by John Denny. During the boom years of the 1880s it was refaced with its flamboyant rendered façade.
34 Ursula Frayne Memorial Chapel
Across the road you see the impressive sandstone Ursula Frayne Memorial Chapel. It is part of the Catholic girls’ secondary college, Academy of Mary Immaculate and Convent of Mercy complex. The Chapel (1887-90) is a rare example of an intact convent chapel in
the geometric French gothic style.
35 Melbourne Museum
Melbourne Museum, opened in the Carlton Gardens in 2000, continues the tradition of exhibitions on the site. Designed by Denton Corker Marshall, the contemporary design takes a number of references from the Royal Exhibition Building including the axial composition of its three distinctive roof canopies. It is not the first Museum on the site, as the Royal Exhibition Trustees formed a Museum in the Eastern annexe at the close of the Exhibition in 1888.