Precinct 10: Victoria’s Palace of Nations

Designed for the 1880 International Exhibition, it also housed the Centennial International Exhibition of 1888. At its opening in 1880 a 1,000 voice choir heralded the emerging nation in song:
‘Lead onward till Australia’s land shall rise
A greater Britain neath these southern skies’.

Yet its wild colonial days were hardly over. From the top of Exhibition dome, visitors could clearly see, just a block away in Russell Street, the bluestone walls of the Old Melbourne Gaol where the last and most famous of the bushrangers, Ned Kelly, was hanged on 11 November 1880. The exhibition was still in progress when the Judge Sir Redmond Barry condemned him to death. Defiant to the last, Ned replied: ‘I will see you there where I go’ — a prophecy grimly fulfilled when the judge himself died just twelve days later.

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When the first young gold-seekers left England for Victoria, London was still celebrating its industrial jubilee, the Great Exhibition of 1851. The immigrants brought the ideals of the exhibition with them, founding mechanics institutes and scientific societies in the new land. When Melburnians celebrated their coming of age, they followed their fathers’ example and mounted a great international exhibition. In the same Royal Exhibition Building 20-years later Australians met to open their first Commonwealth Parliament.

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The Royal Society of Victoria
Founded in 1854, The Royal Society of Victoria laid the foundations of science and technology in the colony. Shortly after its completion in 1859 the gentlemen of the society met here to raise funds for an expedition to cross the Australian continent. Four years later, the doomed expedition’s leaders Burke and Wills lay in state here. Visitors paying their respects were able to view their bones through a glass slide let into the lid of their coffins.

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Carlton Gardens
Victoria’s first governor, Charles LaTrobe, a gardener and early conservationist, created a greenbelt of parkland around the city in the early 1850’s. The Carlton Gardens were part of this greenbelt. Later plantings turned it into one of the ring of public gardens that have made Melbourne a garden city. Once on the main path, we follow the ceremonial route taken by the official party opening the 1880 Exhibition. The saplings planted in 1880 now tower above the dome.

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Royal Exhibition Building
Joseph Reed designed this majestic building by combining the churchlike plan of earlier exhibition buildings with a florid Italian Renaissance style. In 1901, when the Duke of York again stood under the dome to open the first Australian Parliament, many of his audience could still recall the moment when they had stepped ashore at Queen’s Wharf into the hurly-burly of a goldrush port.

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A promise set in stone
The stone ‘obelisk’ is at the south east corner of the Royal Exhibition Building. It was erected by politician John Woods to show the lasting qualities of sandstone from his Stawell electorate for extensions to Parliament House, rather than the chosen New South Wales stone. Across to Nicholson Street is a red-brick engine house (1886-87), a hub of Melbourne’s cable-tram system, once the world’s largest. A cable tram is on display in the Melbourne Melbourne.

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A curious 100th birthday present
In 1888, the year of Melbourne’s Centennial Exhibition, goldrush merchant and historian William Westgarth made a return visit to Australia. He presented ‘to the people of Victoria’, the picturesque Westgarth drinking fountain (in pink Aberdeen granite) erected near Nicholson Street in front of Royal Terrace. Just across Nicholson Street is the bluestone Royal Terrace (1853-8) — a fine example of Regency-style terrace-housing, whose residents protested against the building of the Royal Exhibition Building in ‘their gardens’.

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Between two eras
This ‘events plaza’ on which you are now standing continues a century old tradition of presenting community events and exhibits on this site. The entire area on the northern side of the Royal Exhibition Building was once covered by temporary exhibition annexes (depicted at top of page). In the latter 1900’s — the area now occupied by the Melbourne Museum — was occupied by an earlier museum and aquarium, a cycling oval and an immigration hostel.