Page 402 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Australia

400  VIC T ORIA

gNational Sports
Museum
Melbourne Cricket Ground,
Yarra Park, Jolimont. Map 2 F3.
Tel (03) 9657 8879. £ Richmond.
v 48, 70, 75. Open 10am–5pm daily.
Closed Good Fri, 25 Dec.
& 7 8
Following the redevelopment
of the Melbourne Cricket
Ground (MCG) for the 2006
Commonwealth Games, the
MCG has become the home of
the National Sports Museum.
The museum honours all things
sporting, including Aussie Rules
Cyclists passing a clothing store on Brunswick Street football, cricket and the Olympic
Games among others.
Located across two levels
dBrunswick Street are most lively on Friday and of the refurbished Olympic
Saturday nights and easily
and Fitzroy accessible on a tram. Stand, visitors can view some
of the finest sports-related
Brunswick St. Map 2 E1. v 11.
memorabilia using state-of-the-
Next to the university suburb fOld Treasury art technology. The Olympic
of Carlton, Fitzroy was the Building Museum has displays of
natural choice for a post-1960s the history of all summer
populace of students and other Old Treasury Building, Spring Street Olympic meets.
bohemian characters, who took (top of Collins Street). Map 2 E2. The Australian Cricket Hall
advantage of the area’s cheap Tel (03) 9651 2233. v 11, 109. of Fame, which opened with
postwar Housing Commission Open 10am–4pm Sun–Fri (other ten Australian players as initial
properties, unwanted by times group bookings only). members, includes Sir Donald
Closed Good Fri, 25 & 26 Dec. &
wealthier Melburnians. Despite 8 group tours by request. 7 = Bradman. Each player is
becoming gentrified, Fitzroy’s ∑ oldtreasurybuilding.org.au presented through a compre-
main strip, Brunswick Street, hensive historical display.
maintains an alternative air Melbourne’s beautiful, After you have wandered
and a cosmopolitan street life. 19th-century Old Treasury through the museum,
Today, Brunswick Street is a Building (see p396) was designed you can take a tour which
vibrant mix of cafés, restaurants in 1857 by John James Clark, a includes the Arena, the
and trendy shops, especially nineteen-year-old architectural Ponsford Stand, the football
popular are the numerous prodigy. It provided secure and cricket changing rooms,
vintage stores where anyone storage for gold that flooded into heritage artworks and the
can hunt for an undiscovered Melbourne from the wealthy corporate suites. Tours leave
treasure. Vegie Bar (p528), Victorian gold fields. It also from Gate No.3 every half hour
a restaurant on the Brunswick served as office accommoda- between 10am and 3pm, but
street strip, is something of an tion for the Governor of Victoria only on non-event days.
institution among vegetarians. (a role it still fulfils to this day). Booking is not essential.
A little to the south is Gertrude As well as an opportunity to
Street, which has an eclectic see the building itself, a visit to
mix of record stores, bars the museum includes a look at
and galleries. the gold vaults that lie beneath
Nearby Johnston Street the building. The vaults contain a
has a Hispanic flavour, with a dynamic multi-media exhibition
few tapas bars and a Spanish Built on Gold, which tells the story
grocery. In November, it hosts of how Melbourne developed
The Fiesta, an outdoor festival into a city of enormous wealth
celebrating Hispanic-Latin in a remarkably short period of
American culture. Also nearby ten years. In this time it went
lies Smith Street, which has from a small colonial outpost to
outgrown its formerly seedy a vibrant city with magnificent
reputation to become a buildings and grand boulevards,
hotspot for some of the trendier a dynamic theatre culture,
restaurants and bars in the a passion for sport and Olympic Cauldron on display in the
city. All the streets in this area political activism. Olympic Museum
For hotels and restaurants in this area see pp493–4 and pp526–9