| |
| | Central Business District |
 | | Seen from across the river or from the air, Melbourne’s Central Business District offers up a spectacular, modern skyline; at ground level, however, what you notice are the florid nineteenth-century facades, grandiose survivors of the great days of the goldrushes and after, when Melbourne consolidated its position as a financial centre. |
 | | At the centre of the CBD, trams still jolt through busy Bourke Street Mall, so it’s not quite a pedestrian haven; Swanston Street, bounding the mall to the east, closed to all traffic except trams between Flinders and Latrobe streets since 1992 and renamed Swanston Walk, has been reopened to night-time traffic. |
 | | Most fascinating are the women: Martha Needle, who poisoned with arsenic her husband and her daughters, among many others; and young Martha Knorr, the notorious “baby farmer” who advertised herself as a “kind motherly person, willing to adopt a child”; after receiving $2–5 per child, she killed and buried them in her backyard. |
| www.pacificislandtravel.com /australia/victoria/mel_cbd.asp (2052 words) |
|