Gold, Ghosts and Grit: A Melbourne Self-Guided Walking Tour

On this walking tour, you'll follow the city's most storied streets from their colonial origins to the present day. You'll discover how sheep, gold, and a cast of unlikely characters – a teenage architect, an imprisoned stone carver, and a one-armed muralist – shaped one of the world's great cities.

The tour starts at Melbourne Town Hall on Swanston Street. From there, you'll head up Little Collins Street, one of the narrow streets threaded through Melbourne's original 1830s grid, before turning onto Bourke Street toward Parliament House. Along the way, you'll pass Pellegrini's Espresso Bar, a Melbourne institution and Hill of Content, the city's oldest bookstore.

At Parliament House, you'll learn how Melbourne served as Australia's national capital for 26 years and why the building remains technically unfinished. From there, the tour moves down Spring Street past the Hotel Windsor before turning onto Collins Street for its Paris end. There you'll pass luxury boutiques, nineteenth-century townhouses, and three churches designed by the same architect in entirely different styles.

On this 45-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• See the ornate Princess Theatre, built in the 1880s, and hear the story of its resident ghost
• Visit Gordon Reserve and discover William Stanford's bluestone fountain, carved by a inmate at Pentridge Prison
• Explore the Old Treasury Building, designed by J. J. Clark when he was just 19 years old
• Learn why Melbourne's hook turn is the only road rule of its kind in the world
• Spot a 1929 mural by war veteran Napier Waller, painted left-handed after he lost his right arm in WWI
• Hear how Dame Nellie Melba began her singing career in the choir at Scots' Church

This compact walk packs an extraordinary amount of history into a short stretch of the city – grab your headphones and get started!