Melbourne Australia 1837
Highly accurate scale map of Melbourne, Australia.
Can you make Hoddle’s 1837 proposed city layout a success and earn the respect and admiration of the British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne?
The Yarra river has a plentiful supply of fresh water although the river entrance is generally narrow with frequent shallow banks that can even give small river boats a tough time until a larger canal can be built. However the huge bay provides a safe harbour and a modern pier has been established at Sandridge to bring in supplies by ship, with a track across the marshland to the site of the new city.
The low lying marsh and wetland to the south west of Melbourne contains poor soil and was subject to frequent sea water flooding that it has remained unoccupied for over 100 YEARS with the city expanding to the south east and north.
A unique and rapidly growing city that still uses electric trams with a mostly grid like layout creates a unique challenge that makes Melbourne a perfect city for your next City Skylines project.
The map centre has been positioned to include Essendon airport in the north west corner and squeeze in the Bridge St river crossing at Heidelberg in the east.
Historical Timeline
1835 Batman explored the area north of the Yarra river and declared it "mostly treeless, beautiful sheep pasture".
1836 Batman ‘bought’ all the surrounding land from the Indigenous Wurundjeri people and established a settlement.
1837 Govenor of New South Wales, Richard Bourke, declared John Batman’s land purchase invalid but was forced to accept the growing settlement. Bourke sent Robert Hoddle to plan a proper city layout, along with William Lonsdale to maintain law and order. On 10 April 1837 Bourke officially named the settlement Melbourne!
1850 Melbourne has expanded to a population of 23,000 with 80,000 in the surrounding area and over 6 million sheep.
1851 The discovery of GOLD in Ballarat to the far west leads to rapid growth.
1854 Population of Melbourne explodes to 300,000. Welcome to the gold rush!
Technical Information
This map uses accurate scaled height maps to match the in-game City Skylines assets. The Melbourne city grid was marked out in 1837 with all major streets one and half chains (30 metres) in width, and city blocks exactly 10 chains square (201 metres). The Cities Skylines minor grid squares are 8 meters wide with 240 squares per tile giving a total playable area (with the 81 tiles mod) of 17,280 square metres of Melbourne.
Melbourne suburbs were planned with the primary street grid aligned to (magnetic) north. The central city streets were oriented around 70′ to better align with the course of the Yarra River. However as Melbourne expanded and magnetic north moves over time many outer suburb streets drift out of alignment. This map has been rotated slightly anti-clockwise from true north to accurately match the original intended (magnetic) north-south alignment of Nicholson Street in 1837.
The swamps and low marshes around the river estuary are traced from maps from the State Library Victoria online archive.
Links to sample historical maps – many more maps are available online.
1837 Shewing Map http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/74744
1854 Melbourne Map http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/114840
1872 Shewing Map http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/114873
1906 Melbourne Harbour Map http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/114237
Australia Coast map theme by pdelmo is recommended (but not required) to tweak the colours and position of the sun to better reflect southern Australia.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1309879492
Date Changer mod by Cgameworld is recommended to set the start date to 10 April 1837, the date that the settlement was officially named Melbourne. You can then play the map against the real life time line of Melbourne’s growth.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1729576238
Image Overlay mod by Lanceris is recommended to overlay real life maps on to the terrain.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814102166
Melbourne Open Street Map for use with Overlay mod 9729px x 9729px (77MB)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nq1WGFdfwSdnmQAqD9VKZO1_cSOoG2-d
Feedback welcome in comments below.
