Melbourne Landing is an historical watercolor painting that shows Melbourne city as it appeared to the painter W.
Liardet in 1840. The watercolor depicts the colony of Melbourne by the banks of the Yarra River. The Melbourne Landing shows Melbourne just five years after it was settled in 1835 and is therefore a very important historical artifact for what has become one of Australia's largest and most important cities.
Today Melbourne is Australia's second most populous city, with 3.8 million inhabitants, and the capital of the Australian state of Victoria. Originally Melbourne was settled by free men as a pastoral settlement. When the Gold Rush arrived near Melbourne in the 1850s, the town was quickly transformed into a bustling metropolis.
The city still has plenty of evidence of its Victorian past with the city possessing many 19th century buildings and architecture. Melbourne also has some beautiful parks, which were laid out during the Victorian era. Prior to European settlement the site along the Yarra River had been inhabited by indigenous Australians of the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung nations. In 1835 John Batman explored the area of what is now central Melbourne and negotiated a tract of land of 600,000 acres from the Wurundjeri elders.
The settlement was at first known as Bearbrass, but was named after the British prime minister William Lamb Second Viscount Melbourne in 1837. Melbourne now has Liardet Street and Liardet's Beach named after the would be historian in honor of the contribution made to the historical archives of Melbourne.
