Melbourne's suburbs extend around the huge Port Phillip Bay, into the plains to the west and east and out to the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. This huge area of settlement has been necessitated by the dying but intractable goal of the Great Australian Dream - a detached home on a quarter-acre block, 2.5 children and a couple of cars in the driveway.

The city centre is about situated about 3km (1.8mi) inland, on the north bank of the Yarra River and is a neat grid of elegant (and kitsch) 19th-century architecture and self-important skyscrapers. The main north-south artery is Swanston St, running north from Federation Square and Flinders Street Station, while Bourke (a pedestrian mall for part of its extent) and Collins Sts, which cross it, are the city's other two main thoroughfares. A series of villagey districts circle the city centre.

Melbourne's an easy city to navigate unless you need to be in the suburbs, which can get confusing. It's designed in the classic mould: the thoroughfares fan out like the spokes of a wheel from the central business district. Public transport consists of trams, trains and buses and tends to be efficient and useful - as long as your trip is along one of the spokes of the wheel. Public transport across suburbs can be a problem.