Multiple personality

Richmond has a history as diverse as any Australian suburb. Presently it has a blend of industry and retail, rich and poor, with a range of ethnic and cultural diversity all housed in a variety of architecture which reflects some of Melbourne’s earliest buildings to its most recent. It is a place that is hard to pin down and identify with one defining feature. It is a suburb with multiple personalities.

Land, located in Richmond by the Yarra River, originally home to the aborigines from the Doutta Galla tribe, became known as Cremorne Gardens. It was Melbourne's first 'pleasure gardens'. A type of early amusement park. Entrepreneur George Coppin later acquired and expanded the Gardens, with patrons arriving by train or boat to see wild animals, dancers and other entertainment. However the Gardens were sold in 1863 and adapted for use as, what was then called, a private lunatic asylum.

Richmond’s eccentricity is reflected in the incongruous depiction of “Audrey”, the skipping girl, in the corridors of what the old asylum may have looked like. However the multiple personalities of Richmond are not an affliction, as in the days of the “asylum”, but a source of its vibrancy.