The City of Melbourne

The first Olympics held in the Southern Hemisphere!

This informative guide to the city of Melbourne, Victoria was issued in 1956 by the Vacuum Oil Company. Thousands of visitors would descend on the Australian city that year for the Summer Olympics, and the map was distributed as a helpful reference to the various places and events.

One side shows a street plan of downtown Melbourne that labels numerous locations of interest and Olympic venues. An accompanying chart shows the dates of events. The absence of equestrian is notable – those competitions took place in Stockholm several months prior! Also intriguing is the block of persuasive text that attempts to link the symbolism of ancient Greece with the flying Pegasus logo of Mobilgas.

The verso presents a detailed transportation map of the greater metropolitan area and a small inset of Victoria and part of New South Wales. A table of currency conversions is also provided.