111003_073153_19712 The City In Close, And A View Down Collins Street (Mon 03 Oct 11)

Over Abbotsford (Melbourne), Victoria, Australia

My focal length here was only 58mm. Thus, you can see that we were getting close to the city. My original estimate was that we were over Collingwood, a suburb about 3km NE of the city centre... but since we'll shortly look down on the Carlton and United Brewery at Abbotsford (about 4km ENE of the CBD) we would have to have still been somewhere around there at the time.

Off to the left you can see Eureka Tower where some shots in my Miscellaneous Melbourne album were taken from the Eureka 88 Skydeck. (Or will be there eventually.) That area is known as Southbank, for the very good reason that it is indeed on the south bank of the Yarra River, which we can also see meandering through the frame. (That of course means that I am looking roughly west, across the CBD.)

On the northern bank we see Federation Square (marked by the pink and grey building which is closer to us), and Flinders Street Station. (The station itself isn't so visible, but its orange stonework is.)

Continuing to move to the right, we see a striking pair of black towers. These are the Rialto Towers at 525 Collins Street. No, they have no connection at all to the Rialto in Venezia, other than a Melbourne property developer appropriating the name for a building that was built in the area in 1891. The Intercontinental Hotel is at the back of the towers, using the facades of some of the original 1890s buildings on the site, including the original Rialto. The main tower was the tallest office tower in the southern hemisphere between its construction in 1986, and 1991. Once upon a time there was an observatory there, but annoyingly it closed in 2009, 2 years before this shot. The tower is 251 metres tall with 55 floors.

Continuing to the right, and closer to us in the frame, we see a tall brown / orange building roughly in the centre. (Which you may or may not be able to see has the Telstra logo on it.) That is Collins Place at 35 Collins Street, at the alleged "Paris End" of Collins Street. (Yes, you really need to squint to see it.) It started as a project by the ANZ Bank to aggregate land into a mixed use project. That is, offices, parking, professional suites, cinemas, nightclubs (hey, it was the 60s and 70s), and a high rise hotel. The hotel is now the Sofitel Melbourne on Collins which... I don't know what it was in 2011, but in 2025 it appears to have some very nice rooms with some excellent views. It's not cheap, but nice all the same. However it's an Accor hotel, which is always my last choice. Telstra did indeed have floors 3 to 16 of this building when I took this shot. However it decided to pull the plug on the lease when it expired in June 2018, as discussed in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald at the time:
"Telstra’s move out of Collins Street is in keeping with its recent strategy to cut staff numbers and office buildings.
It shelved plans for a new $1 billion tower in 2015 and announcing job cuts last year."
If you see the building today, it has the global technology company NTT's logo on it.

Move right again and you will see an octagonal building reminiscent (if you are from Sydney) of the MLC Centre. It was built around the same time, in fact. I refer to the one with the Aon name in red, Aon being an Anglo-American insurance and risk management firm. (The name Aon is from the Celtic word for "One", if you're interested.) That is 80 Collins Street, formerly known as Nauru House since that island nation built it with the proceeds of their Phosphate sales. "Wait", I hear you say, are you telling me that the last three buildings are all on the same street? They don't look lined up!" I am, and they are, sort of. The construction of 80 Collins Street back in the 1970s was something of a debacle. Nauru bought up a number of properties around the site but some, like the boutique Le Louvre at 72-74 Collins Street refused to sell. In the end Nauru House ended up being set back from Collins Street. The Queensland Investment Corporation bought the building in 2014. By 2017, 6 years after this shot, it had bought the other properties along Collins Street and demolished them to create a new building which became 80 Collins Street South Tower while the one we see became 80 Collins Street North Tower.

Given the length of this I'll point out only two other landmarks. St Patrick's Cathedral (which is behind Parliament House) can be seen about 3/4 of the way to the right. The tree lined road that runs from the centre bottom of the frame to the centre right of frame (more or less) is Victoria Parade. The orange and white building on that street near the bottom of the frame is the old Melbourne Brewery which has a tale to tell, but this is not the place for it. It has since been converted into a residential cluster known as Tribeca. (Yes, another name that was appropriated, this time from New York.)

Taken in: Australia / Victoria / Abbotsford (show map)

Taken on: October 3, 2011

Tags:

Hot Air Ballooning

Melbourne

Victoria

Melbourne Skyline

2011 Hot Air Balloon Flight Melbourne

Global Ballooning

East Melbourne

St Patricks Cathedral

Federation Square

Flinders Street Station

Eureka Tower

Southbank

Yarra River

Victoria Parade

1 Cathedral Place

Aerial Photography

Australia « less

Sets appears in: • Aviation:Melbourne:2011_10 Hot Air Balloon Flight 01 (Mon 03 Oct 2011)

Groups appears in: • Melbourne - One City, Many Photos

Camera: Canon EOS 40D, f/8.0, 1/2000 sec, 58mm, ISO 1250 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 40D
Lens:	EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.001 sec (1/2000)
Focal Length:	58mm
ISO:	1250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 22.4 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 139 views

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: