News

Setting it Straight - Issue #5

Written by Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty

While there’s great biomedical science in every Australian capital, the Parkville Precinct – or the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct as it’s formally known – may be our most concentrated “research engine”.  The tiny residential suburb of South Parkville is separated from the University of Melbourne by Royal Parade, the elegant avenue that’s the final kilometres of the old Sydney Road. Transitioning again at the Royal Parade/Grattan Street intersection, the four corners that see the beginning of Elizabeth Street anchor the University of Melbourne Medical School, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre housing Peter Mac and the Doherty Institute.

Two blocks west of Royal Parade, the Parkville street where Phyrne Fisher (of the ABC’s Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) has her mansion ends near an imposing brick wall that, commemorating Melbourne’s 1850’s-1930’s Horse, Hay and Corn Market, features a prominently protruding, sculpted horse’s head. Carthorses and carriage horses, which burned around 15 kilograms of hay a day, were central to the life of any city in the pre-automobile era. That north market wall, with its high-mounted horse-head, now borders a campus including part of the Veterinary School, the great Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the Bio21 Institute.