Before this domain told the story of Strzelecki, it spent nine years as a meeting place for Polish Melbourne: a news portal, forum, events calendar and directory, run by volunteers after work.
Co-founder and designer of the portal: Arkadiusz Rejman. The melbourne.pl domain has been his since 2005.
10 Jul 2015
Farewell from Melbourne.pl
The editors thank everyone who read the portal over nine years and announce that the site and forum will disappear from the web.
Melbourne.pl was born on the evening of 18 February 2006, in a back garden. Over a bottle of bubbly opened by Przemysław Płuciennik, the founding team decided to build a portal for Polish Melbourne. Three days later the editors published their introduction, “Welcome to melbourne.pl”.
The inaugural toast
The melbourne.pl founding team, 18 February 2006 · Photos from Arkadiusz Rejman's archivePrzemysław Płuciennik opens the bubbly
1Arkadiusz (Arek) Rejman
2Wojtek Arkita
3Rafał Oleksy
4Magda Oleksy
5Magda Khan
6Justyna Rejman
7Monika Płuciennik with her daughter
8Przemysław Płuciennik with his son
9Wojtek Golis
10Wojtek Golis's wife
Hover over a name or a number to see who is who.
I · The portal
Polish Melbourne
Melbourne.pl was a Polish-language news and community portal for Polish people in Melbourne, with news from across Victoria and Australia. The editors' introduction of 21 February 2006 described a non-commercial project made by volunteers after work, without any political, social or religious allegiance.
A later bilingual introduction explained why the site was in Polish: to keep the language alive, for the adults and for their children.
The portal was co-founded by Arkadiusz (Arek) Rejman, who over the years designed its versions, took photos and wrote.
A melbourne.pl banner: Flinders Street Station at night and the logo with the motto “you can always meet us here”.
Reading room
Melbourne and Australia, travel, migration, study, interviews, the “People from here” profiles and memoirs.
Forum
Everyday help: life in Melbourne, visas, jobs, housing, classifieds and regional groups.
Calendar
Polish community events next to the city's big days: from the debutante ball to Moomba, the Grand Prix and the AFL Grand Final.
For newcomers: childcare and kindergartens, driving licences, studying in Australia.
Galleries and classifieds
Photos from festivals and gatherings, free classifieds, a newsletter and an RSS feed.
II · Timeline
Nine years
Every date below links to an Internet Archive capture or an outside source.
melbourne.pl · 2005
First traces
In 2005 Arkadiusz Rejman registers the melbourne.pl domain. The oldest month in the portal's post archive is December 2005, and the 2006 home page footer says 2005.
The last BBQ announced on the portal itself. Summer didn't show up that day, hence the Facebook album name, “Summer (winter?) picnic 2014”. Richard's sign stands in front of the gazebo.
The first picnic after the portal closed, called on Facebook. The next day: “Thank you all for coming in such numbers, and see you again in six months.”
In 2005 Arkadiusz Rejman registers the melbourne.pl domain. The oldest month in the portal's post archive is December 2005, and the 2006 home page footer says 2005.
The last BBQ announced on the portal itself. Summer didn't show up that day, hence the Facebook album name, “Summer (winter?) picnic 2014”. Richard's sign stands in front of the gazebo.
The first picnic after the portal closed, called on Facebook. The next day: “Thank you all for coming in such numbers, and see you again in six months.”
The forum was the practical heart of the portal. People asked about visas, jobs, housing and schools, sold cars and looked for friends. These were its sections on 12 January 2015; the smallest are grouped together.
The numbers come from the forum's own counters on that day; they are not visitor statistics. A small detail: one of the regional sections was Gippsland, the region Strzelecki named.
V · People
The editors
The authors described themselves as a small group with different outlooks and different lengths of time in Australia, plenty of enthusiasm and very little free time. This was the editorial team in March 2013:
Przemysław Płuciennik also appeared as the portal's editor-in-chief, for example at a talk about Australia in Bydgoszcz. The 2013 list is just one moment: over nine years many people made the portal, writers, photographers, forum moderators and the organisers of the gatherings. Thank you all.
Behind the site
ARArkadiusz Rejmanco-founder; design, photos, writing, the technical side
JRJustyna Rejmanproofreading, help with the photography
WAWojtek Arkitahelped with the site's code
WAWiktoria Arkitahelped with the site's code
Arkadiusz Rejman co-founded the portal and looked after its design and technical side throughout: he designed each version (his are the initials in the footer “Designed by: AR”), took photos for articles and galleries, wrote, and looked after the email, the domain and the server. Justyna Rejman proofread his articles and helped with all the photography. Wojtek and Wiktoria Arkita helped with the code. From Arkadiusz Rejman's own account.
VI · Gatherings
Beyond the screen
Melbourne.pl did not stop at the website. The editors regularly invited people to barbecues. Puls Polonii announced one of them as the tenth, open to everyone with Polish roots, including people who don't speak Polish.
The picnics happened twice a year, in autumn and in spring, usually at Catani Gardens by the bay in St Kilda. People came to meet other Poles living in or passing through Melbourne, and each year there were more children looking for new friends to play with.
The gatherings outlived the portal itself: the last BBQ was called by the melbourne.pl Facebook page on 10 April 2016. The page is still there, with 964 followers.
With thanks: Richard and Magda Hordejuk, later joined by their two daughters, always supported the melbourne.pl picnics. They brought the gazebos we gathered under, and Richard made the Melbourne.pl sign that hung on the gazebo at every BBQ at Catani Gardens.
Julia (sitting) and Adam Rejman (middle) with a friend under the melbourne.pl gazebo. A few years later Adam played Strzelecki and Julia narrated the film. Photo: Arek Rejman
Urszula Jankowska, “Polska prasa polonijna w Australii” (The Polish diaspora press in Australia), Rocznik Biblioteki Głównej Uniwersytetu Opolskiego X, pp. 60–61. Describes melbourne.pl as a volunteer-run news portal and includes a screenshot taken on 20 November 2013.
The melbourne.pl page is still there: 964 followers, events from 2011 to 2016 and photos from the picnics. Its last posts date from January 2017.
Do you remember melbourne.pl?
This story is still being filled in. Photos from the picnics, old articles, memories from the forum: we would love to add them here.
The domain lives on
Following Strzelecki
Today melbourne.pl tells the story of Paul Edmund Strzelecki, the Polish explorer who named Mount Kosciuszko: a film, a globe of his journey, four Australian expeditions, period maps and a quiz.
Following Strzelecki
Arkadiusz Rejmanco-founder; design, photos, writing, the technical side