Victoria (Australia) and is also described as the world's sporting capital. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, the largest stadium in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The ground is also considered the "spiritual home" of Australian cricket and Australian rules football, and hosts the grand final of the Australian Football League (AFL) each year, drawing crowds of approximately 100,000. Victoria has eight public universities, with the oldest, the University of Melbourne, dating from 1853. Victoria, like Queensland, was named after Queen Victoria, who had been on the British throne for 14 years when the
History of the Australian Capital Territory capital. Early advocate for Australian federation, John Dunmore Lang, backed Sydney, but Henry Parkes, a prominent New South Wales politician and Premier, proposed the capital be founded on "neutral ground", nominating the town of Albury as a location. (Albury was located in New South Wales, yet its position on the Murray River placed it on the border between New South Wales and Victoria). In 1898, a referendum on a proposed Constitution was held in four of the colonies – New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Although the referendum achieved a majority in all four colonies, the New South