05/06/2026
Running for 242 km, Melbourne’s iconic Yarra River (Birrarung) has always been an important resource for the people living next to it. Before colonisation, Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung peoples spent their summers in the river’s extensive wetlands, which provided up to 60% of their diet as well as clothing and medicine.
After Europeans arrived in the early 1800s, the colonists changed the river dramatically. Wharves and factories replaced the wetlands, causing erosion and pollution.
This erosion exacerbated existing flooding problems. In 1863, Melbourne recorded nearly 140mm of rain across 5 days. Where 40 years earlier this would have simply spread across the wetlands, it now flooded homes and businesses. Thirty years later, approximately 3000 people were made homeless by the 1891 ‘Great Flood’.
To prevent further flooding, the city undertook major engineering projects to ‘tame the river’. The Yarra was widened, deepened, and shortened. Most significantly, it was straightened when a new course was dug, removing Fisherman’s Bend, to provide easier access for ships. In 1883, the natural Yarra was altered once again, explosively, when the Yarra Falls were demolished to make way for the Queens Bridge.
Today, the river remains an important resource and gathering place for Melburnians but it still faces many challenges from the years of urban development and landscape alteration. In 2017, the Victorian Government passed the landmark Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017, the first legislation in Australia to be co-titled in a First Nations language and the first to identify a large river as a single “living and integrated natural entity” requiring protection.
