Yarra: A Diverting HistoryIt was John Wedge, Batman's private surveyor, who named the Yarra Yarra. In September 1835 he was at the Turning Basin with some Kulin and heard them identify the river as it came over the Falls as, he wrote, 'Yarrow Yarrow'. It was only some months later that Wedge discovered they had been referring to the pattern and movement of water over the Falls, not the river itself. And ever since, it has been the Yarra's fate to be misunderstood- maligned for its muddiness, ill-used as sewer and tip; scooped, sculpted, straightened and stressed, 'cleaned up' to the detriment of its natural inhabitants; built-over, under and beside; worked mercilessly and then bridged almost to maritime extinction. In Kristin Otto's superbly entertaining new history, the whole sorry tale is laid bare. From the creation stories of Kulin owners and geologist blow-ins (and Robert Hoddle's bad-tempered expedition to the headwaters) to the twenty-first-century waterside building boom, Otto traces the course of Melbourne's murky river. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abbotsford Aboriginal Asylum Australian banks Barak Batman beautiful became billabongs Botanic Gardens Boyd brewery built Burnley bush catchment centre Collingwood Coode Creek flows Creek which flows crossing decades described Dights Falls downstream Fairfield feet ferry Fishermans Bend flats Flinders Street flood Footbridge Freeway Gully halfa Hawthorn hectares Heidelberg Heidelberg School Hoddle Hoddle’s huge hundred islands kilometres Kulin lagoon land landscape later Maribyrnong Melbourne’s metres miles mill ofits original Paddock painted painters Penleigh Port Phillip Princes Bridge pumped punt Richmond riverbank riverside riverwater Road scrub settlement ships silt South Yarra Spencer Street St Kilda Station Street Bridge Studley Park suburbs Surveyor swimming Templestowe tonnes trees tributaries Upper Yarra Upper Yarra dam upstream Victoria Warburton Warrandyte waterways wattle wetlands Wharf Woiwurrung Woori Yallock Wurundjeri Yarra Bend Yarra Glen Yarra River Yarra Valley Yarra Yarra Yering