The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, (Kulin languages: Berrern, Birr-arrung, Bay-ray-rung, Birarang, Birrarung, and Wongete) is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia.
The lower stretches of the Yarra are where Victoria's state capital Melbourne was established in 1835, and today metropolitan Greater Melbourne dominates and influences the landscape of its lower reaches. From its source in the Yarra Ranges, it flows west through the Yarra Valley, which opens out into plains as it winds its way through Greater Melbourne before emptying into Hobsons Bay in northernmost Port Phillip Bay.
The river has been a major food source and meeting place for Indigenous Australians for thousands of years. Shortly after the arrival of European settlers, land clearing forced the remaining Wurundjeri people into neighbouring territories and away from the river. Originally called Birrarung by the Wurundjeri, the current name was mistranslated from another Wurundjeri term in the Boonwurrung language, Yarro-yarro, meaning "ever-flowing."
The river was utilised primarily for agriculture by early European settlers. The landscape of the river has changed dramatically since 1835. The course has been progressively disrupted and the river widened in places. The first of many crossings of the Yarra River to facilitate transport was built in Princes Bridge. Beginning with the Victorian gold rush it was extensively mined, creating the Pound Bend Tunnel in Warrandyte, and the Big and Little Peninsula Tunnels above Warburton. Widening and dams, like the Upper Yarra Reservoir, have helped protect Melbourne from major flooding. The catchment's upper reaches are also affected by logging. Industrialisation ultimately led to the destruction of the marshlands at the confluence of the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers in the area around Coode Island in West Melbourne.
Today, the Yarra mouth including Swanson and Appleton docks are used for container shipping by the Port of Melbourne, which is the busiest on the continent. The city reach, which is inaccessible to larger watercrafts, has seen increased use for both transport and recreational boating (including kayaking, canoeing, rowing and swimming). In March 2019, it was reported that the river's environmental health is at risk due to litter, pollution, pets, and urban development.
Melbourne Water is the lead agency for implementing the Yarra Strategic Plan (Burndap Birrarung Burndap Unmarkoo) 2022-32. The plan gives effect to the community's long-term vision for the Yarra and supports collaborative management of the river and its lands. The annual Moomba festival celebrates the Yarra River's cultural significance to Melbourne.
Etymology The river was called Birrarung by the Kulin people who occupied the Yarra Valley and much of Central Victoria prior to European colonisation. The name Birrarung is derived from a Wurundjeri word meaning "river of mists," as the area around the waterfall tended to get misty before nightfall.
At European arrival in 1835, Surveyor-General of the Colony of New South Wales John Helder Wedge of the Port Phillip Association visited the area with two Kulin people, who pointed at the flowing water and said yarra yarra, recorded in Wedge's notebook as the phrase yarrow yarrow in the mistaken belief that this was the name for the river in the Boonwurrung language. Yarra yarra was instead what the Kulin people had referred to as the Yarra Yarra falls, which was later dynamited in 1883 as part of a series of extensive harbour improvements of the river, engineered by Sir John Coode. Wedge later learned of this and admitted he had mistaken the Kulin name for the falls for the river itself, but by then the name had stuck.
On his first contact with local Wurunderi people in 1835, John Wedge wrote:
Geology and formation
Before 8000 BC, the Yarra River probably joined course with other present-day Port Phillip Bay tributaries such as the Patterson/Dandenong, Kororoit, Werribee, Little River, Hovells, and Balcombe. It is believed it flowed directly south towards present-day McCrae, then bent west to drain through a narrow gap (what is now called the Rip) into a bay of the Great Australian Bight on the west side of a prehistoric land bridge called the Bassian Plain (which later became submerged into the Bass Strait). Between 8000 BC and 6000 BC, after the end of the most recent Ice Age, the rising sea level flooded the lower basin forming the shallow Port Phillip Bay, moving the Yarra river mouth over inland and separating various lower tributaries of the Yarra into their own river systems.
A dry period combined with sand bar formation may have dried out the Bay as recently as between 800 BC and 1000 AD, temporarily re-extending the Yarra south to Bass Strait during this period.
History
The area surrounding the Yarra River was first inhabited by the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin nation. The area has been occupied by various indigenous clans for at least 30,000 years. The river, known to the Wurundjeri people as Birrarung, was an important resource for the Wurundjeri people and several sites along the river and its tributaries were important meeting places where corroborees were held between Indigenous communities. The river's resources were utilised sustainably by the Wurundjeri until the arrival of European colonists in the early-mid-19th century.
European discovery and colonisation
The first Europeans to sail up the river was a surveying party led by Charles Grimes, Acting Surveyor General of New South Wales, who in 1803 sailed upstream to Dights Falls, where they could no longer continue due to the nature of the terrain.Parliament papers Government of Victoria European explorers would not enter the river for another 30 years until, in 1835, the area that is now central and northern Melbourne was explored by John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association, who negotiated a transaction for 600,000 acres (2,400 km2) of land from eight Wurundjeri elders. He selected a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village." The document, commonly called Batman's Treaty, was declared void by the Governor of New South Wales, Richard Bourke.
The Port Phillip settlement, which would become Melbourne, was established along the lower banks of the Yarra in 1835. The new settlement's main port was situated just downstream of Yarra Falls, west of modern-day Queen's Bridge, the place where saltwater met freshwater. Ships would use one side of the falls while the other side provided fresh drinking water for the town and a convenient sewer. In the city's early days, the Yarra was one of two major ports, the other being Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), but the Yarra was preferred due to the direct access to the town's main streets and was the location of Customs House (now the Immigration Museum). Early industries grew along the riverbanks, rapidly degrading water quality. Industries then began using the river and tributaries such as Merri Creek as landfill and for harmful chemical dumps for substances like grease and oils.
The disposal of sewerage in Melbourne was very basic in the early days. The majority of waste from homes and industries flowed into street channels and on to local rivers and creeks, which became open sewers. The first City Baths were opened in 1860. The objective was to stop people bathing in the Yarra River, which by the 1850s had become quite polluted and caused an epidemic of typhoid fever, which resulted in many deaths. However, people continued to swim and drink the water until Melbourne's fresh water was sourced from elsewhere.
The first permanent crossing over the river was Princes Bridge, which first opened as a wooden trestle bridge in 1844. The current bridge was constructed in 1888. In the early days, the river would frequently flood. While this was not considered a problem in the floodplains near Yarra Glen and Coldstream, the floodings caused much trouble further downstream in settlements such as Warrandyte, Templestowe, Bulleen, Heidelberg and Ivanhoe. The Upper Yarra Dam was later constructed to alleviate the flooding, protecting settlements along the river, yet depriving the river banks of soil and silt deposits and causing other problems such as erosion and salinity.
Victorian gold rush
Gold was first discovered in Victoria near the Yarra River in Warrandyte. The find was made by Louis Michel in 1851 at a tributary of the river, Andersons Creek, and marked the start of the Victorian gold rush. The approximate location of the site is marked by a cairn on Fourth Hill in Warrandyte State Park. The river was drained and diverted in various areas throughout the gold rush to aid gold miners. An example of this is the tunnel at Pound Bend in Warrandyte. The river was partially dammed at Pound Bend, near Normans Reserve at its eastern entrance and Bob's Wetlands at its western exit. Miners then blasted a 145m long tunnel through solid rock. The river was fully dammed at the entrance and exit to the tunnel and water was diverted through 145m and out the other side leaving 3.85 km of riverbed around Pound Bend exposed to the sun and miners' picks. Other diversions include The Island cutting in Warrandyte and the Little Peninsula Tunnel and Big Peninsula Tunnel near McMahons Creek.
The Gold Rush saw increased development in Melbourne and "tent cities" of new migrants lined the Yarra during the early years of the gold rush. In the 1840s, a weir was built at Dights Falls to power a flour mill and to give some control over the river downstream from there. From the earliest years of settlement, the mid and upper reaches of the Yarra began to be used for recreation. The river was selected as the site for the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1846 and the course of the river was modified slightly for the creation of a feature lake. Further upstream, the Cremorne Gardens were established in 1853.
Industrialisation
Sections of the river mouth and the area around the former West Melbourne Swamp were widened in the late 19th century, to make way for docks, harbours, bridges and other infrastructure. The increasing industrialisation of the river and the growth of the shipping industry saw the need for major infrastructure works which dramatically changed the course of the river in its lower reaches. The creation of new shipping channels to cope with the growing use of the Yarra by cargo ships was first tabled in the 1870s.
The first major change came with the cutting of the Coode Canal between 1880 and 1886. This major infrastructure project created an island which was known as Coode Island, named after the British consultant engineer engaged to design the works, Sir John Coode. This also included widening and deepening, and in some cases, vast areas of land were excavated, such as Victoria Dock, in order to give ease of access for cargo and later container ships. Abattoirs, smelters and even mortuaries used the river as a means of waste disposal in its lower reaches. This industrialisation led to a steady deterioration in water quality during the 19th century and into the 20th. In 1891, the Great Flood caused the Yarra to swell to in width.