Yarra The History of Melbourne’s Murky River

Batman’s private surveyor, John Wedge named the Yarra Yarra.  At the Turning Basin September 1835, he heard some Kulin identify the river as it came over the Falls as, he wrote, ‘Yarrow Yarrow’. Some months later  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.

(BLURB: Courtesy of publisher marketing)