BIRRARUNG – The Sacred River
In Aboriginal Dreaming, Bundjil – the dreamtime father – created the animals and he created Birrarung, the river which gave people life.
From the river the Wirundjeri, the first caretakers of the Melbourne area, gathered fish, eels, freshwater mussels and waterfowl. From the surrounding plains, they gathered herbs and roots and hunted kangaroo, possum, emu and wallaby
BIRRARUNG
In 1830 the meandering Kulin stood tall and straight under the scarred river red gums and looked out at Gardiners Creek, ‘the resting place of the water fowl’
A concrete freeway had landed flat on its back!
That night, in a thick dark enchanting wood, a squatter settled into his wigwam on Richmond flat
These Stone Age warriors with their invisible systems of crop management and food production, stared across the river at this woven clothed, cloven hoofed supreme master of smelted metal and his smoking gun
He tied his horse up to the Corroboree tree where the Kulin Nation met for family reunions and a sulphur crested cockatoo wept
They said,
“This dirt I scoop up is the spot where I was born and I hurl it at you like an exploding seed carried across the river in the wind. That is my dignity and spiritual identity right there at your boot heel, mister”
The surveyor jumped on his horse and rode crazily across Richmond flat, this way and that, crisscrossing and zigzagging – subdividing the lot
The Hentys and Dockers were rubbing the earth on Richmond Hill when a church spire burst out of the earth and grew and grew
Dr Clutterbuck’ s child put her fingers to her mouth after eating gruel. Her name was ‘Dysentry’ and she bathed in the Yarra that night
Sawmillers
Wooolscourers
Fellmongers
Bonecrushers
Tanners
Brewers
Brickmakers
Clawed their way along the clay banks of Birrarung
Disgorging liquid blood and filth by the Hawthorn punt
They swam in swampy tips around the ankles of the Wirundjeri
who still tried to hold their sports days and church services by the sacred river
Floral societies and light opera flourished on Railway platforms
As the town hall was lit up and the first electric cable tram swung across Bridge Road
The crowd looked up and “oohed and ahhed”
At a coal faced Victorian boy standing on a pony
In the Victorian half light, a bushranger lurked by Fitzroy Square
Ferrying carcasses into billabongs
Grand houses turned to seed
Crumbling bricks
Chased fleeing residents
Into segregated Streets
Catholic,
German,
Protestant,
Labor,
Wesleyian,
working mum,
drunken dad,
orphan child
The stain of Struggletown was smeared across their foreheads
After midnight mass at St Ignatius
For all this,
And a pony track owned by John Wren,
not one aborigine was left standing in Richmond
