by The lost blue lake of Melbourne was part of a wetland west of the city, swallowed up by Spencer Street station and surrounding development.
Europeans began settling the area that would become Melbourne in 1835.
That year, two different expeditions arrived from Tasmania by ship: one lead by John Batman, one by John Fawkner. Both were entrepreneurs motivated by the same goal: seeking land suitable for farming.
Port Phillip Bay was already known to the British colonial authorities, who had founded a penal colony at Sorrento in 1803. But this had only lasted a year, abandoned due harsh conditions and a scarcity of fresh water.
Batman and Fawkner would focus their search further north. A few months apart, they both stumbled across a broad river, near the crest of the bay, that they followed inland.
The Yarra River, as it came to be known, originally followed a long, looping curve inland, before running into a small waterfall. This natural barrier prevented the Europeans from travelling any further by boat, and so by accident set the future location of the city (read more about the Yarra waterfall, here).
The new arrivals could hardly believe their luck: the place they had found was an astonishing natural paradise.
‘The country here is enchantingly beautiful. Extensive, rich plains all around, with gently sloping hills in the distance. The grasses, flowers and herbs that cover the plains are of every variety that can be imagined.’
– John Norcock, officer on the HMS Rattlesnake, 1836
The river provided freshwater, fish and other edible marine life. The land near it banks was swampy, but further afield was lush and fertile.
The climate was mild.
Originally under the names ‘Batmania’ and ‘Bearbrass’, Melbourne began as a few streets adjacent to a wharf, that was built seaward of the waterfall. It spread gradually outward from there; in 1839 via the famous grid laid out by government surveyor, Sir Robert Hoddle.
One of the early city’s most distinctive natural features was a blue lake, a short distance northwest of the settlement.
‘(It was) intensely blue, nearly oval, and full of the clearest salt water. Fringed gaily all around by mesembryanthemum, the ground sloping down towards the lake was also empurpled.’
– George Gordon MacRae, early settler
The lake was a saltwater lagoon, the largest in a low-lying area dotted with ponds and marshes.
The blue lake was rich in wildlife.
Batman built a house on a small hill overlooking the town, which also provided a view of the lake to his north. He reported seeing ‘thousands of quail’ there, of a morning.
Many other bird species were present in numbers.
Ducks, swans, geese, curlews, ibis, and cormorants were all found at the lake. It was also well stocked with shellfish.
In the first few years of the city, the blue lake was a popular location. Hunters and fisherman went there to try and catch their breakfast or dinner, it was also considered a beauty spot, patronised by young couples out for a romantic stroll.
In a city initially short of recreation activities, the lake was important.
Oh course, the Europeans did not arrive in a vacuum. The first humans had come to the area at least 25 000 years beforehand, and by the nineteenth century it was divided among the five tribes of the Kulin nation.
The Wurundjeri occupied the area that became inner Melbourne, which they called ‘Naarm’.
The native inhabitants lived well on the location’s resources: hunting native animals, catching fish, collecting mussels, and using grasses for weaving. The blue lake had been an important source for all of these.
It served another purpose as well. The lake marked a boundary between the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung tribes, this delineation creating a meeting place, for trade and discussion.
When Europeans began settling the area, these first nation’s peoples found themselves displaced.
From a modest start, Melbourne would expand rapidly.
Agriculture had proved as successful as Batman and Fawkner had hoped, farms in the area quickly began to thrive. A census in 1836 counted 177 adult residents; 5 years later, the population was above 10 000.
Word spread quickly.
Melbourne’s expansion went into fast forward with the discovery of gold at nearby Clunes in 1851. This drew a flood of fortune seekers, and other immigrants sensing economic opportunity.
The blue lake shortly began to suffer from this rapid development.
As the city grew, the lake began to be seen as a nuisance. The swampy land it sat in was unsuitable for building, the area was also rife with mosquitos.
As early as the 1840s, surveyors began sketching plans to drain and fill the area.
In the meantime, land nearby was considered low value, and so attracted commercial activity unwanted elsewhere. Factories and slaughterhouses were built adjacent, and used the lake as a dumping ground for their effluent.
The crystal blue water became polluted, driving away the birds and killing off the marine life.
Another development that impacted the lake was the arrival of the railway. The state government opened Spencer Street Station in 1859, and it became a busy hub with lines to Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong.
More lines would be added in the following years.
The lake had now shrunk and become non continuous. On maps it was marked as ‘Batman’s Swamp’, and then the ‘West Melbourne Swamp’.
In 1878, the government announced an ambitious plan to transform the Yarra.
While the waterway served a number of important functions for the city, it was far from perfect. It was prone to flooding, and as shallow and serpentine, was difficult to navigate.
To correct these problems, the government hired English civil engineer John Coode. Coode developed a program that would straighten and deepen the Yarra, connecting the city more directly to the sea.
These works would bring fundamental changes to Melbourne (read more about this here).
The Yarra waterfall was eliminated, and a new dock at Victoria Harbour created. Waterflow to wetlands was reduced, which made land adjacent to the Yarra less soggy, but also eliminated a number of small lakes and other waterways.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Melbourne’s blue lake had largely disappeared beneath warehouses, freight lines, and reclaimed land.
The last traces of the West Melbourne Swamp now stood in a kind of wasteland, caught between the railway and the northwestern corner of the CBD. The land here remained unused for decades.
During the Great Depression, the ailing economy caused job losses, and homeless numbers soared. People lived on the streets, or in makeshift shanties on vacant land.
A major shanty town would develop on the land of the old West Melbourne Swamp, known as ‘Dudley Flats’.
‘Dudley Flats is a city of ingenious makeshift. Its ‘mansions’ are indescribably primitive, fashioned from discarded sheets of galvanised iron, bricks from demolition works, timber from packing-cases, hessian from sacks and packs. Its gardens are miniature rubbish-tips.’
– ‘The Herald’, January 1938
Drinking water was obtained from a public standpipe, a mile away.
By the mid-1930s the Flats had evolved into two ‘suburbs’, separated by a coal canal used by the railway.
The city side of the canal was known as the ‘Bachelor’s Quarters’ and was occupied by single men. The other side was called ‘Happy Valley’ or ‘Tin Town’, and was used by couples and single women.
Many of these dwellings became substantial over time. Other, less robust, lean-tos were used by drifters, mostly young men, who passed through briefly.
People living in the slum worked casual jobs at Victoria Docks or the railway, or salvaged scrap from a nearby tip. At its peak in the late 1930s, Dudley Flats had about 50 permanent inhabitants.
The existence of a substantial slum so close to Melbourne caused mounting controversy.
Government officials would tour the area periodically, but were reluctant to evict the established residents from their homes. The tabloid press ran lurid stories, denoting filthy conditions, prevalent disease, and packs of roaming feral dogs.
These reports are generally considered exaggerated.
On 11 November 1942, Elsie Williams, a former singer and well-known resident of the flats, was found dead in her shanty. The public outcry that followed was the catalyst for government action.
The Harbour Authority issued eviction notices on November 18. Once the area was vacated, government officials burned the remaining structures to the ground.
Today, the location of Melbourne’s blue lake, and the West Melbourne Swamp, sits north of Footscray Road. This is one of Melbourne’s busiest industrial areas, home to major freight and shipping companies.
No trace remains of the lake itself, but the boundary of the area can still be seen at Moonee Ponds Creek. The creek is named for the Moonee Moonee chain of ponds, which used to feed into the eastern side of the lagoon.
A cycle and walking trail runs along this section of the waterway. This is a ghostly place; slack grey water sits beneath the Citylink tollway, abutted by fenced off vacant land.
It is easy to imagine people with nowhere to go, coming here.
