As non-Indigenous educators, respectfully teaching Indigenous perspectives is challenging and always evolving. After MCMC’s education specialists provide school incursions that connect with Indigenous perspectives, we sometimes see educators build on the experience and develop their own initiatives. Our congratulations to Carlton Primary School’s Kaytlin Beattie and Winter Dunstone who developed their teaching of Indigenous perspectives by using the school’s indigenous garden to connect with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung language and enrich an understanding of the seasons.

The image (right) shows an example of how Grade 1 students departed from the common, stereotypical seasonal ideas associated with ‘summer’. Instead of using a blue palette of skies and beaches, they used yellow, gold and brown, which is more attuned to the local conditions of ‘biderap,’ the hot and dry season – as conveyed by the grasslands of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. 

Please contact our specialist educators via   to discuss opportunities for professional development, incursions and excursions.

MCMC's Rapid Response to Litter after Rainfall (RRLC) has produced a Litter Report that sums up our efforts in 2022. 747 participants at 71 events collected 94,418 pieces of litter. This litter was overwhelmingly made up of plastics – single use plastic bags and plastic food packaging.   

The RRLC program, which began in 2018 thanks to a grant from the Port Phillip Bay Fund, supports local community to safely remove litter from the waterways of Merri Creek. It has enabled expansion of the litter clean-up program run successfully for over 20 years by Friends of Merri Creek.

Long awaited Woi-wurrung names for two Merri Creek grasslands managed by Parks Victoria were formally gazetted on 22 December 2022. This is 16 years after Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder, Aunty Doreen Garvey-Wandin, provided a series of innovative names for Merri Creek grasslands, based on body parts of the mother kangaroo, at the request of the Friends of Merri Creek.

The newly gazetted names are: galgi ngarrk (backbone) for the Craigieburn Grassland Nature Conservation Reserve and bababi marning (mother’s hand) for Cooper St Grassland NCR. The name marram baba (body of the mother kangaroo) has also been adopted for the proposed parklands that extend along Merri Creek from the Ring Rd to Beveridge. The use of lower case for the first letter in the names is a Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung preference and has been accepted by Geographic Names Victoria.

Other names in the original series, submitted many years ago, were approved using conventional capitalisation: Bababi Djinanang (mother’s foot) for Jukes Rd Grassland in Fawkner; and Ngarri-djarrang (thigh) for Central Creek Grassland in Reservoir.

David Turnbull, who served as the City of Whittlesea's representative on Merri Creek Management Committee from 2001 to 2011, including as Vice President from 2007-09, was awarded a posthumous Order of Australia in January 2023 for his service to local government administration. We are pleased to acknowledge his long-term support for MCMC as one of his achievements. David's most recent appoinments were as CEO of Whittlesea City Council 2007-15 and CEO of Mitchell Shire Council 2016-20. He died  in 2020. RMIT University awards The David Turnbull Memorial Prize in his honour.  

Visitors to Merri Creek are often alarmed by the amount of litter trapped among vegetation and on the creek banks. The great majority of this litter comes after rain runs it from local streets into the creek, via underground stormwater drains, and it's obviously a lot worse when it rains heavily.

There's been a lot of community interest in helping to remove this litter. This is great, but we want to ensure that litter clean-ups are done safely. Wet weather brings hazards such as slippery/muddy banks, site flooding and strong water flows. We always complete a site safety assessment before going ahead with community litter clean-ups. Follow the 'Read more' prompt to find out how we support people to safely undertake litter clean-ups.

The Merri Creek broke its banks and moved out onto flood plains as a result of heavy rains in October 2022. Hernes Swamp, near Wallan in the upper Merri catchment, showed why it's called a swamp (see photo) and other Wallan swamps were similarly filled. This clip gives an excellent view of the expanse of Hernes Swamp.

Downstream, parts of the Merri Shared Path were underwater and constructed wetland, Strettle Wetland in Thornbury, was filled by overflow from Merri Creek. With the floods came masses of litter and the imperative to remove entangled plastics before they degrade into microplastics and contaminate aquatic life of the Birrarung (Yarra), Port Philip Bay and beyond. MCMC and the Friends of Merri Creek were featured in the local Brunswick Voice and The Age about the problem of litter, especially plastics, in and around Merri Creek.

We welcome the proposal to retain the southern part of Burrung Buluk (former Hanna Swamp) in the revised Beveridge North West Precinct Structure Plan. The swamp, which is one of the Wallan Wallan wetlands in the upper Merri catchment, was recently given the Woi-wurrung name: Burrung Buluk. 

Earlier proposals for the Beveridge North West Precinct showed the swamp covered by urban development. After a highly effective presentation by Mark Bachmann of Nature Glenelg Trust, on behalf of Friends of Merri Creek, the Planning Panel Report to the Minister recommended the swamp be protected.  

The next challenge will to be to protect the northern part of Burrung Buluk which falls within a different precint, the Wallan South PSP. Bizarrely, this natural feature, falls across two different precincts and its fate as a single, integrated entity rests on two separate decsion-making processes.

If you're interested in wetland restoration 'Wetland Restoration 101' - Reading the landscape with Nature Glenelg Trust gives an excellent introduction to the approach taken by the NGT. 

Photo shows Herne Swamp, the largest of the Wallan Wallan wetlands, after heavy rain in Sept. 2016, with the volcanic cone of Mt Fraser in background.

Plant Heroes is a project that showcases stories of people saving plant species from around Australia. One of its stories features Murnong Microseris scapigera and the years of work by MCMC and Traditional Owners, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, to conserve this species. It shows that the conservation work was less to do with the plant and more about the special relationship with people, in this place.

The creators of the story hope it can help to acknowledge the need to place cultural knowledge as core to conservation planning and developing 'right-way' projects.
See the video: Murnong; saving Yam Daisy on Melbourne's Merri Creek, or listen to more detail on the podcast.

Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) recently cemented stronger ties with the Port Phillip and Westernport Catchment Management Authority (PPWCMA). Our success in gaining funding to employ a Landcare Facilitator for the Upper Merri led to the development of a formal partnership agreement with the PPWCMA. 

MCMC also joined over 70 other organisations listed as partner organisations to the CMA's Regional Catchment Strategy (RCS). It means we formally support the pursuit of the visions and targets for relevant parts of the RCS and have agreed to help achieve optimum results, within our available resources.

As a partner organisation, MCMC submitted two projects for the Prospectus section of the RCS: the Merri Creek Biolink project and the Merri Creek Community Engagement project. The Prospectus is akin to a ‘stakeholder billboard’ on which organisations summarise their most important, desirable, practical and/or innovative project proposals. Although it doesn't guarantee funding, it advertises the fact that we are looking for help to achieve the projects.

Photo: Merri Creek in its upper reaches in Merriang

The recording of the webinar, Wild Chat: Rewilding & Living Bequests in Darebin, on 5 September 2021 is now available HERE.

Hear about ‘re-wilding’ in Darebin, focusing on an unlikely candidate, the very English-style park, Oldis Gardens in Northcote, and the wild work going on there. Also find out about the Harry Nash Indigenous Garden that's being developed there, and Living Bequests. Perhaps you might be inspired to make a bequest, or to form a new Friends of Oldis Gardens group,

Organised by Merri Creek Management Committee and supported by City of Darebin.