Group Name
Abbotsford Riverbankers
Our Purpose and Mission
Heal Protect Enjoy
Our mission is to help restore ecological function, structural improvement and resilience along the highly degraded, unprotected urban fringe of Melbourne’s most important waterway.
We aim to help our Yarra floodplains community embrace custodianship of country along the lower western Birrarung Yarra, through simple, powerful actions in their daily lives.
We aim to honour its ancient and complex heritage:
– its geological significance at the eastern edge of Victoria’s Great Western Basalt Plain.
– its place in the lands of its traditional owners the Wurundjeri-willlam people of the Kulin Nation; and
– its place at the heart of Melbourne’s pastoral and industrial beginnings, its contemporary life and a healthy future, benefiting residents and wildlife alike.
Primary Contact
Postal Address
Activities
Type of Group
Unique Features
Abbotsford Riverbankers are unique in Melbourne for our focus on healing ex-industrial and non-protected urban riparian terrain.
The work and care this entails require a high capacity to manage physical and mental demands in a hazardous, degraded flash-flood environment along the busy Main Yarra Trail traversed by up to 3000 users daily.
The Riverbankers team comprises carefully selected people who contribute career, life and study experiences, with strong-mindedness, patience and dedication to this independent charity’s successful operation.
Bringing our surrounding community with us on our journey of Yarra healing and transformation, have steadily earned our “social licence to operate” among our neighbours: support and approval to protect this blighted, unprotected urban fringe of the Yarra floodplain from human disturbance so it may heal and thrive into a climate uncertain future. We are a close-knit family right in the heart of our community.
Geography/History/Culture
The Yarra River’s western bank in Abbotsford is on the eastern edge of the Western basalt plains. Their volcanic basalt flows of 780,000 to one million years cap older sediments along the Yarra River in Abbotsford and Merri Creek.
After European settlement, all natural vegetation was eliminated, first by agriculture then by industrial expansion to the Yarra’s edge. Wetlands were drained and the course of the Yarra River was altered.
Ripping out the vegetation that held the Yarra floodplain together and changing the
course of the course of river soon brought predictable consequences – severe damage
from seasonal flash flooding – that still affect us and damage the health and integrity of
the river corridor today.
This represents a significant piece of the urban waterways jigsaw. But it remains under the radar: poorly understood, “too difficult”: a mute reproach hidden in plain sight.
Group/Sites Accessibility
The Main Yarra Trail, where Abbotsford Riverbankers cares for country, is a major thoroughfare and the place of spontaneous, iterative learning about this part of Country and how mindfully to interact with it. The place of learning is right where it happens, for visitor groups passing through, neighbours, nearby school groups, workers on their break…all ages and walks of life.
Abbotsford Riverbankers does not provide for casual volunteering, owing to the physical and mental demands associated with a hazardous, degraded flash-flood environment along the busy Main Yarra Trail. The fragility of the terrain also puts it at risk from volunteers unfamiliar with its attributes and how to work in this context. All of our team members undergo a trial process before being accepted into the team.
The Riverbankers’ monthly interactive sitewalk provides powerful learning and forms part of the trial process for people who wish to join the team.
