LOCATION
The Burke Road Billabong Reserve (the Reserve) is approximately 3 hectares of Crown land within the Municipality of Boroondara. The Reserve is Crown land under the management responsibility of the Burke Road Billabong Reserve Committee of Management Inc. (the Committee). The Reserve is located between Burke Road, the Eastern Freeway, Kew Golf Course and the Yarra River. It adjoins a larger area of land that is currently under management of VicRoads. This land is indistinguishable at ground level from the Reserve, and processes are in place to have this land transferred to the Crown, reserved, and the Committee appointed as the land managers.

 

ACCESS

The Reserve is reached from the adjacent Main Yarra Trail.

HISTORY

The traditional owners of the area of the Reserve are the Wurundjeri people. The clans of the area were Wurundjeri-balluk & Wurundjeri-willam. At the Bolin-Bolin billabong, a few hundred meters upstream, was the site of an annual gathering of the Kulin Nation, a group encompassing many of the local indigenous clans. These meetings would take place every April/May involving over a thousand individuals. It seems likely that many would have set up camp at the billabong within the Reserve. As the billabong began to fill after summer, it would have been a convenient source of eels, fish, and other aquatic creatures.

1845

British settlement of Melbourne had occurred land in the area surrounding the Reserve was bought from the Crown by William Oswin. Oswin is described as an 'agriculturalist', but evidence of fences on the site implies that he used the 279 acres to run cattle.

 

1894

The next major change came when the Kew Golf Club was established. This took over the land almost up then edgfe of nthe nBillbong

 

LATER

The area to the north-east, south, and west of the billabong had been cleared and used for agriculture. In addition, some of the land near Burke Road was part of the Kew tip and contains building rubble now overlain with various depths of soil.

The Reserve has been extensively disturbed over the years having been used for agricultural activities. Other disturbances include a trunk sewer construction on a NW-SE alignment across the western part of the Reserve and a sewer pump station overflow pipe constructed on a NNE/SSW alignment across the eastern part of the reserve.

2007

The Burke Road Friends Group was formed as little to no work had been done to manage or control the site prior to this. The site was steadily degrading through inexorable invasion of exotic plants and animals, and through some inappropriate public uses.