Dights Falls on the Yarra River, Abbotsford. Dights Falls on the Yarra River showing the silurian sandstone hillside Dights Falls is a rapid and weir on the Yarra River in Melbourne, Victoria, just downstream of the junction with the Merri Creek. At this point the river narrows and is constricted between 800,000-year-old volcanic, basaltic lava flow and a much older steep, silurian, sedimentary spur. The north side also contains abundant graptolite fossils in sedimentary sandstone.
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Boating is difficult beyond Hawthorn and impossible past Dights Falls. It is mostly concentrated in central Melbourne where cruises go up and down the river and ferries operate.
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Local highways () are the next important roads under the National highways. The number has two, three, or four dights. Highways with two-digit numbers routes are called State-funded local highways.
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Heritage boundaries The homestead on Dights Hill is a rare survivor, largely dating from the first quarter century of the colony. It is a substantially intact example of early building materials and techniques. It is a harmonious feature of the landscape which provides evidence of having set the example to establish the safe accommodation on the highlands out of reach of the flood waters of the Hawkesbury River. Documentary records and physical evidence support the educational and research potential of Dights Hill and the archaeological resource of an early farm complex.
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Dights Falls, where the Merri Creek and Yarra River joins, is a short walk from the Collingwood Children's Farm and is a favourite spot for kayakers and picnickers. Cyclists pass through the farm on the Yarra River Trail, which follows the Yarra River from the city to Dight's Falls, where it meets the Merri Creek Trail. This also forms part of the Capital City Trail. Studley Park, an extensive parkland which merges with the larger Yarra Bend Park, contains Dights Falls and features within it a golf course, sports grounds, and small pockets of natural forest.
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The creek may also be used recreationally to angle Brown trout. In a study conducted in 1997, it was home to six species of fish. Since the advent of a fishway at Dights Falls, it has attracted more native fish species, like the Spotted galaxias and the Australian grayling.
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On 24 February 2007, Pappas' on-off girlfriend Lynette Phillips disappeared. On 2 March, her body was found wrapped in a quilt in Dights Falls on the Yarra River. She had been weighted down with a backpack containing two four kilogram dumbbells. An autopsy determined that Phillips had been strangled.
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It flows through, or forms a part of the borders between the suburbs of Wallan, Kalkallo, Donnybrook, Craigieburn, Wollert, Epping, Somerton, Campbellfield, Lalor, Thomastown, Fawkner, Reservoir, Coburg North, Coburg, Preston, Thornbury, Brunswick East, Northcote, Westgarth, Fitzroy North, Clifton Hill and Fairfield before meeting the Yarra River just upstream of Dights Falls.
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Over the next few years, he constructed a brick mill there and began the production of flour. The mill was called Ceres, located at Dights Falls. Ownership of the land passed to Charles Dight and his brother John in November 1843. The mill produced flour and had small dynamos, so was the first Victorian hydro-electric plant.
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For most of this section, the road runs directly alongside the Yarra River after it widens past Dights Falls, with a clean view of the bridges and surroundings. Alexandra Avenue also provides access to the Royal Botanic Gardens and Birrarung Marr. Alexandra Avenue, however, is an important thoroughfare in inner-eastern Melbourne, and so traffic can often be unpleasant.
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Weddings and special events are also held at the farm. Cyclists and pedestrians will often take a journey along the Yarra River Trail as it passes through the Collingwood Children's Farm, following the Yarra River from the city to Dights Falls and further afield. They often stop and eat at the Farm Cafe (which is run independently of the farm).
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If heading off in the westerly, either side of the river can be used, but the south side tends to be more popular. The Capital City Trail uses the same path as the Main Yarra Trail up to Dights Falls, where it continues, using the same path as the Merri Creek Trail, as part of its loop around the city.
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The area can be readily accessed by walkers and cyclists from the Yarra River Trail. The rapid is often used for canoeing, and has been used many times for the Victorian Canoe Slalom Championships. Magpies occupy the area, and it is said that the Collingwood Football Club's use of the magpie mascot was inspired by the magpies at Dights Falls.
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Billibellary died on 10 August 1846 of inflammation of the lungs, an ailment which killed many of his people in the period after contact with Europeans. Billibellary was buried at the confluence of the Merri Creek and the Yarra river (Birrarang) near Dights Falls.Ellender and Christiansen, pp. 106–7. His passing was lamented by Thomas who had developed a deep friendship and mutal respect across cultures.
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Melbourne Landing, 1840; watercolour by W. Liardet (1840) Dights Mill Abbostford (built 1839) pictured in 1863 In 1803, the first Europeans sailed up the river, a surveying party led by Charles Grimes, Acting Surveyor General of New South Wales, sailed upstream to Dights Falls where they could no longer continue due to the nature of the terrain. European explorers would not enter the river for another 30 years until, in 1835, the area that is now central and northern Melbourne was explored by John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association, who negotiated a transaction for 600,000 acres (2,400 km²) of land from eight Wurundjeri elders. He selected a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village". The river was instrumental in the establishment of Melbourne along its banks from 1835 onwards.
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Swimming is also popular in the middle reaches throughout winter, particularly around Warrandyte. Around this area there are submerged mining shafts which can cause undertows that suck swimmers under the surface and into these shafts. In the period 2004–08, 3 people died in this manner in Warrandyte alone. Swimming is safer downstream, but not advisable below Dights Falls due to the high levels of pollution and high boating traffic.
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The trail follows the Yarra River to Yarra Bend Park on the Yarra River Trail and meets Merri Creek at Dights Falls. It follows the Merri Creek Trail up the Merri Creek to Rushall Station, where it follows the former Inner Circle rail reserve and Royal Park. It then meets the Moonee Ponds Creek Trail, which continues back to Docklands and Southbank. At its farthest, the trail is 5 kilometres from the centre of Melbourne.
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Grimes explored the Yarra by boat for several miles until he reached Dights Falls on 8 February. The event is commemorated by a historic marker on a ridge above the falls to the east: "first white men to discover the river Yarra reaching Yarra Falls on 8th February, 1803. Also to make the first crossing near here with the cattle by the first overlanders John Gardiner, Joseph Hawdon and Captain John Hepburn in December 1836".
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The site is on the Yarra River Dreaming Trail, an important part of the bigger creation story of the Wurundjeri people and their country. There are important Wurundjeri camping sites located nearby which have been used for thousands of years. A little way north is the confluence of the Merri Creek and Yarra River near Dights Falls; the burial site of Billibellary; the location of the Aboriginal Protectorate, Native Police Corps headquarters and Merri Creek Aboriginal School.
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Charles Hilton Dight (1813 – 9 October 1852) was a miller and politician in colonial Victoria (Australia), member of the Victorian Legislative Council. Dight was born near Richmond, New South Wales, son of John Dight, surgeon and farmer, and Hannah, née Hilton. Charles and his brother John took up land near Albury, New South Wales around 1837. The Dights then moved to Melbourne, John Dight senior on 7 November 1838 bought portion 88, Parish of Jika Jika, County of Bourke.
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Alternatively continue to follow the Yarra boulevarde to Studley Park - see below. At Gipps Street, flights of steps connect to the concrete path on the western side of the river. Some cyclists choose to avoid the steps and ride the back streets of Abbotsford to meet the trail at the Collingwood Children's Farm. A short way further the trail comes to Dights Falls, an ancient meeting place for the Wurundjeri people and tribes of the Kulin nation.
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Returning to the Yarra it was explored for several miles but the boat was stopped by Dights Falls. The journal of another member of the party, James Flemming, has been preserved,THE VOYAGE OF HIS MAJESTY'S COLONIAL SCHOONER "CUMBERLAND,"FROM SYDNEY TO KING ISLAND AND PORT PHILLIP IN 1802-3. A Journal of the Explorations of Charles Grimes, Acting Surveyor-General of New South Wales. Kept by James Flemming and in it he several times refers to finding good soil.
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At the head of the bay they found a river and followed it upstream where it soon divided. They followed the western branch and named it the Saltwater River (the present Maribyrnong) to what is now Braybrook, and then the eastern fresh-water branch (the Yarra) to Dights Falls. They had a friendly meeting with local Aborigines and returned to their ship via Corio Bay. They concluded that the best site for a settlement would be on the freshwater at the northern head of the bay, but were unenthusiastic about the soil and its agricultural potential.
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He was followed shortly after by Matthew Flinders. In January 1803, Charles Robbins and Charles Grimes in the schooner Cumberland explored the whole of the bay, and found the mouth of the Yarra River, on which they rowed as far as Dights Falls at Collingwood. In October 1803 a convict settlement was established at Sullivan Bay at the mouth of Port Phillip, but this was abandoned and relocated to Van Diemens Land in January 1804. The Hume and Hovell expedition passed just to the north of present-day Melbourne in December 1824, before reaching Port Phillip at Corio Bay.
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Formerly part of the City of Collingwood, it is now part of the City of Yarra. Victoria Street forms the southern boundary to Abbotsford (with Richmond); Hoddle Street forms the western boundary (with Collingwood); the Eastern Freeway forms the northern boundary (with Clifton Hill) while the Yarra forms the eastern boundary with Kew, in Boroondara. Some well known Abbotsford landmarks include the Skipping Girl Sign, Dights Falls, the former Collingwood Town Hall, Victoria Park Football Stadium and Abbotsford Convent. Abbotsford is designated one of the 82 Major Activity centres listed in the Metropolitan Strategy Melbourne 2030.
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Dights Mill (built 1839) pictured in 1863 The Abbotsford area was once bush along the Yarra River occupied by the Wurundjeri people. The area of Abbotsford was first subdivided in 1838 and sold at an auction in Sydney. One of these lots was purchased by John Dight and the lot was later called Dight's Paddock. Dight then further subdivided the land into 5 acre (12 hectare) lots and in 1878 Edwin Trenerry, a Cornwall-based property developer, purchased a large portion of Dight's Paddock for his nephew Fredrick Trenerry Brown and proceeded to further subdivide it for a residential estate.
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On the next day, Grimes rowed up the river in a boat and explored what is now the Maribyrnong River for several miles. Returning to the Yarra he explored the river for several miles until he reached Dights Falls on 8 February. The journal of another member of the party, James Flemming, has been preserved, and in it he several times refers to finding good soil. Although it was evidently a dry season Flemming, who was described by King as "very intelligent", thought from the appearance of the herbage that "there is not often so great a scarcity of water as at present".
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Olinda Creek at Lilydale, an upper tributary of the Yarra The Yarra's major tributaries are the Maribyrnong River, Moonee Ponds Creek, Merri Creek, Darebin Creek, Plenty River, Mullum Mullum Creek and Olinda Creek. The river hosts many geographical features such as; bends, rapids, lakes, islands, floodplains, billabongs and wetlands. Most features have been named after translated Wurundjeri phrases or have European, particularly British, origins. Some of the river's more prominent features include; Coode Island and Fishermans Bend, Victoria Harbour, Herring Island, Yarra Bend, Dights Falls, Upper Yarra Dam and Reservoir and many river flats and billabongs.
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The Yarra River as it flows north-west towards central Melbourne, passing underneath the Swan Street Bridge. West Gate near the river mouth Below Dights Falls at Yarra Bend Park in inner Melbourne, the river becomes increasingly estuarine as it passes along the southern side of the central business district. This area forms the venue for the annual "Moomba" festival, which notably features an annual water skiing competition which attracts a huge crowd. The lower stretch of the river from Docklands to the Melbourne Cricket Ground was part of the final path of the Queen's Baton Relay of the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
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Contact with sealers would have exposed the coastal tribes to European diseases, and this would have exercised a heavy impact on demographics, and the economic and social ties binding the Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples, as would the possible effects of infectious diseases contracted from these sealers. James Fleming, one of the party of surveyor Charles Grimes in HMS Cumberland who explored the Maribyrnong River and the Yarra River as far as Dights Falls in February 1803, reported smallpox scars on several aboriginal people he met, suggesting that a smallpox epidemic might have swept through the tribes around Port Philip before 1803, reducing the population.
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The surrounding river valley was enjoyed for thousands of years by the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri, for whom the nearby junction of the Yarra River and Merri Creek was an important meeting point. The precinct surrounding the convent is the most intact site associated with the first documented European inland contact in Victoria. In 1803 Charles Grimes, Surveyor General of New South Wales, explored the Yarra by boat as far as Dights Falls. This bend of the river has been subject to less change than any other section of the river and the valley has changed little since early days of settlement.
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The path commences at Dights Falls near where Merri Creek enters the Yarra River, and then takes a winding route, mainly following the creek all the way to the Western Ring Road Trail. Hazards include a steep section, unmanageable to all but the most hardy cyclists and close to a school, at Heidelberg Road in Clifton Hill, and a missing section in North Fitzroy that requires leaving the river cutting to cross St. George's Road. The route is now sealed for its entirety, with the last unsealed sections replaced in 2008. Along the way it passes by CERES, the Brunswick velodrome and the Coburg Lake park.
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The Merri Creek is a waterway in southern parts of Victoria, Australia, which flows through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. It begins near Wallan north of Melbourne and flows south for 70 km until it joins the Yarra River at Dights Falls. The area where the creek meets the river was traditionally the location for large gatherings of the Wurundjeri people and is suspected to have been the location for one of the earliest land treaties in Australia between Indigenous Australians and European settlers. The creek was the site of heavy industrial use throughout much of the 20th century, being home to quarries, landfills and accepting waste runoff from neighbouring factories.
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The river was then fully dammed at the entrance and exit to the tunnel and water was diverted through 145m and out the other side leaving a 3.85 km of riverbed around Pound Bend exposed to the sun and the miners picks. Other diversions include The Island cutting in Warrandyte and the Little Peninsula Tunnel and Big Peninsula Tunnel near McMahons Creek. The Gold Rush saw increased development in Melbourne and "tent cities" of new migrants lined the Yarra during the early years of the gold rush. In the 1840s a weir was built at Dights Falls to power a flour mill and to give some control over the river downstream from there.
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The park's location at the joining of the Yarra River and Merri Creek has been an important site for the Wurundjeri Aboriginal people for a long time prior to the arrival of Europeans in Melbourne, which is commemorated by the Koori Garden on the western edge of the park, near Dights Falls. Yarra Bend Park was officially reserved in 1877, and in 1929 it joined with Studley Park to the south to cover the whole of the area today. From 1848 until 1925 the park was home to Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, which took up most of the area of the park with buildings, vegetable gardens and a cemetery. In 1904, the Queen's Memorial Infectious Diseases Hospital was established along Yarra Bend Road, Fairfield.
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Then, from 4.6 to 0.8 million years ago volcanoes such as Hayes Hill (about 5 km east of Donnybrook) and Mount Fraser (near Beveridge) erupted, sending lava on a journey along the ancestral valleys of the Merri and Darebin Creeks and into the valley of the Yarra River as far as the CBD. The modern day Merri Creek was formed over many years, by incising through the lava surface. Today, the creek begins in Wallan north of Melbourne and flows in a southerly direction for 70 km until it joins the Yarra River in Fairfield near Dights Falls and subsequently flows into Port Phillip Bay. Its tributaries include; Wallan Creek, Mittagong Creek, Taylors Creek, Malcolm Creek, Aitken Creek, Curly Sedge Creek, Merlynston Creek and Edgars Creek.
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The Boon wurrung people, living primarily along the Port Philip and Western Port coast, were also subjected to raids on their camps by sealers from at least 1809 to as late as 1833, which were frequently violent with men being killed and the women being abducted and enslaved by sealers for sexual partners and taken to the Islands in Bass Strait where the sealers had their camps. This would have impacted the economic and social ties binding the Woiwurrung and Boon wurrung peoples. James Fleming, one of the party of Charles Grimes in HMS Cumberland who explored the Maribyrnong River and the Yarra River as far as Dights Falls in February 1803 reported smallpox scars on several Aboriginal people he met, indicating that a smallpox epidemic had swept through the tribes around Port Philip before 1803 reducing the population. Broome puts forward that two epidemics of smallpox almost annihilated the Kulin tribes by perhaps killing half each time in the 1790s and again around 1830.
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