Australian Cities: Naarm/Melbourne with Gary Presland (S02-EP04)

As we walk around built-up cities of today, it’s easy to forget that nature laid the groundwork long before the first brick was laid. Ancient volcanic eruptions shaped the land and waterways we now build around. These deep-time forces still influence where we place our cities—and how they grow. And as cities grow, natural environments become increasingly altered, sometimes beyond recognition, but nature continues to exert a powerful influence on the shape and size of cities.  In an era of climate crisis, we’re waking up to just how powerful that relationship still is.

Today we’re diving into the deep history of Melbourne—also known as Naarm—with Dr Gary Presland, who quite literally wrote the book on the subject: The Place for a Village: How Nature Has Shaped the City of Melbourne. For those outside Australia, Melbourne/Naarm sits on the southeast coast and is Australia’s second-most populous city. But long before skyscrapers and laneways, this was Kulin Nation land—home to the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peoples, who cared for its rivers, grasslands, and volcanic plains for tens of thousands of years. The city as we know it was laid out in a grid beside the Birrarung—what many know as the Yarra River. Today, it’s easy to forget just how deeply nature has shaped this place—but that’s exactly what we’re here to explore.

Dr Gary Presland is a non-Indigenous Melbourne/Naarm based writer and historian that studied history at La Trobe University and archaeology at the University of London.  His major research interests have been in Aboriginal and natural history of the Melbourne area and Gary has written many terrific books including Aboriginal Melbourne: The lost land of the Kulin People, for God’s sake, send the trackers’, ‘The first peoples of Melbourne, Port Phillip and Central Victoria: The Eastern Kulin and not forgetting ‘The Place for a Village: how nature has shaped the city of Melbourne, just to name a few, which will be the main focus of our discussion today.