Melbourne, a great port city in the great maritime state of Victoria

Melbourne’s river landscape is a place of great spiritual and cultural significance for the Aboriginal people of Victoria and has been responsible for Melbourne’s great wealth from the time of white settlement.

The wetlands – the Yarra River, Birrarung (the ‘river of mists’), the salt-water lake and the swamp lands at the junction of the Yarra River and Moonee Ponds Creek – were important meeting places for the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people who would come together in large gatherings for trade, celebrations, and other social activities. The wetlands teemed with animals and plants which were important food sources, and bark canoes were used for transport and fishing on the sea, rivers and wetlands.

Early in the colonial period, the turning basin below the Yarra Falls was a sea of masts from the sailing vessels moored there, and goods were unloaded on the first wharves created near the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets. Gradually the wharves and docks moved westwards and towards the end of the nineteenth century, the course of the Yarra River was shortened and, in an engineering marvel, Victoria Harbour was hand-dug to cope with the increased shipping. In the twentieth century, Appleton and Swanson Docks were created as the focus of container shipping, and to the immediate west of Melbourne’s CBD, the Docklands Precinct was created.

In the nineteenth century, Melbourne was known throughout the world as Marvelous Melbourne. In the twentieth century, as its prosperity and entrepreneurial confidence grew, Marvelous Melbourne transformed into Modern Melbourne. Underpinning both Marvelous Melbourne and Modern Melbourne was the ever-present Maritime Melbourne. Although seldom acknowledged, the prosperous evolution of Melbourne is due to Melbourne’s status as Australia’s great southern port city. It was ever thus – and even amid a global pandemic this strength has grown.

In the twenty-first century Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network (MMHN) is committed to ensuring Maritime Melbourne, so critical to our future national prosperity, is accorded due recognition by:

• Celebrating Melbourne’s rich maritime heritage,
• Recognizing the critical economic importance, strength and expertise of Melbourne’s diverse maritime industry,
• Using these strengths to ‘rebrand’ Melbourne.

The eight stated MMHN Objectives listed below together provide an exciting future for Melbourne as Australia’s great southern port city:

1. Melbourne’s Maritime Experience – an iconic, architecturally significant experiential and marine research centre;
2. Maritime Heritage Waterways Trails – Northbank, Southbank, Victoria Harbour;
3. Activation of Victoria Harbour as Melbourne’s maritime amphitheatre playground;
4. Marine Service Depot at Bolte West Precinct for servicing Melbourne’s pleasure craft and providing employment;
5. Marine Skills and Training Specialist Centre to build Australia’s seafaring capacity;
6. Southbank Maritime Heritage Precinct;
7. Revisioning the arrival experience at Station Pier;
8. Single Responsible Waterways Authority / Network Approach.

The gathering place, now known as Melbourne, exists because of its proximity to water. The sweet waters and fertile banks of the Birrarung, its rich swamps and bountiful bay teeming with life, perpetually drew people throughout the ages – Indigenous, explorers, settlers, traders, immigrants ‒ culminating in Marvelous and Modern Melbourne. It was an extraordinarily prolonged period of plenty and prosperity, far beyond the discovery of gold, encompassing agriculture, manufacturing and innovation. Underpinning all this development was the remarkable, rich maritime heritage of Maritime Melbourne.

Capturing Maritime Opportunities 

Paradoxically, the challenges of the Covid global pandemic reminded us all that Australia is an island nation defined by the oceans which surround us and that our nation will continue to depend on maritime trade and expertise. The irrefutable reality is that Melbourne was, is, and will continue to be, a great port city. From the social and economic turmoil of the pandemic, an unprecedented opportunity emerged enabling Victoria to re-focus on its dependence on maritime trade and our reliance relationship with the oceans which surround us.

Early economic development of the port of Melbourne and Victorian coastal development was propelled by a fortunate congruence of domestic and global factors – empire expansion and contested zones, by discovery of gold, and two gold rushes attracting astounding numbers of migrants, by steam propulsion replacing sail. Such factors accelerated maritime trade and local entrepreneurialism drove the Victorian economy. Melbourne became known as Marvelous Melbourne through the economic impetus of Maritime trade.

Innovation and efficiencies conduct of global maritime trade are relentless but so too is political instability. New factors render maritime trade today increasing problematic: disruption in major global shipping routes through the Suez and Panama Canals, ship ownership and marine insurance, exploitation of seafarers, trade wars, pollution, warming of the Antarctic and the Arctic waters, control of international waters is contested. Global commercial maritime norms are in flux. Australia is an island continent with an immense coastline, utterly reliant on maritime capability. We have an acute maritime skills deficiency, merely thirteen Australian registered vessels and a comparatively small navy. Australia’s maritime dependency and makes us vulnerable.

In the nineteenth century both the public and the government of the day recognised this vulnerability and invested in maritime capability, on and offshore. Our maritime heritage past can inform the future. We must rise to the challenges. But a major impediment is that in relation to matters maritime – the public does not know what it does not know.

MMHN is intent on dispelling this ‘maritime amnesia’ to enable a better understanding of the significance of the maritime sector and to enable us to grasp the future opportunities presented in the Blue Economy.

Squandering Heritage Assets

Port cities across the world value, and invest in, maritime cultural tourism. These cities understand, unlike Victoria, that maritime heritage has an important part to play in the visitor economy. 

Docklands Precinct presents a depressing example of Victorian state government mis-managing and squandering the maritime heritage assets in and around Victoria Harbour (formerly known Victoria Port). It is a nineteenth-century civil engineering marvel, yet when it became operationally redundant, its wharf infrastructure was simply demolished and discarded. Negligence by a state agency, Development Victoria, resulted in the forced demolition of heritage-listed Central Pier at the centre of Victoria Harbour. Stark contrast indeed to comparable redundant sites elsewhere in the world which have been maintained and / or re-purposed and now attract significant domestic and international visitation, e.g. The Port of Liverpool is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another dispiriting example in Victoria Harbour is the struggle by volunteer restoration teams working valiantly on heritage vessels to retain possession of berths and use of sheds on heritage-listed North Wharf. The responsible state government agency has allocated the wharf space to a property development company.

Such disregard for the value of maritime heritage is not limited to Melbourne. There are many examples in regional Victoria, for example, the neglect by Parks Victoria of the physical fabric of the unique Quarantine Station at Point Nepean; neglect of many heritage piers around the coastal towns of Port Phillip Bay; the commercial fisheries assets demolished and disappeared from Fisherman’s Pier at Lorne; the shameful demise of the notable vessels such as Cerberus and the Otama, and Osborne House Naval College, Geelong.

Future Advocacy Action 

Since its establishment, MMHN has focussed on the question: What needs to be done to halt this waste of maritime heritage assets?

In essence, the key to countering this threat is MMHN advocacy to inform and create awareness that our waterways and maritime heritage are being squandered – under-utilized, under-valued public assets and sites with the potential to deliver significant economic stimulus.

 MMHN aims to address this by advocating across all three levels of government to:

1. Ensure that the optimum potential of Melbourne’s maritime heritage legacy and its extensive waterways become valued assets.
2. MMHN focusses on a series of eight clear, realistic and achievable opportunities which we describe in terms of Objectives.

Further MMHN Projects

MMHN works towards a number of projects and seeks specific funding for these as they arise:

1. Children’s book: River to Bay: Victoria’s Maritime History, published 2023. Received National Children’s Non-Fiction Award.
2. Combined Maritime Heritage Trails (Northbank, Southbank and Victoria Harbour). Completed September 2025.
3. Trail with QR codes: Maritime Heritage Waterways Trails (Northbank/Southbank/Victoria Harbour): MMHN task completed – awaiting collaboration with City of Melbourne 2025.
4. Student Guide and Workbook: Combined Northbank/Southbank/Victoria Harbour Narrative Trail. Due 2025/26.
5. Children’s Book: Wharf Work – Ship to Shore Transformations (draft title), Due October 2025.
6. Documentary: Three Piers and a Goods Shed (draft title). Sub-Committee formed. Seeking funding
7. Development of two maritime data bases – artefacts and Victorian heritage vessels