Nestled beside one of Melbourne’s busiest roads, sits the Bolin Bolin Billabong — a site of immense cultural significance for the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people.
Part of a once-vast wetland that flowed into the Yarra River, it’s known to them as Birrarung.
It used to be rich in native foods such as waterfowl, fish, eels and plants.
For associate professor in earth sciences and Wiradjuri man Michael Shawn Fletcher, it’s still rich — in priceless data.
His scientific analysis of this muddy waterhole gives an extraordinary window into the past.
