The Wirundjeri people pass down many different stories about how Birrarung (the Yarra River) and Nairm/Naarm/Narrm (Port Phillip Bay) form, in what will become Melbourne.
The stories speak to ancient knowledge about the bay being a flat, dry shrubland, where boorrimul (emu) and marram (kangaroo) lived, before science is able to confirm this.
Wurundjeri man Beruk, or William Barak, will pass down a version of how Birrarung was made.
It begins with two boys having fun and playing out in the bush with toy spears.
They love to eat the sap from the wattle trees because it’s very sweet.
And particular types of trees have different kinds of saps.
One boy saw a clump of sap up in a tree, climbed up and was throwing it down to the other boy on the ground.
All of a sudden there was a big rumbling from under the ground.
An old man who was beneath the ground woke up angry and grabbed the boy. He started dragging him away, making a track in the ground.
The boy who was up the tree ran back to the family to tell them that the other boy had been taken by this old man.
By the time they asked their creator, Bunjil the wedge-tailed eagle, for help, the old man had taken the boy all the way to Naarm (Port Phillip Bay).
Bunjil threw sharp rocks in front of the old man and he died.
The boy went home.
The moral of the story is not to be mean to kids.
But in the meantime, that track that was being made filled with water and eventually went into the flat scrubland.
There were rocks blocking the entry to the ocean (Port Phillip headland), so eventually the land filled and formed a bay (Port Phillip Bay).
Another story about the creation of this waterway will be handed down to Barak’s uncle, Billibelary.
There was water trapped up in the mountains, and it was flooding Taungurong country.
Wurundjeri clan headman Mo-yarra thought he would release this water so they, and their neighbours, would have more hunting grounds on top of the mountains.
He tried to dig, but the ground was too hard so he gave up and went to live at The Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp.
Wurundjeri headman/elder Barwool tried to do the same.
He made a journey to try and release the water using a stone axe.
Along the journey he came across Yan-Yan at Warrandyte, and they decided to keep digging this channel together, making gorges and beautiful features along the way.
They rested in different places, like Mooroolbark and Heidelberg, where Moorool, the big body of water rested.
Eventually they got to Naarm (much scrub land).
When they released the water into Naarm, it flooded.
This is how Port Phillip Bay was made.