The Werribee River Trail winds beside the Werribee River from Davis Creek in Tarneit to the Princes Highway in Werribee.
Etymology
The Hume and Hovell expedition camped by the river on 15 December 1824 and named it the Arndell after Hovell's father-in-law. John Helder Wedge "re-discovered" the river in 1835 and initially called it the Peel, but then decided to call it the Ex or Exe. The name of the town of Exford, an early crossing place on the river, is derived from this name.[2] One of the local Wathaurong-speaking Kulin tribesman that accompanied Wedge said the name for the stream was 'Weariby Yallock' (yallock meaning 'stream'). The spelling changed to the present form of Werribee, the original Aboriginal root word meaning spine or backbone.[1]
In the late 1830s and 1840s, the Werribee River was the scene of conflict between the Wautharong people and the European colonisers. The squatter Charles Franks and a shepherd were speared to death near Mount Cottrell in July 1836. This resulted in the Mount Cottrell Massacre – a punitive party led by John Batman[clarification needed] which came upon a large party of Aboriginal people and indiscriminately shot and killed at least ten, There are accounts of arsenic-laced flour being given to them.
In 1851, a substantial timber bridge was built to cross the Werribee River to replace an earlier wooden bridge. In 1852, this bridge was washed away when the Werribee river flooded.[6]
In August 2004, the Victorian Government pledged A$300,000 (equivalent to A$472,648in 2022) towards restoring the Werribee River, removing willows choking the river around the township and replacing them with native plants in a habitat restoration project.
Fishing
Werribee River holds fish all along its course, most of which are at the mouth of the river into Port Phillip Bay in the estuary. This area is best fished for southern black bream.
Features and highlights
Behind the Werribee golf course, the K-Road cliffs are perhaps the most unusual feature of the river, being sometimes described as looking like a river in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.[according to whom?]
Gallery
Running through parkland in Ballan
Under the old Western Highway at Ballan
A ford across the river west of Bacchus Marsh
Marking the boundary between Bacchus Marsh and Maddingley
"FLOODS". Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer. Vol.XI, no.1785. Victoria, Australia. 25 May 1852. p.2 (DAILY and MORNING). Retrieved 29 June 2022– via National Library of Australia.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Werribee_River, and is written by contributors.
Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.