Traveller safety information

Board one of the many river craft at Southgate or Princes Walk or travel along the Yarra in your own boat to visit attractions such as Melbourne Park for the Australian Tennis Open, the Royal Botanical Gardens and Herring Island Park. The Yarra River is now the undisputed social heart of marvellous Melbourne.

A Melbourne icon, the river is the focus for numerous spectacular events including the famous Moomba festival, rowing regattas, the Melbourne Festival and Dragon Boat Festivals.

Herring Island Environmental Sculpture Park
Accessible only by boat, Herring Island is the only substantial island in the Yarra River. Explore the wonders of the Sculpture Trail created by artists using materials harmonious with the bush setting. Discover the natural colours and textures of the vegetation and listen and watch for the abundant and varied birdlife.

Como House and Como Park
Como Park ground were once part of the magnificent gardens surrounding the elegant Como House. The Park today leads visitors from the river towards the historic mansion.

Dights Falls and Mill
A weir was built at Dights Falls on a natural rock bar in the early 1840s to supply water to the recently restored historic Dights Flour Mill.

Yarra Bend Park
Yarra Bend Park offers visitors a unique combination of natural features and European settlement. Steep rocky outcrops and 235 ha of native vegetation wrap around the river.

• The Yarra River offers a multitude of picturesque settings. The banks of the river have a number of barbecue and picnic facilities, fishing platforms and jettys.
• In addition, there are trails and paths which cater for cyclists, walkers and joggers.

The Yarra River was very important to Aboriginal people, and its name is thought to derive from Aboriginal words meaning "ever flowing". In 1803, Charles Grimes, Acting Surveyor General of New South Wales, led the first party of Europeans up the Yarra River.

The river was instrumental in the establishment of Melbourne beside its banks in 1835. It provided shelter for the first ships and drinking water for the first inhabitants; it drained the neighbouring land; it was a ready made sewer; and it gave the early industries the large volumes of water necessary in their processes. After a steady deterioration in water quality during the 19th century, measures were undertaken more recently to clean up the river.

Over the years, the mouth of the river has been completely transformed by realignment, widening and deepening in order to create a large modern port.

Aboriginal Traditional Owners

Parks Victoria acknowledges the Aboriginal Traditional Owners of Victoria - including its parks and reserves. Through their cultural traditions, Aboriginal people maintain their connection to their ancestral lands and waters.
Further information is available from Aboriginal Affairs Victoria AAV and Native Title Services Victoria

Over 200 species of native birds live in the Yarra Valley. Of these, over one third use the river and its wetlands for feeding, nesting and breeding. Common species include the Pacific black duck, Eurasian coot and Australian pelican. Latham's snipe is a migratory bird that travels from the mountains of northern Japan to areas along the Yarra River over the summer months.

With its quick-drying fur, webbed feet, streamlined body and broad muscular tail, the platypus is at home in Victorian rivers including the Yarra. What is quite remarkable is that these egg-laying mammals still occur on the doorstep of Melbourne. Other animals that live along the banks of the Yarra are echidnas, koalas, possums, sugar gliders, kangaroos and bats.

About ten different kinds of frogs are known to occur in the Yarra Valley, including the common eastern froglet and eastern banjo frog. They are an important food source for larger animals such as fish, tortoises, water rats, birds and snakes.

Fifteen species of native fish can also be found in the river, the most common being the river blackfish. A number of our native fish migrate from the sea to the Yarra River at some stage in their life. As part of their lifecycle, eels travel to the Yarra River from as far away as the Coral Sea off Northern Australia.

The Yarra River rises east of Warburton and flows through Melbourne's eastern suburbs to Port Phillip Bay. Manna gums with their tall white trunks can be found along its upper reaches, their leaves an important food source for Koalas.

Riparian scrub occurs along much of the river. River red gums form a tree canopy with a dense understorey of silver wattles, river bottlebrush, prickly currant bush and tree violet. Rushes and sedges often line the banks.

Herring Island is a man-made island in the Yarra River, 3 km upstream from the city. Vegetation on the island consists of a few remnants of indigenous riparian forest and grassland communities as well as native and exotic species that have been planted over the past 60 years.

Gain easy access to the Yarra River from either of the two main city railway stations - Spencer Street or Flinders Street - and stroll along its grassy banks. Or try walking or riding the Main Yarra Trail which follows the course of the river for 33 km.

But the most enjoyable way to appreciate the Yarra is to visit one of the many parks through which the river meanders, such as Yarra Bend Park (Melway ref: 2D) with its ruins of the water channel and flour mill at Dights Falls (Melway ref: 2D B6), Studley Park and its restored Boathouse (Melway ref: 2D E8) or the Fairfield Boathouse where you can relive the days of Edwardian style picnics and boating on the river, or further out, in the Yarra Valley, at Banksia Park through to Westerfolds Park (Melway ref: 32 and 33) and Warrandyte State Park (Melway ref: 23 and 24).

• Banksia Park
• Birrarung Park
• Westerfolds Park
• Yarra Flats Park