CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE RIVER YARRA: ITS FALLS, PUNTS, BRIDGES, AND NAVIGATION.
SYNOPSIS:—The Yarra River Described. —The Yarra Falls. —The First Puntman, William Watts. —First Punt at Richmond. —Murder of Monahan. —"Paddy" and "Polly" Byrne. —The Melbourne Bridge Company. —The First Bridge Across the Yarra. —Prince's Bridge. —Laying the Foundation Stone. —Public Demonstrations. —Particulars of Construction. —Opening of the Bridge. —Grand Processional Display. —Collapse of the Richmond Bridge Company. —Port and River Navigation. —Mr. Amman's Scheme. —Mr. Blackburn's Suggestions. —Porpoises in the Yarra River. —A Disputed Point. —Mr. Robert Russell's Opinion of "The Falls." —Drowning of Young Batman.
THE Birr-arrung (water coursing through mist and umbrageousness), as aboriginally designated, but accidentally named the Yarra Yarra—Anglice, Flowing-Flowing—by Mr . Charles Wedge under circumstances elsewhere narrated, was, when first seen by white men, a stream shrouded in romance, and wrapped in a grand grotesque wildness, to which its waters and its banks within the Melbourne circuit have long been strangers. From the spot whereon Melbourne was afterwards built to the Saltwater River confluence, the Yarra Yarra flowed through low, marshyflats,densely garbed with ti-tree, reeds, sedge, and scrub. Large trees, like lines of foliaged sentinels, guarded both sides, and their branches protruded so far riverwise as to more than half shadow the stream. The waters were bright and sparkling; and, wooed by the fragrant acacias, shaking their golden blossom-curls, how different in aspect and aroma from the Yarra of to-day—a foetid, festering sewer, befouled midst the horrors of wool-washing, fellmongering, bone-crushing, and other unmentionable abominations! Some of the contiguous timber attained to a considerable height in the region of the present Queen's Wharf, and the Yarra basin constituted a natural reservoir which, viewed from the adjacent eminences, offered a spectacle for which eyes would now seek in vain. The Eastern and Western, the Emerald and Batman's Hills formed an immense cordon of she-oak, gum and wattle tree forests, which it could hardly be imagined would ever succumb to the fire and the axe of civilization. As for herbage, it luxuriated everywhere, and two persons still living, who walked through un-streeted Melbourne in 1836, have informed me that in the places now known as Collins, Bourke, Elizabeth, and Swanston Streets, they waded through grass as green as a leek, and nearly breast high. The blacks, the emus, the bell birds, parrots, and magpies had the northern quarter all to themselves, for the kangaroos mostly affected the southern side of the river, satisfied with the immense scampering area afforded them throughout that then practically illimitable region. The Yarra also swarmed with a sort of black fish, bream, flounder, and herring, which afterwards became a source of much sport to European anglers. The porpoises used not only to venture out of the Bay into the Saltwater River, but were sometimes rash enough to indulge in an aquatic stroll as far as Richmond. The Yarra Falls were primarily a rocky ledge barring the river, but in the centre was a fissure sufficiently wide to permit small laden boats to ascend at high water, and such had been known to do so occasionally. The salt water flowed up the river sometimes as far as Studley Park and into Gardiner's Creek. Shoals of sharks would now and then, like a hostile squadron, take a reconnoitering look in at Sandridge and Williamstown, and seals have been caught at the place now known as Fisherman's Bend. For years after the white occupation an excursion up the river was most enjoyable; along by the new Botanic Gardens and round towards Studley Park and the Yarra Bend, which, with two or three nooks in the Merri Creek, were the favourite haunts for the aborigines— "the forest primeval," tenanted with trees of every age and condition, which had weathered many thousands of storms.
Boating pleasure parties contributed one of the earliest modes of recreation for the few persons sufficiently affluent to indulge in such a luxury; and the following account of one of these excursions on the 1st March, 1839, extracted from the Port Phillip Gazette, will best convey to the mind of a present reader
