Swimmers in Australian city rivers are on the rise, along with moves to clean up urban waterways abc.net.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from abc.net.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rivers around the world are now recognised by law as living entities. In Australia, our rivers can be understood as ‘ancestral beings’ under Indigenous laws.
VIC Premier
Birrarung, with stronger, permanent planning protections.
The Minister for Planning Richard Wynne today announced permanent planning controls to protect the river and its surrounding lands from Richmond to Warrandyte. The controls will ensure the health and amenity of the Yarra River is safeguarded for future generations.
The changes lock in permanent landscape and built form controls, including height restrictions to prevent overshadowing, and setbacks to protect the river from inappropriate development.
Mandatory height limits of between 6 and 25 metres have been set along the Yarra River between Richmond and Warrandyte and a minimum mandatory setback of 30 meters means no development can occur on the sensitive riverbanks.
NGV Triennial 2020, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
I read recently an article published by Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the United States, entitled ‘Pulling down our monuments’.
1Michael Brune, ‘Pulling down our monuments’, 22 July 2020,
The Sierra Club, accessed 14 Sep. 2020. In this article the club, one of the United States’s foundational conservation organisations, acknowledged the racist attitudes and support of white supremacy by its founder, John Muir. The article came as somewhat of a shock and surprise, as I clearly remember that in the 1990s, while I was studying environmental science, he was viewed with reverence. The article made me curious to consider the origins and trajectory of what we commonly, and righteously, call conservation.