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DUDLEY FLATS
Two significant archaeological investigations were undertaken by Gary
Vines during the year. A proposed by-pass of Yarra Glen required a preliminary
survey, the results of which have been useful in providing some comparative
archaeology relating to the Wurundjeri people whose territory extended from
north of Melbourne to the Upper Yarra. While the landscape is far less disturbed
in the Yarra Valley, there are surprisingly fewer archaeological sites compared
with the urban area of the Maribyrnong Valley and other water courses of
Melbourne's west. This may be an indication of the natural abundance of
the basalt plains, which favoured larger grazing marsupials and provided
abundant tubers and grass seeds as a staple diet for Aborigines.
An assessment of potential archaeology of a former tannery site in Richmond
provided further evidence of the character of this now-vanished industry
which once dominated both the Yarra and Maribyrnong River banks.
In contrast, the Dudley Flats excavation examined the remains of European
occupation right on the edge of the City. The following section describes
these excavations in some detail.
Dudley Flats
When the site of Melbourne was settled by Europeans, they sought grazing
land and avoided the swamps, marshes and mud flats of the tidal estuary
of the Maribyrnong and Yarra. This wasteland between Spencer Street and
Footscray was seen as useless ground suitable only as a dumping ground.
At first, it was somewhere where Aborigines were tolerated, then a drain
for the city's effluent and a rubbish dump. While this was once one of the
richest resources for Aboriginal people, it remained a wasteland well into
the 20th century. Several rubbish tips were established from the 1860s on
by the Melbourne City Council and the Railways Department, as well as informal
or illegal dumping, while the Harbour Trust deposited silt dredged from
the river and dock. They covered an area near the Moonee Ponds Creek outlet
and Footscray and Dynon Roads.
In the 1930s depression, the land at the end of Dudley Street and the
banks of Moonee Ponds Creek (then known as the Coal Canal) became the site
of an informal shanty town for unemployed, itinerants and homeless people.
By 1935, over 60 humpies had been erected. They remained there until World
War Two because of the indifference of authorities and their buck-passing
as this no-mans-land, known as Dudley Flats, fell outside the jurisdiction
of either the Melbourne City Council, the Harbour Trust, the Railways Department,
the Crown Lands Department, or the MMBW. While some individuals such as
the housing reformer, the Rev. Oswald Barnett, tried to improve the lot
of the inhabitants who made their living scavenging from the tips, it was
the recycling programs of the war years that forced them to move, as any
valuable trash ceased to be dumped.
The object of the archaeological watching brief and test excavation was
to try to identify evidence of the slum settlement in the area being disturbed
by the City Link Tollway. Finding such evidence was only ever going to be
a long-shot as the Dudley Flats camp was built on land reclaimed from the
swamp by rubbish and the humpies were built out of rubbish from the dumps
such as old bed steads, drums and corrugated iron. Then when it was abandoned,
it reverted to a tip and was buried under more rubbish.
Some inconclusive evidence of the camp sites was found in the form of
a former ground surface (compacted soil buried beneath post World War Two
remains) but there were no incontrovertible remains of the camps. However,
the project provided interesting data on the environmental changes and history
of land use in the area. Once part of Batman's Swamp, the area was reclaimed
in the 1870s by drainage and filling, including excavation of the Coal Canal
to allow barges to deliver coal to the railways depot. This also created
an artificial outlet for Moonee Ponds Creek and raised the level of the
ground adjacent to it.
At the lower level of the excavation, rubbish from 1860s Melbourne formed
a distinct layer between the original black humus swamp deposits of the
original ground surface near Batman's Swamp and the later dredged fill.
While almost all the land surface of West Melbourne has been totally altered,
the Coal Canal has managed to preserve some of the original Batman's Swamp
saltmarsh vegetation. This evidently recolonised the area from undisturbed
patches prior to the drainage and filling of the land further west. Native
reeds, sedges, succulents and water plants thrive along the banks of the
canal.
The rubbish tips also provide an insight into early Melbourne with vast
quantities of broken crockery, glass, ceramics, other domestic refuse and
building material. Construction workers on the bridge excavations told of
finding hundreds of intact bottles which they souvenired as they dug them
up. Most ofMelbourne's rubbish from the 100 years between 1850 and 1950
still lies beneath the City Link, although the latest work has mixed some
of it up that much more.
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