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| Grasslands to sheep and cattle runs, to industrial powerhouse, to post-industrial consequences. |
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| Digital composite created by Csaba Szamosy for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996, from images by Steven Bush, Andrew Shannon and Merrill Findlay, and historic photographs contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West and Geelong Heritage Centre. |
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| The Maize Factory on the Maribyrnong River, early twentieth century. For many years factory proprietors saw the Maribyrnong as a sewer into which they could discharge their industrial waste with impunity. |
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| Photo contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West. Photographer and date unknown. |
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As the populations of settlements such as Melbourne, Geelong, Warrnambool and Portland increased in the mid-nineteenth century, their economies grew much more complex.
Victoria's basalt plain was the engine of this new industrial development, generating great wealth from its mills, factories, meatworks, foundries and other manufacturing establishments.
The negative social and ecological impacts of the emerging industries soon became apparent as people's health and the integrity of local ecosytems was compromised. The Maribyrnong River, and Moonee Ponds Creek were quickly transformed into sewers.
Local activism over several generations, supported by legislative change, has brought some of these waterways back to life, but many industrial emissions and processes continue to cause concern, including the burning of fossil fuels, and the storage of a range of extremely toxic substances at Coode Island, near the confluence of the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers.
Progressive industries, however, are working with local people to make their production processes more ecologically sustainable. Some visionaries can even imagine a future in which no emissions are permitted into the air, water, or soil, and all so-called 'waste' from one manufacturing process is used as raw materials for the next in closed-system industries of the future.
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| Etching of the Melbourne Meat Preserving Company's meatworks on the Maribyrnong River, probably from the 1860s. The building on the hill, known as Raleigh's Castle, was built by meatworks proprietor, Joseph Raleigh, to house his employees |
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| Image contributed by Melbourne's Living Museum of the West which now occupies the old meatworks site. Artist unknown. |
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What are your stories about the industries that support the people of Victoria's basalt plain?
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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