Looking for another great day at the West Papua office? Lunch first, of course. Then two hours in our transformative green space, keeping up with the freedom struggle. Bring a friend, family, colleague. Don’t forget Dr Joe’s World Famous Auction for the West Papua Rent Collective. And we have prepared a really special treat for you ……..
Dr Olivia Ball from the Melbourne City Council will introduce social historian David Sornig and his wonderful investigation of the 8km-square west of central Melbourne Blue Lake, Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp (Scribe Publications, 2018). Yes, where our West Papua office is was once a tidal blue lake and fertile wetland belonging to the Woiwurrung speaking Manna Gum people and the Boonwurrung-speaking Yalukit clan. Later it became a swamp of bones and other rubbish, and then a shanty town of people, drains, and dredges called Dudley Flats. Now it’s a swagger of towers … for banks, offices, cafes, fashion outlets, library, the infamous Department of Home Affairs … creating shade for yachts basking in our contortions of the old Yarra and Maribyrnong rivers. Somehow, unbelievably, the lake lives on, just; and so does one tiny purple succulent with medicinal leaves and salty-sweet fruit.
“In masterful prose, Sornig exposes cracks in the colonial mythology of the ordered vision of progressive, urban Melbourne — a place where identities, both personal and public, have never quite been resolved. In doing so, he encourages readers to look harder at the places they live in — at the streets they walk, the buildings they enter, the empty spaces they pass — and to see in them intricate layers of time and history that have been hidden from view” (Publisher’s summary).
“The destruction of the Blue Lake on the fringe of Melbourne has long been a sad symbol for me of the ugly order associated with the European conquest. But Sornig shows how in the “zone” of tameable mud that replaced this wondrous wetland, the soul of the country and an underground freedom miraculously survived” (James Boyce)
You can buy Blue Lake, Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp at our office ($35) or from our online store at https://westpapuawomensoffice.square.site/
Extra Information
i) William Street looking north-west from Lonsdale Street
(December 1869, John Noone, Department of Crown Lands and Survey Victoria).
This was the Blue Lake in 1869, which by then had become, and was known as, the West Melbourne Swamp
ii) A fascinating review of Blue Lake, Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp, ABC Radio National, 9 April 2019.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/the-history-listen/the-blue-lake/10944060
Written by Cynthia Troup, with Zahra Newman as Elsie Williams and Adrian Plitzco as Lauder Rogge. Featuring Gary Vines (industrial archaeologist and historian); Lindsay Peacock, grandson of Jack Peacock; Phyllis McIlvenie (resident of South Kensington during the Dudley Flats era); Peter Somerville OAM (Captain of the Blackbird ferry that has been cruising the Yarra and Maribyrnong rivers for 45 years).
iii) David McLean interviewing David Sornig, 3CR, 23 January 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-sornig/id329144938?i=1000685090742
iv) Blue Lake by Marita Dyson, 2018
(PS/ free West Papua tee-shirt for anyone who correctly locates the site of our office!)
v) Finding the heart of the blue lake
Musicians Marita Dyson and Stuart Flanagan (The Orbweavers) were walking with David Sornig through Blue Lake/Dudley Flats/West Melbourne Swamp (Ch 36:pp331-353) one a Sunday morning in November 2016 and found ‘the heart of the Blue Lake’:
A road leads north from the Port Truckie Diner along the western side of the canal through the railyards to Dynon Road … We cross the level rail crossing and encounter what looks to be a remarkable fenced-off oasis, a cool pool of water being fed by a steady flow from a pump and pipe on a small peninsular platform. Its lush, verdant fringe of trees and other plants is out of place in a landscape that is otherwise bare and desiccated. It only occurs to me later that this oasis is a drainage pump, and that its job is to continue to empty out the subterranean waters of the lagoon. It’s the heart of the blue lake that Stuart and Marita’s song of that name dreams about: George McCrae’s lagoon, once ‘framed in pink and green’, but now bitumen-covered, ‘concrete over clay’. ‘Blue Lake’ Marita laments in the song, ‘where is it you lie?
vi) Blue Lake, The Orbweavers, 3RRR Live from Melbourne Music Week, 18 November 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzMvgUq9Gg0
vii) The Orbweavers, turning research into music and art
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw3YqFOfShU
