2006. Pre-European The Wurundjeri-willam were the original occupants of what are now the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Their name comes from the Aboriginal word Wurrun meaning "white gum tree". The Wurundjeri-willam was a clan consisting of a number of extended families. During the first years of contact with Europeans, the Wurundjeri-willam people were represented by influential senior men such as Billibellary, a respected elder. Billibellary’s clan lived on the northern bank of the Yarra and their territory extended from Yarra Bend northwards along the Merri Creek. The creek supplied the Wurundjeri-willam with an abundance of food such as eel, fish, and duck. Women waded through the Merri with string bags suspended around their neck, searching the bottom of the stream for shellfish. Emu and kangaroo were hunted in the surrounding grasslands. In the forests and hills, possum was also a staple source of food and clothing, The flesh of the possum was cooked and eaten, while the skin was saved to be sewn into valuable waterproof cloaks. Post-European In May 1835 an historic meeting took place between John Batman and prominent members of the Wurundjeri-willam and other clans. Billibellary and the other clan elders signed a document, which came to be called Batman's Treaty, the only treaty ever struck between the European settlers and the indigenous people of Australia. These unique negotiations took place, wrote Batman, by the banks of a "lovely stream of water" which twentieth century historians suspect to be the Merri Creek. This treaty was declared invalid by Sir Richard Bourke, the Governor of N.S.W., who was unwilling to recognize and allow the aborigines the right to use and control their own land as they saw fit, thus implementing the doctrine of terra nullius. The largest recorded meeting of Aboriginal people in Victoria occurred at Merri Creek in January 1844. The Wurundjeri-willam hosted an immense gathering of tribes which came from all over central Victoria. An estimated 800 people journeyed to the district to witness important judicial proceedings carried out according to traditions of Aboriginal law. Since European settlement, the lower reaches of the creek have been seriously degraded by human activity. In the early history of Melbourne, numerous quarries were established along the creek to extract bluestone for the construction of many of the city's buildings and paving for roads and lanes. These quarries were later used as landfill for waste. Numerous environmental weeds, such as