The Merri Creek is a waterway in southern parts of Victoria, Australia, which flows through the northern suburbs of Northcote. It begins near Wallan north of Melbourne and flows south for 70 km until it joins the Yarra River at Dights Falls. The area where the creek meets the river was traditionally the location for large gatherings of the Wurundjeri people and is suspected to have been the location for one of the earliest land treaties in Australia between Indigenous Australians and European settlers. The creek was the site of heavy industrial use throughout much of the 20th century, being home to quarries, landfills and accepting waste runoff from neighbouring factories. This has degraded the riparian ecology of the creek leaving behind pollutants such as heavy metals and various greases. Recent decades have seen some regenerative planting and the foundation of several community groups dedicated to protecting and regenerating the creek's ecology. Etymology The unnamed creek in the 1800s described by John Batman as a “lovely stream of water” appeared as Merri Merri Creek in an early 1839 map. It was shortened later to Merri Creek. The phrase said to be Woi-worung language was not documented anywhere else by observers and is disputed by historians and Elders in People of the Merri Merri. Some believe it means “very rocky” or “very stony” to symbolise the volcanic history of the site. Geography Over 400 million years ago the sea covering the area receded. It left behind a layer of yellowish marine siltstone and sandstone rocks. Around 66 million years ago non-marine sediments left a sandy layer behind. Over time the ancestral valley of the Merri Creek developed, eroding through these sediments. Then, from 4.6 to 0.8 million years ago volcanoes such as Hayes Hill (about 5 km east of Donnybrook) and Mount Fraser (near Beveridge) erupted, sending lava on a journey along the ancestral valleys of the Merri and Darebin Creeks and into the valley of the Yarra River as far as the CBD. The modern day Merri Creek was formed over many years, by incising through the lava surface. Today, the creek begins in Wallan north of Melbourne and flows in a southerly direction for 70 km until it joins the Yarra River in Fairfield near Dights Falls and subsequently flows into Port Phillip Bay. Its tributaries include; Wallan Creek, Mittagong Creek, Taylors Creek, Malcolm Creek, Aitken Creek, Curly Sedge