‘Make Yarra Swimmable Again’ maybe won’t be a catchy enough slogan for hats, but it’s a noble goal that could transform the way that Melburnians interact with their river, and the resilience of the city in the face of a climate emergency. Swimmable Birrraung is an initiative that’s part of the Regen Melbourne collective, and has a clear yet powerful goal: improve the health of the Birrarung/Yarra River to the point where we can dive from the banks for a cooling swim. Here’s how they plan to do it!
The Swimmable Birrarung initiative paints a pretty delightful future of a possible future, one where the river is swimmable from source to sea, and on summer afternoons, you can escape the scorching heat of the CBD by hopping in for a dip from North Wharf or Birrarung Marr. But more than just about swimming, it’s about improving the health of a crucial part of our city; 70% of Melbourne’s drinking water comes from the Birrarung’s catchment area. Amidst the ongoing climate crisis, it’s critical to improve the river’s resilience and biodiversity, and connect people with it once again – for of course, the Birrarung has been a vital asset to native communities in these lands for centuries.
As a result, Swimmable Birrarung is as much an infrastructure project as it is a vision for happy Melburnians, and the goal of the team is to build a coalition of governmental agencies, businesses, communities, and other stakeholders to help realise this dream. By raising awareness and building momentum, they hope to navigate the laws and bureaucracy that currently exists to turn the Birrarung/Yarra into an accessible public asset, and create “an interconnected corridor of swimming places for Melbournians to enjoy”, free from pollution and teeming with river life.
In the past week, they took this vision to the first ever Swimmable Cities Summit in Rotterdam. The Swimmable Cities Alliance, which spans 72 cities across 27 countries, was formed on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which famously used the Seine as the site of various swimming events. Turning a notoriously polluted river into a safe swimming site helped crystallise the mission, which is based on four foundational values: that healthy and swimmable waterways should be accessible to all; that these waterways are crucial to city liveability; that urban swimming culture is ingrained in city life; and that natural waterways should be celebrated as living entities and community assets.
Here in Melbourne, Swimmable Birrarung shares the same goals, and attention is focused on forming a coalition that includes legal minds, First Nations custodians, keen swimmers, local and state government, academic, developers and more, who can help clean the river, measure its health, drum up money to support the project, and generally win hearts and minds to the cause. It’s an ambition that needs a co-ordinated, sustained push, but this would be an amazing vision to see come to life – and we’ll be there for a dip when it does!