Kristin Otto

It was John Wedge, Batman's private surveyor, who named the Yarra Yarra. In September 1835, he was at the Turning Basin with some Kulin and heard them identify the river as it came over the Falls as, he wrote, 'Yarrow Yarrow'. It was only some months later that Wedge discovered they had been referring to the pattern and movement of...

In 1901, the Australian colonies came together to form a new nation which, for the next 26 years, was governed from Melbourne. It was a small city, a place where people knew each other—not just the people who mattered, but those who didn't yet—where small changes loomed large and the import of big changes could scarcely be imagined. Yet in...