Is Fishermans Bend a forgotten corner of the city? It has often seemed separated from the city. It has been hard to get to, wind-swept, remote and yet so close to the central business district.

Today, Fishermans Bend is a focus of attention as a significant urban renewal project.  

This social history supports the Fishermans Bend Framework. This social history is not chronological. It explores eight themes, each designed to illuminate an aspect of the interwoven stories that meld people, place and time together. Fishermans Bend is a place of stories, people and communities. It is a place of resilience and self-determination.

A companion volume provides a guide to history resources that are available to researchers and community members. This social history provides a touchstone for future place-making and interpretive initiatives.

Detail from a plan by Sir John Coode (1879), showing the sharp northern bend in the Yarra, marked here as ‘Fishermans Bend’, which is to be replaced by the new canal (source: Map Collection, University of Melbourne)

Image: Detail from a plan by Sir John Coode (1879), showing the sharp northern bend in the Yarra, marked here as ‘Fishermans Bend’, which is to be replaced by the new canal (source: Map Collection, University of Melbourne)

Equally, it is an evocative watery landscape of swamps and sea, wind and sand, sitting right on the edge of 'Nerm' or Port Phillip Bay. Today, it reads as a landscape of industry. And yet all those past landscapes and peoples can still be imagined here; they still exist in the stories of Fishermans Bend.

This social history is deliberately concise. It is a like a sketch of possibilities that might be explored by others in the future. To this end, a companion volume to this social history provides a guide to history resources that are available to researchers and interested community members. And as part of the Fishermans Bend Framework, this social history will provide a touchstone for future place-making and interpretive initiatives.

Read 'Life on the bend - a social history study of Fishermans Bend, Melbourne' PDF, 9967.28 KB

Social history resources: a guide PDF, 591.86 KB

To request an accessible Word version, email fishermansbend@ecodev.vic.gov.au

Australia's first woman engineering graduate

Aboriginal Country

Women's work during World War 2

Children of Montague

Page last updated: 08/11/19