The Yarrowee River, known by the Wadawurrung as Yaramlok, has a long and history that reflects both natural and human influences. Long before European settlement, the river was a clear, winding waterway at the heart of Wadawurrung Country, sustaining Indigenous communities with abundant fish, eels and other resources and holding deep cultural significance. With the arrival of pastoralists in the 1830s, its waters were first drawn upon for livestock and agriculture. The Yuille cousins homestead is in fact located above the swamp next to the river in Sebastopol.
Then the 1851 gold rush dramatically reshaped the Yarrowee. Within days of gold being found, miners crowded along its banks seeking riches, sluicing clay and soil and diverting the river and its tributaries to serve mining operations and support the booming settlement that became Ballarat. These changes straightened its once serpentine course, buried sections underground—especially through what is now the Ballarat CBD—and ultimately rendered the waterway a heavily altered urban channel, full of mining sludge and other debris.
As Ballarat grew through the late 19th and 20th centuries, the Yarrowee became increasingly degraded. Sludge from the mines, industrial waste, stormwater runoff and effluent discharges turned the river into a polluted drain, contributing to flooding and public health issues. This prompted extensive channelisation with bluestone, brick and concrete to control erosion and mitigate floods - what is known as the formed part of the river. Only in recent decades has attention shifted toward restoring the Yarrowee’s ecological health and community value, with rehabilitation projects removing invasive weeds, stabilising banks and replanting native vegetation while recognising the river’s environmental and cultural importance to both the local community and Wadawurrung traditional owners.
The Friends of the Yarrowee River is a Ballarat-based community Landcare group first established in the 1980s with the mission of actively restoring and protecting the Yarrowee River and surrounding environments after decades of degradation from urbanisation and mining and drainage works. Early river rehabilitation efforts in the Ballarat region began with volunteer plantings and clean-ups, and over time the FoYR formalised this grassroots stewardship by joining the Yarrowee Leigh Catchment Group network. The FoYR aims to work actively to restore, protect and enjoy the Yarrowee River and its environs, between Brown Hill and Magpie.