This picture was made whilst I was on  a brief visit to Sunshine,  Melbourne.  I was there for an industrial photo session with Stuart Murdoch in North Melbourne.   We had a break from photographing drosscapes/edgelands with Stuart taking  me for a walk along the Kororoit Creek trail in Sunshine.  Kororoit Creek is  approximately 80km in length and is  a major waterway in Melbourne’s north-west region. 

 This page gives  a brief  history and geology of Kororoit Creek which flows over the Western Plains and through various suburbs ()including Sunshine) from Mount Kororoit, near Sunbury  to Port Phillip Bay between between Williamstown  and Altona Bay . There is a Strategic Plan 2005-30  which has a section on the Sunshine Reach (Reach 7). It  says this reach has the most extensive provision of shared use trails along the entire study area with the threats the creek being  weed invasion, rabbit grazing and disturbance, poor water quality  and further development backing onto the creek. 

In the  Brooklyn and Altona suburbs south west of Sunshine  larger industry begins to dominate the creek landscape.  Pollution has been a problem in this creek in the past--pesticides  from agriculture, nutrients from  urban areas, heavy metals   (zinc, mercury and copper) from industry. The offending industries were  connected to the sewerage system  and so were discharged into  the creek, which effectively used  as a drain. 

Update

The future effects of climate change are predicted to create even drier and warmer conditions, with less rainfall occurring in winter and spring, will increase the concentration of pollutants with the creek  becoming more ephemeral. There  is going to be extensive development around Sunshine as it becomes a transport superhub  connecting the airport, the CBD, and regional areas. 

How this will affect the ecological health of Kororoit Creek is unclear. What is clear though is the absence of meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the national and international level  and this means that  environmental crises (the absence of meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the national and international level — as I’m sure he is — then environmental crises (the fires, floods and heatwaves)  are unambiguously the greatest, most likely and most immediate security threat we face.

 Albert Palazzo  The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security