Plan of the New Docks on North Side of River Yarra as recommended by the Royal Commission on the low lying lands on the Yarra.

Rare early plan of the proposed docks on the Yarra, alongside the Customs House which sat on the River between William and Queen Streets, Melbourne, 7th November, 1873.

The proposed docks were are at a point on the Yarra River which was as far as ships could sail up and where customs officers were rowed out to the ships by convicts.

Charles Grimes government surveyor was the swamp in 1803 during his charting of Port Philip Bay. It became known as Batman’s Swamp, after pioneer settler John Batman, who built a house at the base of nearby Batman’s Hill in April 1836. In 1912 George Gordon McCrae (son of diarist Georgiana McCrae) described it as being in 1841: a real lake, intensely blue, nearly oval, and full of the clearest salt water. The lagoon was also described as; having a bottom of solid blue clay and laying at the high water level while the flats surrounding it were about one metre above high tid. Because of its distance from the city and its unsuitability for residential development, it soon became the location for numerous industries that polluted the swamp, such as; abattoirs, fellmongeries, tanneries and rubbish depots. The 1873 Royal Commission into the development of the area described the swamp as “a disgusting swamp as repulsive in its present aspect as it is pestilent in its influence”. The Commission recommended some residential development to the immediate west of the city, the reservation of areas along the Yarra River for docks, warehouses and industry, with the rest of the land being given over to agriculture and parkland. Drainage of the swamp was considered from the mid-19th century, but did not commence in earnest until about 1877, when a steam-operated pump was set up near Brown’s Hill at South Kensington, and drains dug along Swamp Road, which was later reconstructed as Dynon Road, connecting to West Melbourne. Draining was recommenced from 1890, under the design and supervision of the Victorian Public Works Department engineer William Thwaites.