A new life for Moonee Ponds Creek?

On Wednesday, September 4, I joined an eclectic troupe of Moonee Ponds Creek (MPC) advocates. We met to hear about any MPC-related progress and refocus our collaboration towards rejuvenation of our forgotten waterway. 

I’m sure that in the preceding years each person present had privately envisioned what that rejuvenation might look like. We know the creek’s history, we’ve imagined what it was like in the past, and we’ve dreamt of helping to restore some of its former biodiversity and ambience. 

I was heartened by the fact that the community was clearly demonstrating their patience and determination to hold the state government and the City of Melbourne to account. 

For too long we have been peppered with wonderful aspirational statements and utopian images, but precious little action – particularly in the lower reaches of the creek. 

Apart from the Kensington Association and the North and West Melbourne Association who advocate for residents on either side to the lower reaches, there was a number of businesses owners and other community members who attended the meeting. 

Also present were those wonderful stalwarts, the Friends of Moonee Ponds Creek and the MPC Chain of Ponds Collaboration group, who have done such sterling work along the northern banks of the creek. 

For at least the past decade council planners have acknowledged that managing and breathing life back into MPC is critical to the sustainable development of Arden, Macaulay and Docklands. 

In the shadow (literally) of the Big Build, attention to public open space in these urban renewal precincts should have been at the top of the state government’s agenda, but it clearly hasn’t been. Those at the meeting wanted to know why. 

City of Melbourne councillors Rohan Leppert and Davydd Griffiths, both local residents, had been invited to answer some of our questions. To the credit of the City of Melbourne, they have done more with limited resources, in particular the purchase of a significant parcel of land adjoining MPC in Chelmsford St for a public park.

It seems that the story behind the state government equivocation is mostly to do with entangled bureaucracies, fragmented ownership of land and management buck-passing; but that’s not the whole story. 

The Arden and Macaulay Structure Plans were finalised in 2021 – why have they only just been exhibited? That three-year procrastination can only have been some kind of state government ploy. 

Whenever there is a job to be done along the creek corridor, whether that is land care and planting, or rubbish and graffiti removal, it always seems to fall to the locals to hassle whoever is responsible or take things into their own hands to do the planting. 

There is certainly no lack of community commitment. We see many eight-storey residential blocks rise around us in the Stubbs precinct, which will more than double local population. So, we feel a deep sense of frustration with the prevarication around the potential public open space that could be available along the nearby MPC corridor. The community deserves better.

Our meeting succeeded in drafting a strong call to the state government to unlock land along MPC for the benefit of the expanding population. We called on the government to immediately release the MPC Implementation Plan and create a clear governance and funding pathway to deliver critical projects along the creek, including reinstatement of the Moonee Ponds Creek trail in Docklands. •