Would you take a dip in the Yarra? Bold plan to make Melbourne’s ‘number one drain’ SWIMMABLE again

Tennis champion Jim Courier famously jumped into Melbourne’s Yarra River after winning the Australian Open in 1992 – and was sick for a week. 

The brown river meandering through the CBD has a long reputation as polluted, but a new development is planning to make it a destination for swimmers again. 

A community led push for the initiative, the Yarra Pool, aims to make the river a recreation hotspot.

The project combines lap lanes with surrounding wetlands and parklands.

But locals aren’t so sure.

‘On old Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works maps it used to be called Melbourne’s number one drain – without irony,’ Yarra Riverkeeper Andrew Kelly told The Age.   

The brown river meandering through the CBD has long had a reputation as polluted but a new development is planning to make it a destination for swimmers 

Volunteer groups such as Rotoract, Ocean CleanX, and the Cleanwater Group frequently hold clean ups of the river.   

Among the items found during one monthly clean up were a push bike, 18 alcohol bottles, and an AFL ball. 

The city is slowly starting to take a more proactive approach to making the river an attraction. 

Arbory Afloat – a bar and restaurant that floats on the Yarra – won last year’s Melbourne Award for Hospitality 

The Inflatable Regatta has also become a yearly event that sees thousands of locals and tourists paddling down the river towards a festival style party at the course’s finish. 

‘People will put a coffee shop up in a shoe box in Melbourne but the Yarra is this wonderful under-utilised resource,’ Inflatable Regatta founder Courtney Carthy told the publication.  

Locals hope the project would be a catalyst for cleaning up the river and it was a feature of Melbourne Design Week in 2019. 

The designers say the project’s inspiration is the ‘global movement towards reviving urban river swimming and the growing demand for healthy waterways’.  

Among the items found during one monthly clean up were a push bike, 18 alcohol bottles, and an AFL ball 

The Yarra Pool initiative design concept hopes to turn the Yarra into a recreation hotspot 

The Inflatable Regatta has also become a yearly event that sees thousands of locals and tourists paddling down the river towards a festival style party at the course’s finish 

‘Our ultimate goal is to create a swimmable Yarra River and introduce back all the recreational activities that used to happen,’ Yarra Pools president Felicity Watson said. 

At this stage the project is yet to receive official backing or funding from local or state government. 

The Yarra River Protection Act was passed by the Victorian parliament in 2017, however, which called for a holistic approach to cleaning up the river. 

The Yarra River Protection Act was passed by the Victorian parliament in 2017, however, which called for a holistic approach to cleaning up the river