Yarrowee River

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Yarrowee is a major tributary and catchment of the Barwon River in Victoria, Australia. Its origins are in the hills at Gong Gong, and it is notable for passing through the settlement of Ballarat and crossing the City of Ballarat local government area before becoming the Leigh River in the vacinity of Cambrian Hill.

There river has numerous tributaries in urban Ballarat, including Gnarr Creek, Gong Gong Creek, Little Bendigo Creek and Warrenheip in the north eastern reaches and; Redan Creek, Canadian Creek and Buninyong Creek in the southern reaches.^[1] It runs through the Ballarat suburbs of Gong Gong, Brown Hill, Black Hill, Ballarat East, Ballarat Central, Golden Point, Redan, Mount Pleasant, Sebastopol, Magpie and Cambrian Hill. Tributaries in the catchment run through most other Ballarat suburbs.

It is widely believed that the creek was derived from Yarrow Water, attributed to the early Scottish settlers of the area.

The river was important to the first settlers (squatters) of the region, with William Cross Youlle establishing his home near the swamp that is now Lake Wendouree, that was an important part of the river's catchment.

During the Victorian Gold Rush it was heavily mined for alluvial gold and used by the mines as a source of water. It also become heavily polluted during the early industrialisation of Ballarat.

During the Gold Rush, much of the river and its tributaries were sealed as drains using quarried bluestone to prevent erosion and help mitigate frequent flooding. The river was known to flood in the early days.

In 1869 a serious flood of the Yarrowee River put most of the lower section of the city including Bridge and Grenville Street underwater and causing the loss of two lives.^[2]

During the 1960s, the river through the Ballarat CBD was re-routed, concreted and built over. As a result, it now forms an underground drain running under Grenville Street. Many other parts of the river also became wide and deep concrete stormwater drains. Several stretches of the river, remain, however in its natural bush and parkland setting.

Since the 1980s, major initiatives have been undertaken to restore the river's state and vegetation and several natural wetlands have also been re-established along the river's course.^[3]

The river suffered flash flooding several times in 2010 and 2011.