Birrarung Marr

This guide to Birrarung Marr in Melbourne opens on a 1916 crowd straining to hear a young John Curtin argue against conscription at Speakers Corner, decades before he became prime minister. From there it traces the ground beneath your feet through railway yards, a morgue and a swimming centre, long before any of it became parkland. Elm trees planted in 1925 still shade the same patch of riverbank where that crowd once stood.