My little-known suburb was an inner-city swamp known as ‘Worst Smelbourne’

When I say I live in West Melbourne, people sometimes think I mean “west of Melbourne” and that I’m perhaps embarrassed to say where. But it is indeed an actual suburb, although it’s not traditionally been regarded as a residential neighbourhood. Much of what is now West Melbourne was once an abundant saltwater wetland, stretching from Flagstaff Gardens to Docklands, and thriving with birdlife that sustained the local Indigenous population.

Now you’ll see more iterations of Pam the Bird – a local graffiti artist’s trademark artwork – than any of the wild geese or swans that once inhabited the area. That beautiful blue lake didn’t last long. Within 20 years of colonial settlement, the suburb’s proximity to the city meant it rapidly became a cesspit of run-off from the abattoirs, fellmongers, tanneries and evocatively named “bone mills” that sprang up in surrounding areas.

The lake became the West Melbourne Swamp and the suburb was for a time known colloquially as “Worst Smelbourne”. Eventually, the swamp was drained to make way for the railway line. By the 1920s, while a bustling home to flour millers and other light industry, West Melbourne also housed some of the last slums in the inner city – Dudley Flats – comprised of shacks cobbled together from rubbish.

It remained a homeless camp from the Depression until the 1950s. These days, you can look out over the valley of industry and curved metal from a delightfully obscure railway viewing platf.