Koonung Creek (or Koonung Koonung Creek) is a small tributary of the Yarra River in Melbourne's east. The creek originates in Nunawading near Springvale Road, and flows to join the Yarra at the border between Ivanhoe East, Bulleen and Balwyn North. The place the two waterways meet forms the borders between these suburbs. Bushy Creek (now carried by an underground pipe) is a tributary to the creek, joining near Elgar Park in Mont Albert North. A shared use path follows the course of the creek (and therefore also the Freeway), known as the Koonung Creek Trail.
Melbourne Water rates the condition of the creek as 'Very Poor'. Also according to Melbourne Water, the river is the unhealthiest waterway in Melbourne. Melbourne Water's monitoring station for the creek at Bulleen Road in Bulleen, detected an average E. coli count of 1800, this is nine times the safe swimming level (200). This was the highest level of E. coli measured in all of metropolitan Melbourne's waterways. The poor condition of the creek has been evident from the earliest days of European settlement.
Five species of frog call the creek home, these are the Common Eastern Froglet, the Spotted Marsh Frog, the Striped Marsh Frog, the Eastern or Pobblebonk Frog and the Southern Brown or Ewing's Tree Frog. The Eastern Freeway follows the path of the creek within the band of parkland that adjoins the creek over its entire length.
Read more about Koonung Creek: Geography, Crossings, Other Information
Famous quotes containing the word creek:
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)