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Humans have been visiting Merri Creek for millennia. The waterway snakes from Wallan, north of Melbourne, down through the suburban sprawl and flows into the Yarra River. The Wurundjeri, the traditional owners, once camped on Merri’s banks, dug up yam daisy and collected shellfish from the creek bed. When the Melbourne founder, John Batman, stumbled upon the creek in 1835, he scribbled a note in his diary describing it as a “lovely stream of water”.
Almost 185 years later, Trevor Lithgow, a biochemist at Monash University, and a student in his charge, visited that same lovely stream, bent down at its bank with an empty flask attached to a broom pole, and retrieved a double shot of water. They bundled the sample into a bag and drove it back to examine at their laboratory.
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