Since you shared your ideas for revitalising Yan Yean Reservoir we have been preparing for the development of a draft master plan for Yan Yean. During all of this, we have been working with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community who are the traditional custodians of the Yan Yean Reservoir catchment area. We work with them as partners, and value their connection to Country.

We are collaborating with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation (WWCHAC) on the following programs and initiatives at Yan Yean Reservoir:

• Natural resource management by the Wurundjeri Narrap Team, whose ongoing work to care for Country draws on traditional Indigenous land management practices
• A Cultural Values Assessment for Yan Yean Reservoir, identifying places of historical, cultural, and heritage significance to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people.

We are thrilled to have the ongoing expertise of the Wurunjderi Narrap Team at Yan Yean, who combine conventional conservation and land management with traditional Wurundjeri cultural practices. The team were recently awarded the KPMG Indigenous Land Management Award at the 2022 National Landcare Awards.

Their work with Melbourne Water includes cultural burns and weed control to improve biodiversity values, reduce risks to assets and, importantly, allow the rangers to rebuild knowledge to restore and maintain healthy Country.

'Cultural burning' practices were developed by Aboriginal people over thousands of years to enhance the health of the land and its people. It involves cool burning (or prevention of burning) for the health of particular plants and animals, and may include patch burning to create different fire intervals across the landscape, or be used for fuel and hazard reduction.

When the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Melbourne Water teams were on Country together recently they spotted some fantastic outcomes of the cultural burn – the regeneration of native plants including Eryngium vesicullosum, commonly known as 'prickfoot'.

Melbourne Water is excited to partner with WWCHAC to prepare a Cultural Values Assessment for the Yan Yean Reservoir catchment area.

This project combines archival research and on-Country knowledge recording sessions with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elders, and identifies features of interest relating to how Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people lived within the area. These features include:

• registered and newly discovered Victorian Aboriginal Cultural Heritage places
• creation ancestor and totem species
• places representing colonial settler and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung interactions, and
• important biodiversity that is currently managed by the Wurundjeri Narrap Rangers.

It will also include a set of recommendations to appropriately protect and manage these cultural attributes, and help determine how cultural heritage can be celebrated and shared with visitors to the Yan Yean Reservoir.

This work will inform and strengthen the Revitalising Yan Yean Reservoir project by increasing our understanding of the historical, cultural and heritage significance of the catchment area to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. It will guide us as we work together to incorporate Wurundjeri's aspirations and recommendations to protect, restore and celebrate this significant landscape into the future Yan Yean Master Plan.

We will share a summary of the Cultural Values Assessment for Yan Yean in the coming months. To be notified when it is released click FOLLOW at the top of this page.