I love a walk along the Merri Creek. The section of the Merri from Rushall Station to Arthurton Road is an area I know well from my many wanders and train journeys, and I cross the Merri every day while riding to work. To the interested eye the landscape of the Merri is rich with layers of evidence of human activity, in the form of buildings, parks, exposed basalt banks, plantings and pylons, prompting questions about the who, when, how and why of these places and features. Walking along the creek makes me wonder about the kinds of records and sources that could answer these questions. Conversely, this piece is intended to show how archives, in this case records created by state and local government agencies, can evoke a landscape, and enable stories to be told about places.

As well as exploring the relationship between the records and landscape of the Merri in words, I will be presenting digitised images of records referring to particular places on the stretch of the Merri we will be 'walking along'. Each of these will provide occasions for reflection on the connection between records and the place they document. In addition, I will include audio of sound recordings from the Merri that can be accessed via hyperlinks along the way.¹ This piece is not an attempt to write a history of the Merri, nor of the suburbs along its banks. It is primarily a journey through records as a way of exploring a landscape, and vice versa, an exploration of records by journeying through a particular landscape.

This project has been inspired not just from my thoughts and questions about the processes and people that have shaped and inhabited the Merri, but by theoretical discussions about the relationships between cultural heritage institutions such as archives and museums, and their surrounding locales.² These theoretical perspectives articulate the profound connection between records and objects and the places they describe or in which they were created. Through the relationships that connect a particular place, in this case the Merri Creek, to a range of contexts, it is possible to evoke a richer range of meanings of both the records and the places to which they relate. The meanings of both the records and the place can inform each other and possibly generate new historical understandings or insights.

There are a variety of contexts for records in addition to the geographic location of their subject matter, including the provenance of their creation, that is, the actual workplace or home in which they were created, or the activity they document. As we read about the places described in the records, and through the records uncover layers of meaning in the landscape, we can also to a lesser extent, by placing ourselves in the landscape physically or even imaginatively, consider layers of meaning and context in the records, and the processes and people that created them.

There are many kinds of sources alongside public records that are capable of providing insights into life along the Merri, such as newspapers, reports, published and unpublished histories, photographs, as well as a variety of web sites and web-based resources such as databases. Public records have been selected for this piece for their ability to communicate about human experience and processes of change along the Merri, and how the records combined and described are able to communicate a sense of the landscape. As a case study it is intended that this piece can point the way to sources, particularly records held at Public Record Office Victoria, for people interested in researching and writing about landscapes and their historical, cultural and social dimensions. I have also drawn on discussions with people about their associations with places along the Merri, and included sound recordings and photographs taken along its banks.