Yarra Ranges

Distinguished and Famous people from Yarra Ranges

🎵 Dame Nellie Melba

Dame Nellie Melba made a home at Coldstream after becoming an international opera star. She purchased the property that became Coombe in 1909 and had Coombe Cottage built in 1912, naming the estate after a house she had rented in England. Between overseas engagements she returned to this Yarra Valley retreat, while also teaching at the Melbourne Conservatorium and raising funds during the First World War. The family connection continued after her death. Coombe brings a domestic chapter into the story of a singer whose name travelled around the world—and even onto the dessert menu as Peach Melba.

🦘 Sir Colin MacKenzie

Surgeon and comparative anatomist Sir Colin MacKenzie helped lay the foundations of Healesville Sanctuary. In 1920 he obtained permission to establish a research field station on land at Badger Creek, where native animals could be studied. The site subsequently became the sanctuary that opened in 1934. His interest in animal anatomy was linked to his medical work, including the treatment of damaged muscles and limbs. He also assembled collections that became part of the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra. Behind a familiar destination for animal lovers lies this unusual meeting of surgery, zoology and field research.

🎨 William Barak

William Barak was a Wurundjeri Woiwurrung leader and artist whose life is closely associated with Coranderrk, near Healesville. He lived there from its establishment in 1863 until his death in 1903 and advocated for the community as it faced government interference and threats to its land. His drawings and paintings recorded ceremonial life and cultural knowledge, particularly in work produced during his later years. Barak’s art and leadership belong together: both express a continuing connection to Country and community. Coranderrk was a place where he worked to protect people’s ability to live together on their own land.

Coranderrk was also a place of practical agricultural work. People from several Aboriginal groups settled there and grew crops, with the community numbering 105 by 1865 in the book’s account. Barak’s argument for residents to manage the land themselves brought work, independence and cultural survival into the same demand.

🌿 Edna Walling

Landscape designer, photographer and writer Edna Walling made Mooroolbark the setting for one of her most personal projects. In her twenties she bought land there and developed Bickleigh Vale, a village of cottages set among carefully composed gardens. It was her home for more than three decades. Her designs brought buildings, paths, stonework and plants into a unified landscape, with gardens intended to feel settled into their surroundings. Bickleigh Vale, along with her gardens at Mawarra and Folly Farm, is recognised on the Victorian Heritage Register. Her local legacy is a place people inhabit, rather than a design confined to a drawing board.

Walling also brought garden design to readers through Home Beautiful, using photographs and accessible writing to explain her ideas. She liked garden rooms: spaces linked by paths and sometimes defined by low walls. Her concern for plants extended beyond the garden gate. In The Australian Roadside she argued for retaining native vegetation beside expanding roads and highways, treating those everyday strips of country as worth looking after.

📚 Manning Clark

Manning Clark’s early education included state schooling at Belgrave, one of several moves made while his father served as an Anglican clergyman. University study and teaching later took him to Melbourne, Oxford and Canberra. His best-known undertaking, the six-volume A History of Australia, appeared between 1962 and 1987. He treated the past as a drama of people, beliefs and conflicts, winning readers well beyond academic history. Fellow historians also challenged his accuracy and interpretations. Belgrave’s connection is the schoolboy years, rather than a claim that his major histories were written in the hills.

📚 David Dexter

David Dexter lived at Kilsyth until 1923, when his father’s soldier-settler venture failed and the family moved into a succession of clergy houses. The son later trained as a historian before wartime service took him to Timor and New Guinea as a commando officer. After the war he combined diplomatic work with writing The New Guinea Offensives, a substantial volume of Australia’s official war history published in 1961. His later responsibilities included development of the Australian National University’s campus. Kilsyth belongs to the childhood chapter, rather than the overseas service or Canberra writing years.