A regenerative visitor economy — The river as anchor for well-being
How a small river community in Victoria's Yarra Ranges began re-imagining its future, starting with the river at its heart.
Partner: Upper Yarra River Reserve Committee of Management (UYRRCoM)
Place: Warburton and the Upper Yarra, Birrarung catchment, Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country, Victoria
When: August–September 2022
Format: Six online community workshops, a deep listening walk on Country, and a co-created community discussion paper
Funding: Yarra Ranges Council Grants for Community Program 2022 (Community Development)
The Place
Warburton sits in a forested valley about an hour from Melbourne. Running through it is the Birrarung, the Upper Yarra River. The river is the source of life for the bioregion and part of the living cultural landscape of the Wurundjeri people. It is also Warburton's everyday meeting place, its recreation ground, and the reason many residents chose to live there.
The Upper Yarra River Reserve is a strip of Crown land along each bank of the river. It works as riparian habitat and a natural filter that protects water quality, and it is cared for by a volunteer Committee of Management that looks after weeding, replanting, trails, bridges and signage.
For more than a century the valley has welcomed visitors. But by 2022, pressures were building: growing day-trip crowds, rubbish left on the riverbanks, weekend congestion, the ever-present risk of bushfire, the aftershocks of COVID lockdowns, and a contested large-scale mountain bike destination proposal that had divided the community. Many residents felt that tourism was being done to the river and the town, rather than with and for them.
The question
Rather than starting with a solution, the Committee started with a question:
How can tourism and the visitor economy contribute to the wellbeing of the Upper Yarra, Birrarung, its catchment, and its community?
This reframed the conversation. Instead of asking how to grow visitor numbers, it asked what the river and the community need to flourish, and how visitors might become part of that.
How we worked
The conversations were open to anyone who wanted to take part, and brought together residents, business owners and community members with diverse interests. Four principles held the space:
Ground-up conversations, rooted in lived experience and local knowledge. Diverse ways of knowing, drawing on head, heart and instinct, and respecting Indigenous wisdom and Wurundjeri connection to the Birrarung. Deep listening and empathy, so people could genuinely hear perspectives different from their own, and co-design rather than consultation, because communities are rightly wary of processes that feel tokenistic or consultants who arrive with ready-made answers.
"The living entity - the river - creates the economy here. We need to respect it."
~ Workshop participant
What it produced
The workshops generated a community discussion paper, co-created by the group, that set out possible pathways including: attracting visitors who seek deeper, longer connections and "contribute more than they take"; a day-trip visitor management strategy; keeping spending local; supporting nature-based experiences led by local guides; an emergency plan that accounts for visitors in bushfire season; and clearer, more collaborative governance between state agencies, council and community groups.
The paper also introduced the idea of social licence: that tourism only earns its place in a community through legitimacy, credibility and trust. Participants acknowledged that no small group could claim that licence alone, and framed the conversations as a first step towards building it with the wider community.
Why this matters
This project captures what Place Ecologies is about. A river, a reserve or a town is not a resource to be extracted and its needs ignored. It is part of a living system, and a community's cultural and ecological assets. When people are given the time and space to listen deeply, to each other, to Country and to the place itself, conversations that were polarised can become generative. The questions shift from "What can we get from this place?" to "What does this place need, and how can we all contribute to the wellbeing of this place?"
That shift applies well beyond tourism: to how communities plan, care for shared assets, make decisions together, and imagine their futures.