Darebin Creek Indigenous Calendar

The following Indigeneous Seasonal Calendar is based on the page compiled by Dr. Beth Gott of Bioligical Sciences, Monash University and viewable here

All over Australia, Aborigines had their own local yearly calendars. Just as the climate in Kakadu is very different from that of Melbourne, so the Wurundjeri had their own way of marking the changing seasons. The division of the year into four seasons comes from Northern Europe, and does not fit Melbourne. We still think of winter as an unfavourable season for plants, when northern European trees drop their leaves and become dormant, but for our native plants, especially the small tuberous herbs, winter is a season of growth. At this time the bush is green, and the temperatures are rarely low enough to stop growth. The unfavourable season is high summer, when water is scarce, and much of the ground flora becomes brown and dies off. Water-plants such as Cumbungi are usually green during the summer, they die off during the winter.