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At the edge of the Birrarung, beneath the West Gate Bridge, sits one of Melbourne’s most unexpected urban landscapes.

Westgate Park wasn’t always like this. Once a heavily modified and neglected site shaped by landfill and industry, it has been transformed over decades into a mosaic of wetlands, grasslands and habitat.

In this episode of Finding Melbourne’s Nature, we walk through the park with Naomie Sunner, who in the late 1990s, as a young woman, led and established the Friends of Westgate Park.

Naomie shares the story of a seven-day walk along the Birrarung that brought her here, and how that moment led to decades of restoration, community effort and learning on the ground.

We talk about the early days of the project, the challenges of rebuilding a landscape from scratch, and the people who helped shape what the park has become today.

The Friends of Westgate Park remain an incredible, active community, continuing that work and caring for this place.

This episode is about persistence, community, and what it takes to bring nature back in the middle of a city.