A brief introduction to the history of Keilor area.
One million years ago, molten lava erupting from volcanoes, buried earlier landscapes. As the Maribyrnong River (known previously as the Saltwater River), flowed in a series of meanders. It cut deeply into the basalt plains to form the present landform.
Megafauna – which included a kangaroo three metres in height, as well as diprotodon – roamed the plains until their extinction 13,000 years ago, when climatic changes associated with the end of the last Ice Age, took place.
Evidence indicates that Aboriginal people inhabited the area for at least 40,000 years, or a span of 1600 generations, making it among the oldest known human inhabited sites in Australia. The Wurundjeri, believed that their way of life in the valley was given to them by Bunjil, their great ancestral being, who had created the land, its people and their culture. It was Bunjil who showed them how to live in harmony with their environment, respecting it and all living things.
Keilor Historical Society 