https://www.cbdnews.com.au/rediscover-the-flagstaff-gardens

Telling time in early Melbourne MAY 29, 2013 AT 15:40 BY PAUL DEE blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/such-was-life/telling-time-in-early-melbourne/

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4521938

>>>see https://tomelbourne.com.au/flagstaff-gardens/ >>>cannot cut and paste tho but good history

Victoria’s (long awaited) separation bill is passed by imperial parliament and the news from NSW is announced 11.11.50 and celebrated for five days: ‘A huge beacon-fire on Flagstaff Hill and the firing of rockets gave the signal for the lighting of a chain of hilltop fires to spread the joyful tidings’
p1, The Golden Age:A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861 by Geoffrey Serle, 1977 Melbourne University Press.

from flagstaff hill you could see;;;;;;

LAGOON, aka SALTWATER LAGOON aka THE BLUE LAKE aka HUMBUG REACH

The Yarra delta was once a fertile landscape dominated by a large blue saltwater lagoon. In his account from 1835, John Batman described a cloud of a thousand quail flying over the miles of wetlands, while the lagoon was ‘upwards of a mile across, and full of swans, ducks, geese, etc.’
View from Flagstaff Hill, West Melbourne, in 1841, published in the
The Australasian sketcher, 1881

SOURCE Walking the blue lake APRIL 16, 2019 by Dr David Sornig https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/our-stories/walking-the-blue-lake/