Degradation of the soils in the steep slopes at the river's edge has been exacerbated over the last century by unsustainable agricultural processes (such as the harvesting of storm-felled trees), deforestation and the introduction of rabbits.

Following the 2006 drought, the community newspaper had reported several times that the population was only brought under control in 2007, 12 years after baiting programs were begun[3][failed verification] and that more conservation funding is needed to halt the loss of vegetation along the river.

It had been recently accepted that "when the coastal plain is overweighted the back country rises" due to inexorable forces moulding the surface of the Earth and the so-called "Templestowe anticline" was studied as representative of microscopic faulting, which accommodated this elevation of the eastern suburbs.

It was observed that the new reserve grounds established along it would become a "Mecca" for geologists:[6] at the better geological sections... [there are] folded rocks, which were originally soft mudstones, but now hardened by the forces induced through [lateral] pressure, often sheared and thrust out of position.

The saddleback thus produced naturally opened out at the summit of the old, and the cracks that were formed w[h]ere [w]ater filled in with milky quartz veins... [are now, after being mined] full of cavities which were once occupied...The land to the east of Melbourne was inhabited by the Wurundjeri people, who had lived in the Yarra River Valley and its tributaries for 40,000 years.

[7] Europeans first began to settle in the mid-1830s, and George Langhorne, a missionary in Port Phillip from 1836 to 1839, noted that a substantial monetary trade with the new settlers was "well established" by 1838: "A considerable number of the Aboriginal people obtain food and clothing for themselves by shooting the Menura pheasant or Bullun-Bullun for the sake of the tails, which they sell to the whites.

According to John Green, the Inspector of Aboriginal Stations in Victoria and later manager of Corranderrk,[10] the people were able to achieve a "sustainable" degree of economic independence: "In the course of one week or so they will all be living in huts instead of willams [traditional housing]; they have also during that time [four months] made as many rugs, which has enabled them to buy boots, hats, coats etc., and some of them [have] even bought horses.

The grassland there was interspersed with large Manna and River Red (Be-al) gum trees and broken up by chains of lagoons, the largest of which, called Lake Bulleen, was surrounded by impenetrable reeds that stove off attempts to drain it for irrigation.

[12] Due to the distribution of raised ground, the flats were always flooding and for a long time only the poorest (non-English) immigrants leased "pastoral" land from Unwins Special Survey, the estate of the Port Phillip District Authority.

Pontville is historically and aesthetically significant amongst the early towns, as its landscape contributes to the greater understanding of 1840s agricultural and garden history, as well as for containing numerous relics of aboriginal life.

The survival of its formal garden terracing and the presence Hawthorn hedgerows, used for fencing, is unusual (with an historical account from Tasmania noting the huge difficulties and costs resulting in the rarity of such plantings in the early 1800s).

[19] Suburban development began in earnest in the 1970s and, while there is still no rail service, there is now a bus network operating routes to Melbourne in the west, Box Hill and Blackburn in the south, and Ringwood in the east.