Globally, waterfronts have been used for trade, waste disposal, leisure and most recently for urban spectacle and lifestyle housing. While this has been explored in urban studies research, its relation to imperialism and colonisation has not. Waterfronts were often the entry points of imperial occupancy, trade and industry. Contestation over their value and use is integral to their constitution as landscapes, as place-taking becomes part of their place-making. Drawing on Adelaide and Melbourne, Australia, these sites register culturally specific imprints connected to the colonisation process. For Indigenous Australians, sea country was indistinguishable from land, but subsequent and current imperial transformations of land and water use have rendered benign an Indigenous presence through its symbolic re-presentation. This post-colonial reading will correlate the divide between land and water with those who have the imperial and class power to define this elemental boundary thus adding a new dimension to waterfront research.
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