Rachael was walking her dog along the river drains on the Moonee Ponds Creek Trail on a recent cloudy Friday afternoon when she saw him.
He was masturbating and staring directly at her.
Pulling at her dog’s lead, she ran in the opposite direction. She passed another woman on the path and cautioned her about the man.
The other woman sighed.
“I’ll have to find another walking trail, she said to Rachael. But, she added, “you know, probably not going to be that different there”.
Rachael, 28, who asked for her last name not to be published, told The Citizen she wondered how the encounter might have played out differently if she didn’t have her dog with her, or if she had been younger.
“I wish I’d thought to pull out my camera, but I think I was in survival mode,” she said.
The Merri Creek Trail stretches through the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne. Source: Streets Alive Yarra.
As any number of regular users of the nature trails of Melbourne’s inner north will attest, this is not an isolated incident. The Merri Creek Trail, a beloved walking and cycling path which winds from Abbotsford through Fitzroy, Brunswick, Coburg and out to Fawkner, is strewn with a horrifying history of sexual and violent attacks targeting women. The same wild bushland pathways and quiet creek corridors where people look for peace and serenity are overshadowed with concerns about safety.
This clash of realities underwrites challenging questions around how to raise awareness, minimise risks and improve safety while celebrating and promoting a positive image of this and other trails as valuable spaces for humans and havens of biodiversity.
In July this year, artist Silk Cartwright posted a video to TikTok saying that a man stalked and masturbated in front of her while she was walking on the Merri Creek Trail near Coburg Lake, in an incident closely mirroring the one Rachael experienced on the Moonee Ponds trail.
“It’s such a beautiful area, and these fucking people just ruin it,” Cartwright said in the video, which garnered over 218,000 views.
While recorded incidents of sexual violence and harassment along the trail have decreased since 2020, Gray-Barberio said that gendered violence often goes underreported. Photo by Rhoen Kennedy.
In August, Victoria Police posted an appeal on social media for public assistance about a man stalking joggers and walkers along the Merri Creek Trail near Thornbury.
Other similar incidents have been reported by women in local Facebook groups this year.
Recent data from Crime Statistics Agency Victoria’s September release found that recorded incidents along the trail had decreased overall since 2020, with none reported to police from July 2025 to June 2026.
But Greens MLC for Northern Metropolitan Melbourne, Anasina Gray-Barberio, said that the figures did not capture the number of incidents that go unreported.
“We know that gendered violence is underreported – women do not feel safe to go report it to police,” said Gray-Barberio.
Greens MLC for Northern Metropolitan Melbourne Anasina Gray-Barberio said that there needs to be a collective effort across government in preventing gender-based violence in outdoor areas. Photo by Rhoen Kennedy.
Friends of the Merri Creek vice-president Clare Weekley said that the Merri Creek is “thought of as this place that people go to relax, to exercise, to connect with nature, and then you’ve got these really shocking events that happen”.
In 2019, after a man raped and attempted to drown a woman along the creek, widespread outrage in the community prompted the Merri-Bek Council to commission an investigation into safety on the trail the following year.
The 2020 study, led by Monash University’s XYX Lab, recommended some improvements, including that lighting should be added at key points along the trail. But it noted that this would not necessarily improve safety and could impact wildlife habitat.
Additional lighting and infrastructure could disrupt nocturnal species in an important conservation zone, Weekley said.
Merri-Bek council said that there were no current plans to add lighting to the trail, although it had acted on many of XYX Lab’s findings, hosting more community events and roundtables, improving trail maintenance, and forming “Courageous Conversations” – a men’s discussion group about reducing gender-based violence.
Locals and experts agree that improving infrastructure along the trail would not necessarily improve safety for women. Photo by Rhoen Kennedy.
“While place-based interventions can help, we need to stop gender-based violence in public spaces at the source,” a council representative said in a statement.
Violence against women is driven by “general inequality and behaviours, systems and attitudes that limit women’s independence and agency” and requires a “whole-of-community approach”, said violence prevention organisation Our Watch’s CEO Patty Kinnersly.
In 2023, the ABC reported that police were investigating four separate sexual offences along the Merri Creek Trail that year. Victoria Police still regularly patrol the trail, a Victoria Police spokesperson told The Citizen.
Gray-Barberio said that communities need the support of government to improve safety on the trail and prevent gender-based violence in outdoor areas.
On 24 September she raised the issue in the Victorian Parliament, saying the much-loved trail “has been a place where incidents of violence against women are on the rise. Women are being harassed, being stalked and experiencing indecent exposure”.
Highlighting the recommendations of the Monash audit, she recognised that these were “complicated to implement due to the ecological reserve of the area”, but asked for the Minister for Environment Jaclyn Symes to commit to ensuring safety infrastructure was prioritised. The Citizen has contacted Symes for a response, but did not receive a reply.
Gray-Barberio said that the role of education, healthcare, housing and community services was key, and called on all levels of government to improve them.
“Enough is enough,” she said. “There needs to be a collective effort to really address what is going on.”
For local groups like Friends of the Merri Creek, creating a positive community presence along the Merri Creek Trail can help make it feel safer for women.
“I think one of the greatest things we can do to improve safety along the trail is make sure there’s people on there doing positive activities,” Weekley said.
“I think some things that can make us feel unsafe is if we feel like we’re isolated and alone”, she said.
Youth-led environmental organisation Co-Exist Australia runs ‘Merri Mornings’, a monthly clean-up event along the creek.
Jessica Ditchfield, people manager of Co-Exist Australia, said that hosting community events like this make young people feel “more comfortable and confident in going out and being there.
“When you have everyone there upholding this standard of how we behave in this space, then that’s how it trickles along,” she said.
Ditchfield said that everyone should have the right to safely enjoy the beauty and unique scenery of the outdoor community areas like Merri Creek Trail – regardless of gender.
“It’s really important that those spaces are protected for us and for future generations to enjoy without, you know, fear,” she said.
Youth-led environmental organisation Co-Exist Australia runs ‘Merri Mornings’, a monthly clean-up event along the creek. Jessica Ditchfield, people manager of Co-Exist Australia, said that hosting community events like this make young people feel “more comfortable and confident in going out and being there. Photo: Supplied
This story is co-published with The Melburnian.
