A source of spiritual as well as physical refreshment, the Yarra River and its hinterland around Australia’s second-largest city has a rich Catholic heritage and a real wealth of retreat centres, as Mark Brolly reports The Indigenous traditional owners of Australia’s second-biggest city, Melbourne, have deep spiritual connections to the Yarra River (known to them as Birrarung) that flows through the city into Port Phillip Bay. Catholics, too – Indigenous and those who have settled here since 1835 – have sought spiritual refreshment near its waters.Retreat centres offering a wide array of Catholic spirituality can be found near the Yarra, which rises in mountains 150 miles east of the city, and its tributaries. Pallotti College, built 50 years ago as a seminary but