I would like you to think about what Birrarung might have felt or experienced over the last two hundred years. So, if you like, close your eyes and try to imagine being the river, a living, feeling entity extending from the mountains to the sea: in the high country, among the giant forests, arising from the smallest of soaks to begin flowing in shallow channels, sliding over rocks and delicate ferns, picking up leaves falling from the canopy above that are the food for tiny insects, that are in turn food for other creatures that follow the cycle of seasons. Collecting more tributaries across a vast area, they join to form the beginnings of a river, clear and flowing, eventually emerging from the hills onto a wooded plain. You are in great parts swampy and dense with paperbarks, and tightly meandering, with flows slowing and moving gently through the landscape, over, under and around fallen trees and smaller wooden debris where the blackfish and yabbies linger and rest. The sun warms the waters, where here and there the dense paperbarks open up to the sky.
Finally, to the coast, spilling and spreading into billabongs and wetlands, thronging with noisy water birds, many with their beaks exploring mudflats heavy with organic matter and worms. Flocks, thrashing through your waters to lift off in fright at some disturbance, wheeling overhead, before gliding back across the glassy surface to land once again and restart the business of feeding or displaying elaborately for a mate. Here there is mixing with the salty water of the sea, sometimes surging upstream, clearer there with fresh water carried so far across many lands, and sometimes retreating back to the sea, in a regular tidal rhythm so familiar and unalterable, understood and accommodated by all living things touched by you.
There are people too, their language also familiar like the tidal rhythms, who have been here since even before the plains of Naarm were flooded by the sea and pushed you back to this new place of joining with the salt water. The people are of the land, but know you intimately. They explore the waters to harvest reeds and shellfish and in special places they arrange stones to guide your flows to trap migrating eels. The people gather along your banks and hold ceremony with fire, song and dancing. There is respect and care between you.
Then one day, something different comes from the sea, carrying people making unfamiliar sounds. This is the beginning of a time of great change. The people are not the same as those who have lived with you for such a long time – so long that it feels like there was no time without people. But there is little care and respect from these people. They ignore seasons and cycles. They are devastated by your flooding that replenishes wetlands and billabongs. They respond with cutting and digging, widening and deepening, and lining your banks with stone and timber. They continue making places to bring more boats and more people to the lands of the Woi Wurrung.
Your flows can no longer reach the wetlands and billabongs and most have been filled. There are no longer places for the birds to gather and feed. The people you knew to be Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung have mostly disappeared. Sometimes you see them like ghosts among these new people, but they no longer gather for ceremony of fire, song and dance.
In the hills, the new people have built walls to dam your waters and divert your flows. Only a small part of what the river gathers from the giant forests now flows onto the plains below. The paperbark swamps and floodplains have been cleared and the billabongs drained, the fallen trees and woody debris that protected the blackfish have been pulled out and burnt. The kangaroos and wallabies are few, and huge cattle, beats, trample the banks and leave their messy waste behind. There has not been much respect from these new people.
But you can feel something changing. The voices in Woi Wurrung are still faint but you can hear this language more often. The voices of the new people have softened and there is more joy and laughter in gatherings along your banks. Your waters have become cleaner, trees are returning along with many birds.
But you are changed.
You cannot go back to what you were before the new people came, just as you can’t go back to what you were before the sea pushed you back across the plains of Naarm. What is changing, you sense now, are the people recognising and respecting what you give them. There are still many who choose to take as their entitlement, but there are more and more who are asking, ‘What can they do for you?’ There is concrete and cars and those who rush past or over the river without a thought. There are those who drink the waters taken from you in the mountains of the great forests without a thought or care for this gift of life, which is taken from the fish and platypus and other creatures who once took life from these flows.
Much life has declined, but it is not extinguished.
Perhaps the greatest loss has been the reciprocal respect and dignity you shard with the Woi Wurrung people. However, there are still many things to enjoy. Some things of importance may seem insignificant, like one of the new people, different from many of the others, who often come to Birrarung, disturbed and in pain. You can feel there has been suffering in their life. They sit in solitude with you to catch fish, like the old Woi Wurrung people. Quiet and contemplative, they grow calm and settle, casting off the pain for a time. Figures of quiet dignity. You are happy for them to take that gift of dignity and respect and you feel it is returned to you. That is the greatest loss, and the thing you can give back: respect and dignity as living entity.
Willip-gin Birrarung murron, ‘keep the Birrarung alive’, is the Woi Wurrung language name of the Yarra River Protection Act introduced in 2017. It is the the first Victorian legislation to be co-titled in an indigenous language, and the first time First Nations Elders have spoken in Parliament as part of the legislative process. It is the first legislation of its kind in Australia to recognise a river as a living entity. This legislation is an expression of respect for the dignity of Birrarung and the connection of our First Nations people, and their care for the river, spanning thousands of years. The act sets up the Birrarung Council of Elders and non-indigenous members to act as the voice of the river.
Understanding the river as a living entity reflects Indigenous ontologies or ways of knowing, and demands different ways of being in our relationship with the river and its lands. On the Birrarung Council, we are walking together on that journey of understanding. It’s a journey that we encourage others to embark on. The Willip-gin Birrarung murron Act also required the development of a fifty-year community vision and a Yarra Strategic Plan (Burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo) to bring together the many public entities involved in managing the river and its lands to give effect to that vision in partnership with Traditional Owners.
Professor Chris Chesterfield is a Professor of Practice at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and Chair of the Birrarung Council.