Relationships with Birrarung

In recognition of the status of Birrarung as a living entity, in 2024, Birrarung Council members prepared statements articulating their personal and professional relationships with Birrarung.

In 2025, Birrarung Council invited senior management of each responsible public entity to develop a relationship statement articulating their organisation’s relationship with Birrarung. This reflective exercise offered an opportunity for organisations and their staff to explore the way they understand the River as a living entity.

The Birrarung Council extends a broader invitation to community groups, landowners and other stakeholders to also consider their relationship with Birrarung as a living entity, and implications of that relationship for how they interact with the River.

Here are some examples of our relationship statements, published in our 2024 Annual Report.

Dr Sandra Brizga

It’s complicated.

I live near the Birrarung.

Over geomorphological timescales, the Birrarung has built and carved the landforms that define my neighbourhood.

The Birrarung and its riparian zone also support birds, insects and animals that visit my home and garden. The Birrarung provides many opportunities for rest and recreation. The Birrarung and its tributaries provide water supply to my home and workplace.

From time to time, the Birrarung spills out of its banks, clashing with infrastructure and land uses on its floodplain, bringing anthropogenic debris and pollutants back into its river channel.

As a waterway management professional, I provide advice on how the Birrarung functions, how to look after the Birrarung, and how to minimise any harms to the Birrarung.

Zena Cumpston

I am a Barkandji woman. We are river (Barka) people (kandji). Without our Barka, our lifeblood, we do not exist. All of our waterways are connected. I have seen what happens when greed and extraction takes an unbearable toll. My relationship to Birrarung is guided by the deep respect and reverence I have for water as a lifeblood, as mother.

Whilst I am far from my mother's Ancestral lands, Birrarung is what makes me feel most at home. I feel held by Birrarung, and I feel compelled to show respect and care for these lands and its Traditional Custodians by doing all I can to support her.

I see her strength and resilience, her power and abundance. Even in the times where I cannot sit with her as often as I would want to, just a glimpse of her as I race across the city will brighten my day. She calls to me to work as hard as I can, to care with all of my being.

She reminds me that time is circular, that our Ancestors are with us always.

Dr Erin O'Donnell

For the 21 years that I have lived in Naarm, the Birrarung has cared for me. Every time I turn on a tap, I am grateful to the Birrarung for her gifts of well-being: the water I drink, the water I cook and wash with, the water that brings joy and health.

The Birrarung makes my life possible. Yet I also know that the Birrarung doesn’t have a choice. My well-being currently depends on the dams that strangle her mountain flows, and the city I live in requires her to funnel away storm water, bearing the burden of pollution.

I became a member of the Birrarung Council because I wanted to hear her voice, to understand her needs, and to restore reciprocity to my relationship with the Birrarung.

I spend time with her whenever I can, getting to know the ebb and flow of her rhythms. I watch the flocks of black cormorants chasing fish, darters drying their wings on her banks, and flying foxes winging their way in search of fruit as the sun goes down.

This is a river who has been in company with people for tens of thousands of years. I think she wants us to know her, to be with her, and to treat her with all the respect and love we have to offer.

Dr James Thyer

I like seeing the river when it is flowing high on its banks, when its waters have more strength, and flow into joining billabongs to nourish the land, reed beds and trees.

A high river seems to invite others to come and see it. Fast flowing rapids with overhanging native vegetation gives it a beauty.

A drought river is sluggish and without energy, somehow sad. The river is also less vital when it becomes a bog for cattle and deer, muddying its waters.

When its tributaries disgorge brown turbid water, laden with plastic waste, it also has a forlorn and depressing feeling.

Bronwyn South

For me, the Birrarung – that main artery – evokes thoughts of human relationships - peace, recreation and friendships.

My lifelong relationship is with one of the Birrarung’s tributaries. It is generational. My family has been here for over 100 years because of the creek – its water and soil provide our livelihood. Like all relationships it must be constantly nurtured to retain its balance.

My period of stewardship is so short and yet I feel its importance. I have weeded and revegetated, worked with Melbourne Water to fence and install off stream watering. This will always be ongoing. The best I can hope is that I leave this creek - and its waters flowing on their way to the Birrarung - in a better condition.

I wonder if the next generation will have a similar relationship with the creek. It gives me heart that consumers are recognising the importance of waterways. To export our fruit or to sell to some domestic outlets we now require certification of our environmental stewardship. I hope the desire for environmentally sound food production and its associated costs survives these difficult times in our economy.

Dr David Jones

A child of the neo-liberal landscape protection and conservation philosophies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, I avidly explored and played in the watercourses of the Birrarung and Gardiners Creek, before being educated and teaching in environmental planning at various universities, including under McHarg.

Intimately experiencing the silent foreboding, golden-blossom coloured and aroma-filled patches, with dappled light and platypus-splashes, and occasionally being drowned in the tumultuous and water-immersive waters and rapids of the Birrarung, from Yering Gorge through Laughing Waters to Pound Bend, was my regular weekend journey route.

Additionally, I have been lucky to have been guided and challenged by several Elders over the years as to how better to respect, protect and nourish Country and its tangible and intangible values.

Alexandra Lee

My formative childhood years were spent on the banks of the Dooyedang (Avon) River on Gunaikunai Country. In and around the river was how our childhood was spent, it was central to our world.

Now as an adult, Birrarung is how I understand the place in which I live. It is the wilderness that remains in our city that supports my health and wellbeing. Its waters bring stories from up in the catchment, it tells me the seasons, it draws me to its banks and reminds me why we are here. Our river that formed this landscape has a power for me that urbanisation has not diminished.

I often feel a mixture of stress and support when I visit Birrarung. Stress on her behalf of the state she is in. Support through the prevailing strength she has and gives to me. I feel she supports me far more than I can support her. As an adult, she carries my childlike wonder.

Prof. Chris Chesterfield

Being raised in the outer suburbs of Melbourne in the 1960s and early 70s, First Nations people and culture was invisible. Nature was present, but there to be violently repurposed rather than appreciated.

I was curious about nature but frustrated by the ignorance and lack of story related to the place I lived. I learnt a way of understanding something of nature through my study of biology and earth sciences at university. That led me to a job and career working to care for Victoria’s waterways.

Only in recent years have I built some relationship with Traditional Custodians’ land and waterways and begun to appreciate a different way of seeing and knowing these living landscapes.

The Birrarung has been at the core of that journey. I greatly appreciate what the River and its lands give to us, but also feel ashamed of what we have taken from it without gratitude and acknowledgement.

I now also better understand the pain this taking from the ‘Mother’ has inflicted on the Traditional Custodians and their wellbeing. I now speak to the River about my feelings and find myself hurting at the attitudes and sense of entitlement of others who take from the River without gratitude or speak badly of the River. It is a privilege to share some part of my life with the Birrarung.

Page last updated: 20/11/25