Friday, September 19, 2025
By Lucy Buxton and Aramiha Harwood
Late on a Friday afternoon, a group of people gathered along the Birrarung to take part in a facilitated walk guided by the recordings of Dr N’arweet Carolyn Briggs. After a day of strong winds, the sun broke through just in time, offering the perfect moment to tune in to N’arweet’s voice through our mobile devices. This walk was originally created by N’arweet, Dr Troy Innocent, and the Alliance of Praxis Research as a live, in-person journey for Melbourne Design Week 2023. Since then, N’arweet has recorded the walk, transforming it into a self-guided digital experience accessible through the use of a mobile device, internet connection, and headphones.
N’arweet’s recordings immerse participants in time travel, carrying us back to the year 1883 and then forwards to 2100. Along the way, we are invited to uncover and remap the original course of the Birrarung, while also generating wishes for our shared future. Participants are encouraged to capture and care for a “watery companion” in a recycled vessel, carrying it for the duration of the walk, before returning it to the river. Stopping and listening at four locations between Enterprize park and Southbank, participants encounter hidden memories of waterways and engage in play design to intimately reconnect with each droplet.
Joining this iteration of the experience were a diverse group of professionals – three creative producers, two environmentalists, one researcher, one physiotherapist and a very friendly dog. Seeing as not everyone knew each other, I opened the walk by inviting everyone to introduce themselves with their name, where they were joining us from, and a small reflection on their connection to water.
Ahead of the walk, participants completed a short pre-experience survey, exploring their existing connections with the Birrarung and their feelings of ecological responsibility towards the river. Their responses described the Birrarung as “murky,” “polluted,” “muddy” and “historic.” When asked what the river would be like if they were a person or character, responses varied from “an old person. Slow and tired but stubbornly continuing to move and get to their destination,” to “a person who is alive but dead – alive in that they still live and hold value and importance, but dead in that they feel the weight of not being appreciated or loved like they once were.” Another described the Birrarung as simply, “my father.” Collectively, the responses revealed a perception of the Birrarung as polluted, and personified as an older, wounded yet wise character.
We met at 3pm at the first location, using bright pink astroturf shapes as a meeting place, a playful nod to the parklet branding at the Future Play Lab. Participants selected a recycled vessel from the collection I had brought along, before being invited to collect some water, most opting for doing so directly from the water’s edge.
With our headphones on, we followed N’arweet’s voice to the second location and back in time to the year 1883; the year the Yarra waterfalls were demolished. Some participants gazed out to the river as we listened, while others chose to write in a journal to record their thoughts. When invited to play a game that involved disrupting each other’s vessels to spill the water, most people were reluctant to do so. Instead, I suggested we each pour a little bit of our vessels out onto the wood decking, to watch how the water flowed and to reflect on N’arweet’s words about how water always finds its way back. We then came together to replenish each other’s vessels, sharing our resources to restore our watery companions, before continuing our journey across the bridge to the third location.
When we reached Southbank, we were teleported forwards to the year 2100, where sea levels had significantly risen, contaminating all water. We used a red spice as a contaminant, adding a pinch into our watery companions. Everyone was invited to silently make a wish for the future, and reflect on this as we walked to our final location. One participant shared anxiety about what was going to happen to our watery companions – would we keep them or would they be lost?
At the fourth and final location we put our watery companions together to form a body of water on the deck, near the water’s edge. When N’arweet instructed us that it was time to let our companions go, we each released them back into the Birrarung.
We came back together to reflect on a few questions – I invited the group to firstly share their wishes for the future. Responses were very climate-motivated and included “I wish that as humans we would do better,” and “I wish that the world would stay the same as it is now.” When asked if anyone had any reflections or commitments that they wanted to make, one participant noted that she was surprised at how clear the water was when put into her vessel, and how this changed some assumptions she had previously made about the river’s murkiness. Another participant noted that the people making decisions that affect the water often do not directly visit the waterways, and that the walkshop could be a powerful tool to share with policymakers to shift the perspectives of people in a position of power over the Birrarung. Another participant reflected that the walk had shifted the way he sees the Birrarung and rivers in general.
Responses from the post-experience survey revealed a noticeable attunement to the river’s trauma, perhaps as a result of becoming aware of the effects of colonisation and industrial pollution on the Birrarung. The river was described as “disturbed, injured, but resilient.” One response personified the Birrarung as –
“Patient and wise. A person you could sit with and learn from for hours – with many cuppas and biscuits of course. Birrarung has an extensive knowledge of animals, plants, law and history of the place and would advocate for care and change at government level.”
Overall, the walk was a success, bringing together people from diverse fields to time travel, remap the original meander of the Birrarung, and generate wishes for its future. It was a privilege to facilitate this experience with N’arweet Carolyn Briggs in digital form, which now serves as inspiration for developing future playful walkshops along other waterways in Naarm (Melbourne) for Play About Place.
