31 July 2024
Waring season is here – cold and misty mornings, long dark nights, rain moths emerging and, if you are lucky, a wombat or two.
In early June, we marked the second annual Burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo Executive Forum. The forum took place at Abbotsford Convent not far from the river.
It brought together decision-makers from councils, government agencies, and the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation (Wurundjeri Corporation) to strengthen our commitment to transform how we care for and respect the Birrarung, across organisational boundaries.
The key themes of the meeting were the Birrarung Council’s recommendations, self-determined Traditional Owner engagement and authorisation of our transformative projects that aim to fulfil the actions in the Plan.
Photo credit: Sharon Blance, Image Workshop.
The Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability’s 5-yearly State of the Birrarung Report was tabled in parliament in May. It’s not a lot of good news, but there are positive trends in some of the 36 indicators used to evaluate the condition of the river and its parklands.
Some of the recommendations:
Continued investment and delivery of activities by government agencies and local councils, together with our transformative projects, will contribute to addressing the Commissioner’s recommendations. We are also seeing strong alignment between that of the Commissioner’s findings and those from the Healthy Waterways Strategy mid-term review.
Paul Mitchell is the Burndap Birrarung burndap Umarkoo (Yarra Strategic Plan) Lead with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.
Paul has a PhD in ethnohistory and extensive experience in agricultural and environmental management. For much of Paul's career he has been working with indigenous groups on sustainable livelihoods within a contemporary economy – culturally and environmentally sustainable ways of living on country.
Paul enjoys working cross-culturally; he believes it is a way of enriching your world view. He is excited to work with Wurundjeri on the BBBU as an opportunity to support the recognition and respect of Wurundjeri history, knowledge and contemporary management responsibilities. Since working for Wurundjeri he now sees the landscape where he lives very differently:“Wurundjeri life and knowledge can enrich us all if we allow it to.”
When asked what the Birrarung as a living and integrated natural entity meant to him, he said, “I am lucky I live near the Birrarung. I can walk along the river and listen to the bush. It is always an encounter, a discovery of untamed life and processes. That immersion is what it means to me.”
Photo credit: Jenny Mitchell
The lower stretch of the Birrarung was once a rich ecosystem, described as a “temperate Kakadu”. It held significant importance for the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people and the broader Eastern Kulin nation. But extensive urbanisation has left little of this landscape intact.
The floating wetlands project is reintroducing native plantings and providing a study of the potential for restoring the river’s wetlands, and opportunities to improve the river system’s health and urban landscape. The community can contribute to this effort by recording wildlife observations via iNaturalist, aiding in the project’s monitoring and ecological knowledge-building.
For more information, view the Channel 31 Community designs episode on YouTube.
Adapted from City of Melbourne Birrarung Trial Floating Wetlands.
Photo credit: Rob Molloy
Melbourne Water respectfully acknowledges the Bunurong, Gunaikurnai,
Taungurung, Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples as the Traditional
Owners and Custodians of the land and water on which we rely and operate.
We
pay our deepest respects to their Elders - past, present and emerging.
