This presentation explores an evolving partnership-led approach to river restoration and cultural revitalisation on Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury River), within the framework of the NSW Coastal Management Program (CMP) and the emerging Dyarubbin Cultural Restoration Strategy (CRS). Grounded in collaboration between Water Technology and Muru Mittigar, a Dharug Aboriginal social enterprise, the work repositions the river not as a resource to manage, but as a living, cultural entity. Ngurra, Country, kin.
Beginning with statutory planning through the CMP, our work expanded through extensive on-Country engagement with Dharug Elders and community members. This approach, walking, yarning, listening, surfaced disconnection caused by colonisation, restricted access, and ecological degradation, but also revealed deep cultural memory and opportunities for renewal.
Our key projects like Water Culture and Hope Farm demonstrate this shift. Water Culture supports Elders in retracing cultural sites by boat, blending Traditional Knowledge and contemporary mapping to reconnect people and place. Hope Farm transforms flood-damaged and weed-invaded landscapes into spaces of cultural healing, where invasive species are repurposed into cultural tools like clap sticks, linking ecological restoration with traditional practices.
By centering First Nations leadership and relational values, this work moves beyond transactional consultation to a model of genuine partnership and care. It responds to ecological and cultural loss not through extraction or control, but through reciprocity, resilience and regeneration. These efforts also inform broader policy and planning, embedding Indigenous worldviews into future waterway and land management frameworks.
In considering Dyarubbin as a living, relational entity, our work exemplifies how Indigenous knowledge systems, community-led action, and government frameworks can together seed long-term transformation. Ultimately, we see this work as strengthening ecosystems, restoring cultural practice, and reweaving the ties between people, water, and Country.

Despite Birrarung (Yarra River) having the legal status of a living entity since 2017 many of the people who rely on Birrarung do not understand what it means to relate to a river as a living entity. This presentation will introduce a new project that seeks to bring communities into relation and reciprocity with Birrarung through story telling. This project is in collaboration with Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Traditional Owner groups and supported by Melbourne Water.

Urban waterways provide important habitat for biodiversity in cities, and valued ‘breathing space’ for city-dwellers. Additionally, waterways are often key stormwater drainage infrastructure, transport infrastructure, and an industrial history of waste disposal; reflecting our utilitarian relationships with waterways. Yet we are starting to reframe our connections and relationships with waterways, from programs to address stormwater quality and revegetate riverbanks, to legislation recognising a river as a single integrated living entity. These efforts often involve and necessitate collaborative governance – waterways are owned, managed and maintained by a complex jigsaw of jurisdictions, utilities, community groups and landowners. This complexity of ownership, management, funding, interest and care complicates restoration efforts, potentially resulting in situations where too many interested parties combine to hamper or forestall new approaches.
This research utilises qualitative document analysis to examine new approaches to collaborative governance of urban waterways. The research focuses on Birrarung-Yarra River and its tributaries. Groundbreaking legislation in 2017, the Yarra River Protection / Wilip-gin Birrarung murron Act, the first in Australia to be co-titled in the language of the Traditional Owners, identified Birrarung as a ‘single living and integrated entity’, and established the Birrarung Council as the voice of Birrarung, with membership of the Council required to include Traditional Owners.
Birrarung and its tributaries are the focus of a range of waterway restoration projects, from the Greenline and Floating Wetlands in the central business district, to wetland rewatering in the middle reaches, and various revegetation projects funded and implemented by a wide range of organisations and groups , as well as larger paradigm-shifting questions: What is good for Birrarung? The research examines how collaborative governance has supported or constrained these efforts: while effective collaborations can extend and expand capacity, the complex, dispersed and at times opposing responsibilities of multiple agencies can also stymie these efforts.

There is increasing interest in legal mechanisms that recognise rivers as living entities to bridge Western legal frameworks with Indigenous knowledges, laws, and cosmologies offering new pathways for better protection and care for more-than-human entities. In Victoria, Australia, the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017 declares Birrarung’s (Yarra River) waters and lands as an indivisible living entity. This landmark legislation formally acknowledges the Traditional Owners as custodians, centring their ongoing authority and responsibilities in caring for Country. It responds to the degradation of the bio-cultural waterscape caused by extractive and unsustainable development and has catalysed shifts in river policy, governance, and institutional frameworks, challenging colonial logics of water ‘management.’ However, while important these legal tools only represent initial steps in transforming people river relationships. In the case of Birrarung, Traditional Owners call for a deeper shift: an invitation to all Victorians to see and understand Birrarung “through their eyes” - as a sacred living entity. Living entity is not an idea or a concept, rather it centres relationality and a way of being with and knowing Birrarung. This worldview is particularly challenging for non-Indigenous/settlers as it requires deep reflection and critical awareness on personal - and institutional - relationships with Birrarung. Through policy and document analysis and semi-structured interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors in this space, this study identifies the important and central role language plays in this shift. Language does more than describe, it shapes our worlds, creates meaning and is dynamic and performative. By (re)enacting language that centres relationality and recognises Birrarung as a living entity, this research explores how language could act as a tool to help re-story and foster human-river relationships.