Walking with Wurundjeri Elder Chris Hume: A Journey Through Country and Memory
Written by Professor Adrian Hearn
Enabled by an Arts Firestarter grant, a team from SOLL experienced an enlightening walk through urban Country alongside Wurundjeri elder Chris Hume. It was not just a tour of the land, but an immersion into layers of memory, language, and ecological wisdom that have historically shaped our city. Each stop along the trail revealed a story embedded in the land, reminding us that the trees, rivers, and soils carry ancestral knowledge for those who listen.
The walk began in Yarra Park, beneath a great river red gum, a “scar tree” whose bark was once used to fashion canoes and containers for carrying water.
Uncle Chris pointed out that the MCG was historically a site for ceremony (tanderrum), where gatherings once took place for people from across the region. Such spaces were not just for ceremony but also for diplomacy, trade, and renewal, reinforcing the deep social networks that bound Indigenous nations together.
He spoke with reverence about David Barak, who should have been the biological ngurungaeta (leader) of the Wurundjeri people, carrying the authority passed down by the famed elder William Barak. David died from tuberculosis after long hospital delays and now lays buried under the Queen Victoria Market parking lot together with other Indigenous people. Chris hopes to see this site recognised with a sign and the restoration of grassland, transforming a place of loss into one of remembrance. It is a stark reminder of the city’s colonial layering over sacred ground.
Chris brought to life the ecological and cultural sophistication embedded in ancestral knowledge. He told us of the wollert, or brushtail possum found in southeastern Victoria, which has the third warmest pelt in the world. Its hollow follicles capture heat in winter, while in summer the fur can be reversed to radiate warmth away. Treated with beeswax, the skin becomes waterproof. Each person customarily receives one new skin per year, gradually sewn into a full wrapping used in ceremony and, ultimately, for burial and return to the dreaming. The northern Melbourne suburb Wollert takes its name from this animal, demonstrating a linguistic echo of an ancient yet living heritage.
Chris engaged us in a game of Woggabaliri, played with a palm-sized object woven from emu feathers with beeswax and raffia. Hitting the object to each other around a circle with our hands required a balance of cooperation, assertion, and respect for each other’s space. With his vibrant laugh, Chris observed that our SOLL contingent was more considerate and less ruthlessly competitive than groups he guides from the corporate sector.
We were reminded of a truth well known in SOLL: that language and perception shape each other. The so-called “Yarra” River, for instance, had been mistakenly named by early colonists after hearing Gadigal labourers from New South Wales use their word for “waterfall.” In Woiwurrung, however, Yarra means “hairy” and the river maintains its true name Birrarung. Moreover, in Woiwurrung, Narmm (the traditional name for Melbourne) refers to the lower tidal stretch of the Maribyrnong river, where salty and fresh waters converge.
Chris has recently joined UoM’s Liwik Loorendegat (Ancestors Guidance) program, where he continues his cultural and environmental work. He invites us to reflect on the lessons we can draw from murrup Woiwurrung bik (literally “the ancestral land of Woiwurrung speakers”). To put knowledge into practice, he and his colleagues are applying Indigenous ecological knowledge to restore Birrarung, for instance by reintroducing native filtration plants to heal the waterway.
Chris is carrying forward an inspiring agenda: to commemorate past episodes with plaques and stories so errors are not repeated, to integrate ancestral ecological wisdom with modern science, and to honour spirit through practical acts of restoration.
Walking with Chris, we learned that every tree and current is a teacher who reminds us that Country is alive, listening, and waiting to be cared for once more.
To further explore Australian and Latin American sites of ceremonial connection with Country, visit Adrian’s “Who is Nature?” project.
