I take a walk across the Birrarung Yarra River in Naarm Melbourne and eventually reach the Botanic Gardens. On the way I pass a fireplace on a hill overlooking the city, and a music bowl. At the garden there are many native and introduced plants and trees. There is an area of volcanic soil and plants on top of a hill in full sunlight. There’s an area nearby of paperdaisies and acacias. In the little valley at the centre, amongst water, is an area full of ferns and darkness. At the wetlands I find a bunch of familiar faces—magpies, butcherbirds, cockatoos, coots, moorhens, teals, swans, cormorants, egrets, black ducks, wood ducks, teals. And I learn from a sign that the Birrirung used to flow through here, until they redirected it closer to the city to manage flooding, attempting also to straighten its path: feeling here, too, from this other direction, Australia wrestling with its Indigenous and non-Indigenous stories and connections.