Being present in a place requires a stillness that feels like a luxury in our busy lives. It requires us to enact deep listening, to practise ngara – to listen, to think, to feel. In that listening, we can find Country, even in the deeply urban spaces. In these times of biodiversity collapse, climate emergency and ecological injustice inflicted by settler-colonialism, never has the invitation to ngara been more important for humans – particularly architects, designers and planners.
We, the authors, contemplate what urban Country means during a walk in Melbourne’s Docklands – a tower-filled, post-industrial, urban renewal precinct that began as a hallmark of neoliberal planning in the mid-1990s. We meet at the end of a tram line, beneath the eight-lane Bolte Bridge in a park named after an Aussie Rules football champion that provides much-needed public space in an area where such indulgences still seem an afterthought. Sitting on a bench at the entrance to the park, we observe the entwining of the environs around us and our own being in place, recording our yarns.
