Birrarung Marr is a riverside park in central Melbourne whose very name carries a corrected history. When European settlers arrived, they misheard the local Woiwurrung word for the river and called it the Yarra. The Wurundjeri people had always known it as the Birrarung: "river of mists and shadows." Look at the murky brown water today and you'll understand the settlers' other nickname for it too, "the river that runs upside down." That colour is their fault, incidentally. They blew up a waterfall near the river's entrance, turning what had been pristine water into something considerably less poetic.

The park sits between Federation Square and the Arts Centre, dotted with spears and shields that mark the traditional country of the Wurundjeri people.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use Birrarung Marr as a starting point to weave together 60,000 years of Indigenous history, colonial blundering and the modern city that grew from both.