Everflow: Birrarung Riverfest Closing Event

We warmly invite you to join us for Everflow, the official closing event of Birrarung Riverfest 2026. Come early and make an afternoon of it! You’re very welcome to visit and explore the Collingwood Children’s Farm at any time before the Everflow formalities begin at 6pm.

Everflow is an immersive evening of Deep Listening, music, sound-sculptural installation and projection art, held at the beautiful Collingwood Children’s Farm, nestled up against Birrarung’s flowing body.

Developed in alignment with Deep Listening as a way to embody the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung philosophy of burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo (what's good for the Birrarung is good for all), Everflow explores the interconnectedness of community, care for Country and collaboration. Weaving both creative and environmental elements, the program welcomes audiences into stillness, reflection and deep connection with Birrarung as we understand our place within its ancient story.

Deep Listening is a way to practice awareness for the more-than-visible, more-than-audible and more-than-human, expanding conscious attention towards deeper layers. In this way we begin to hear the rhythm that runs beneath the noise, the rhythm of the Birrarung. Our practice of Deep Listening involves compassionate listening/sharing circles, musical listening sessions and guided meditations, as we learn to listen with our whole being.

Everflow is the intersection of artist-producers Alex “Pug” Williams and Evie Juliet’s individual creative practices, collaboratively merged through reciprocal, repeated visits with Birrarung, meditative experimentation and Deep Listening.

We are excited to share our experiences of how Deep Listening shifts our relationship to self, others and place - allowing us flow toward our shared futures by truthfully acknowledging the past and present.

What to bring?

Pack a picnic and bring a rug or somethihng to sit on.

Deep Listening with Dr Maya Ward

We are blessed to open our event with Dr Maya Ward facilitating a Deep Listening workshop on the banks of the Birrarung, with whom she embarked on a walking pilgrimage from Sea to Source, in 2003, following sacred Wurundjeri songlines which had been blocked off by private ownership and industry for the last 100 years.

Dr Maya Ward is an independent artist, designer and researcher, collaborating with Melbourne University on addressing climate anxiety through nature contemplation, and with the Gay’wu group of women on the cross-cultural experience of speaking with the world. Maya’s intimate communion with the intelligence of life is profoundly influenced by her longstanding dance and embodiment practices, and practices of earth celebration, communion, and repair – co-creating community rituals, teaching, food growing, tree planting and activism.

Birrarung Paddle: Connected by the Deep

Join us to practice Deep Listening, paddling on water. Hosted by Up the Creek, you'll experience the river from a new perspective; a place to slow down, immerse yourself in nature, and reflect on the relationship between city and landscape. As we paddle, we focus on how we collaborate with the water itself, tuning into our senses, noticing the river's effect on our bodies as we move across it, and imagining new ways for people and the river to collaborate differently. This tour is designed to be suitable for all ages, and flows in alignment with our event sponsor, RMIT’s Regenerative Futures Institute. Children are encouraged to come along and share their voices. A diverse cohort of all ages can help us all imagine better!

Everflow Paddles are to be separately booked at https://upthecreek.co/experience/everflow-rmit-x-yrka-x-utc-paddle

Everflow Installation - Evie Juliet x Pug

Everflow is the physical manifestation of Pug and Evie’s complementary collaborative research. Evie creates text projections that blur the lines between personal and ecological mythology, while Pug constructs resonant sound-sculptural installations from waste polystyrene and steel. Much of the polystyrene used in this artwork has been pulled directly from Birrarung, or their connected tributaries, Merri Merri and Maribyrnong. Through relations with people and place, to the tension of rivers with waste, Evie and Pug present an immersive assemblage of sound, sculpture and light designed to reconcile the stories held within bodies of self and water.

Genevieve Fry X Genevieve Callaghan

Everflow presents a brand new place-based musical collaboration between interdisciplinary artist Genevieve Fry and writer and performer Genevieve Callaghan. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, their harp, voice and multi-instrumental soundscapes encourage an inward journey touching on deep time, memory and sense of place.

Driftwood

Driftwood is the duo project of Naarm-based experimental musicians Nick Ashwood and Aviva Endean. They have released two albums on experimental music label ROOM40

Performing face to face, with back-to-back organs, Driftwood meets in a microtonal, buzzing, blurring landscape. Their unique instrumental line up features two re-tuned antique pump organs, which create a resonant backdrop for their primary instruments of clarinets (Aviva) and guitars (Nick), complemented by modular synths and electronics. Their slowly evolving music draws influence from minimalist, drone and folk traditions to create a generous and shimmering sound, inspiring a hypnotic and transformational quality of listening in their audiences, who are momentarily immersed in this harmonic expanse.

Artist Biographies

Alex ‘Pug’ Williams

is a multi-disciplinary artist from Djilang/Geelong living/working/singing/playing on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung in Naarm/Melbourne.

Driven by curiosity, his practice explores acoustic phenomena, material transformation, and the cultural and ecological implications of mass waste through immersive and site-responsive sound sculptural installations. Drawing on truth-telling, deep listening, extreme metal, ritual, and expanded sculpture, they created resonant environments that invite audiences into embodied encounters with sound and materiality.

Pug seeks confluence with the Moonee Ponds Creek, Merri Creek and Birrarung.

Williams has exhibited and undertaken residencies in Australia, Ireland, Italy and Vietnam. He studied Fine Art at RMIT (TAFE ’16’17, undergrad ’23) and VCA (Honours ’25).

Evie Juliet

is an artist interested in deep listening, memory and embodiment. Working in collaboration with community and environment, their creative work explores the space between the personal, ecological and cosmological - weaving these realms as interconnected. Their practice includes video projection, installation and poetry, as well as expanded forms of deep listening, both independently and in community.

Evie’s work has been presented in various spaces in Naarm including Gallery Gallery inc (Brunswick), Centre for Contemporary Photography (Collingwood) and Abbotsford Convent.

https://eviejuliet.com/

This event is proudly hosted by Up the Creek. To learn more about their work, visit their website here.

• Most Riverfest events are free, and many have limited places with long waitlists. Please only book if you're confident you can attend, so others don't miss out. Bookings are limited to 2 tickets for smaller events and 4 tickets for larger events.
  

• Can't make it? Please cancel your ticket by opening your Humanitix confirmation email and selecting 'Manage Order'. Your place will then be released to someone on the waitlist. If you need assistance, contact us by email: riverfest@yarrariver.org.au
  

• Events will proceed unless severe weather or other unforeseen circumstances require a change. If this happens, registered participants will be notified by email.

We welcome people of all abilities. If you have any accessibility requirements or need assistance to participate, please contact us before the event so we can discuss how we can support your attendance.

Celebrate the Yarra, Birrarung at one of 70+ events hosted over three weeks from 27 September to 18 October. Whether you enjoy riverside walks, cleanups, creative workshops, wildlife spotting or paddling adventures, there's something for everyone at Riverfest. Riverfest is presented by Yarra Riverkeeper Association with thanks to our partners Burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo collaboration and Water4Good. Check out the full Riverfest program here.

Yarra Riverkeeper Association acknowledges that the lands and waterways of the Yarra, Birrarung catchment, are the unceded territories of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung and Bunurong Boonwurrung peoples. We pay respect to Traditional Owners, who have, and continue, to care for Country. We acknowledge that the river now called Yarra has always been known as the Birrarung by its custodians.