What 'thing' is being discussed? TIme is not 'a thing'. — Wayfarer

Time is the fact of change. When you say time doesn't exist prior to consciousness, you state change didn't happen prior to consciousness. Thus, I understand why you say time starts with consciousness, as change would start with consciousness. The primacy of consciousness. But there is no evidence that change doesn't happen prior to consciousness by your points presented. Only that we are observing and measuring change. Change happens whether we observe it or label it 'time'.

My claim is that time as succession or duration does not exist independently of the awareness of it. — Wayfarer

I understand this. The problem is you have no evidence of this. You haven't presented what it would be like if time did not have succession or duration. I'm not trying to put ideas into your head as I wanted to see what you came up with first. Since you haven't, the only state I could see reality being in prior to consciousness is a state of nothingness. The logical step would be that there was a state of existence in which no change happened, then suddenly consciousness came along and changed it. Basically the God theory of universal creation. Only in this case, the "God" is consciousness as a general point.

The problem of course is that this doesn't answer Ludwig's point, it presents an alternative view point without evidence.

Presuming anything is the act of a conscious being, so it is certain that presumption of the physical world presupposes a conscious being. But we know that the physical world existed long before any conscious beings existed (at least on this planet) and, since we know of no conscious beings that exist without a physical substrate, we can be sure that the physical world can exist without any conscious beings in it. — Ludwig V

You haven't presented evidence that the world did not exist prior to consciousness. The only thing you've observed is that humans have measured change with units we call time, and you think that if there isn't a consciousness measuring change that change cannot happen. That's a big claim with nothing backed behind it.

My claim is that time as succession or duration does not exist independently of the awareness of it. What can exist without observers are physical processes and relations between states. — Wayfarer

Ok, but what would that look like coherently without the idea that change happens as succession and over duration? What does a universe without duration mean or look like? What does an idea of change without succession look like? We use succession and duration in measuring time, because these are proven concepts. I'm willing to entertain a world that does not have succession or duration, but it needs to be coherent. What does that look like to you? Again, if you accept change existing prior to humanity observing it, then 'time' exists. If you're simply stating the 'measurement of time' doesn't exist, no argument there. But the lack of an observer measuring change does not mean change does not occur apart from observation.

It’s also worth noting that contemporary physics itself no longer treats space and time as fully observer-independent in the classical sense. — Wayfarer

Yes because that is how time is measured. You need an origin, because time is the measure of relative change between two states. Again, just because someone isn't there to measure relative change between two states, doesn't mean that it does not happen.

My point is not to deny physical reality, but to note that the naive realist picture of time as an observer-free container is no longer supported — even by physics. — Wayfarer

And again, all you've demonstrated is that "The naive realist picture of measuring time as an observer-free container is no longer supported." You have that 100%. Its the leap of you removing an observer's measurement to removing change prior to the observer that is missing a logical step.

The relation we create is the thing we invent measurement for, given some difference we observe. — Mww

The relation we observe, not create. The creation of a relation is something independent of observation. I can create a related measurement of zorbools, which relates the existence of magical fluctations to farts in the wind. Does it mean I can observe zorbools? No. Magic cannot be observed, so neither can zorbools.