Perl 6 still has references -- you can still take an explicit reference like \@array. However, Perl 6 will automatically take a reference or dereference a reference depending on context. Here are a few examples of Perl 6 with the Perl 5 in the comment.

my %x = ( a => 1 );   # same
my $y = %x;           # $y = \%x
%x{a} = 1;            # $x{a} = 1
$y{a} = 1;            # $y->{a} = 1
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This can surprise a Perl 5 veteran because the code $length = @array won't work the same anymore. (This is a good thing for beginning Perl 6 programmers though!)

However, Perl 6 has more contexts than Perl 5 -- numeric and boolean contexts -- so some Perl 5 idioms still work. For example, if (@array) ... still works because the 'if' uses boolean context. $length = @array + 0 works because '+' uses numeric context.

Of course, arrays are now objects, so the simplest way to get the length of an array is @array.length.

For more information about variables in Perl 6 check out Apocalypse 2.