Ted Lovett at St Paul's : a footy great tells us stories of Lake Condah, harsh treatment, life achievements and eels

 

Ted Lovett at the pulpit at Saint Paul's, Bakery Hill, Ballarat

 

 Ted Lovett, Father Constantine Osuchukuwu ,

with The Chair of Advocacy @ St Paul's,

Hedley Thomson 

Yesterday at St Paul's, we celebrated NAIDOC Week by having as our guest Aboriginal Elder Ted Lovett.  (For further NAIDOC week events in #Ballarat, please see the program embedded below.)

Ted, now in his seventies, is a Gundjit-Mara man from south-west Victoria - down closer to the Victorian-South Australia border. Ted said he hadn't been in an Anglican church in a very long time. He was raised on Lake Condah mission - a mission run by the Anglican church. He grew up in the very harsh conditions that modern Anglicans remember in shame.  This land was regained and taken back by the Gundjit-Mara under native title. The story of The Gunditjmara Land Justice story is embedded below.

The Budj Bim landscape in southwest Victoria is a traditional homeland of the Gunditjmara people, and is on Australia’s National Heritage List as well as in the process of being nominated for the World Heritage List. The area in and around Mount Eccles National Park has great cultural and historical significance to the Gunditjmara people, with evidence existing that their people once had a settled aquaculture society and engineered the stony wetlands around Lake Condah and Darlots Creek.  To read of the restoration of the wetlands around Lake Condah please go here.

This partnership is designed as a way of continuing the traditional land ownership strategies practiced by that society, as well as their contemporary techniques, as part of a broader view that Indigenous communities have the potential to provide new and unique viewpoints on land management. Read more here.

Uncle Ted spoke of the regeneration of the water and the lake.  I think that Uncle Ted had us in the palms of his hands as he spoke of these things.  At Cuppa Time after the service, he was warmly greeted ... and a few of us are thinking that we would like to see this country too.  And stories of the eels got our attention as well.

If readers would like to join us, should we finish up with a plan to go to Lake Condah, please be in touch with Advocacy at our email address in the side bar.