Saving St Brigid's

<p>At the top of a hill in south-west Victoria surrounded by rolling green hills that fall<br />away to the Southern Ocean sits a grand old red-brick church. For more than 150<br />years these fertile volcanic fields have sustained the largest rural population of Irish<br />descent in Australia. Built and paid for by the children of potato-famine survivors<br />St Brigid’s is a symbol of faith and hope in an ancient land by a cold wild sea.<br /><br />In 2009 the Catholic Church put the church and hall up for sale against the wishes<br />of the local community. What began as a small local issue soon became a national<br />news story in a battle that went all the way to Rome.<br /><br /><em>Saving St Brigid’s </em>is the truly unique story of a small Australian rural community who<br />in the spirit of their Irish rebel ancestors stood up for what they believed in. Their<br />fight for justice awakened the author to the richness of her Irish Catholic culture<br />and its lasting legacy on the community and the Church she grew up in. Through<br />the lens of her Irish heritage and that of the local Indigenous people she weaves<br />together a lyrical narrative of song and story and discovers just how much our<br />ancestral traditions have to teach us if we are to transform the world we live in.</p>