Saving St Brigid's

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