Scraping stalled, but future of Huskisson Church still in doubt

Aboriginal elders and defiant residents in a south coast town have won a key battle in saving gravesites at a historic church, but the future of the site remains uncertain.

A south coast council has voted against proposed scraping of an old church grounds believed to house the remains of First Nations residents in unmarked graves.

The Shoalhaven City Council resolved to not proceed with the highly controversial measure at its ordinary session on April 11, but fell short of affording the historic site full protection.

The proposed process would seek to confirm the existence of Aboriginal burial sites located around the church and its grounds by removing the topsoil, something advocates say would be harmful to the area.

Instead, councillors resolved to take the matter to a briefing to discuss a potential heritage listing more than three years after a development application was first approved for the lot.

In 2018, developer Stephen Bartlett and the Anglican Church proposed to demolish the church and other buildings on the site. While greenlit, that proposal has been stalled by pushback from the community, setting off a years-long fight for the church’s survival, according to the Huskisson Heritage Association.

Speaking to councillors, heritage association member Joanne Warren told of how she felt “deflated” after rounds of consultation and reports on the future of the site.

She lambasted the council for not engaging with stakeholders, including the heritage group and local Aboriginal elders whose families might be buried on the site.

“We have a long way to go,” Ms Warren said.

“This matters. It matters because this campaign to protect this iconic site is not new.”

Ms Warren said work to have the site heritage listed began in earnest in 1998, and has more recently generated a petition garnering more than 3000 signatures.

“The community has craved consultation and engaged fully with the Shoalhaven City Council and state planning process, but our correspondence have been ignored,” she said.

At the heart of the effort to save Huskisson church is its intrinsic value to local Aboriginal communities and their elders due to burial sites believed to be on the property.

Prior to the 70s, Ms Warren said it was common for Aboriginal burials to be unmarked, and now believes as many as 50 grave sites could be on the property.

Aboriginal elder Aunty Jean Carter voiced her support for the heritage committee, and told councillors it was important that Huskisson Church remain a burial site for Aboriginal people already buried there.

“I just want you to let the council know, those that are for or against the motion, how important it is to us as Aboriginal people, and for the Huskisson people, and many very young people growing up in the communities now, that we have a place to learn the value and the importance of what this country means to them,” Aunty Carter said.

Aunty Carter told councillors she had lost a lot of her own heritage as a member of the stolen generation, taken away from her family in the region as a small child.

“It‘s time we talked about reconciliation,” she said.

“It‘s not too late to reverse a lot of the damage that’s been done to our people.

“The Huskisson church is precious, it‘s beautiful.

“We don‘t want high rise buildings on our sacred land, on our burial grounds, where our people are lying underneath.

“Churches have been destroyed in the Jervis Bay Basin area, so this little one in Huskisson needs to be protected so we can have an Aboriginal ministry in there.”

While discussing the matter, Councillor Evan Christen moved a motion to liaise with stakeholders, including the local Aboriginal council.

Plans to transform the former Huskisson Anglican Church site into a bustling residential and commercial precinct have been approved by Shoalhaven City Council, but have faced repeated setbacks due to pushback from the community.

“Unfortunately, many stakeholders weren’t well consulted in the previous process, and that has actually undermined confidence,” Mr Christen said.

The motion, backed by councillor D’Arth, also affirmed the council would not move forward with scraping of the ground at Huskisson Church.

A future briefing would investigate whether the site had retained any special zoning provisions, as well as seeking to brainstorm what the future of the area would be.

“It‘s so important to the community that the council helps to bring together the community and the developer to look at the future options for the site,” Mr Christen said.

Councillor Paul Ell instead urged the council to defer the whole matter to a briefing, without making any commitments about scraping. The move was seconded by Councillor John Wells, but failed to pass.

Voicing their support for Mr Christen’s motion, councillor John Kotlash said the council was failing in its stated duty to Aboriginal people in the region, gaining claps from the audience, while Councillor Matthew Norris spoke of how, after burying his own father only a few days earlier, he was “utterly opposed” to any scraping at the site.

Mr Christen’s motion passed with support from Mayor Amanda Finley, as well as councillors Kotlash, Norris, Butler, D’Arth, and Grey.

Councillors Copley, Ell, Watson, Kitchener, and White voted against it.

Emboldened, Mr Christen told the council it wasn’t the first time Aboriginal elders had come before the organisation looking for support, and that the issue wasn’t going away soon.

“It‘s clear that with scraping or without scraping, there will still be uncertainty about the location of the graves,” he said.

“The trees there have been there a very, very long time and are intermingled with the graves, and everything is shared. So it becomes one large space.

“So, scraping the graves, scraping the site, really won‘t answer any questions that we don’t already know, which is that it’s the whole site that is a graveyard.”