After 191 years, Victoria’s Indigenous people will walk 400km for truth

There was black, red and yellow paint galore as the children of Reservoir East Primary School prepared a banner to be carried on a long and historic “walk for truth”.

The colours of the Aboriginal flag were enthusiastically stamped by hands and bare feet to create an unmistakable canvas of Indigenous pride.

Reservoir East Primary School children put the finishing touches on the “Walk for truth” banner.Credit: Justin McManus

Koori pride resides deep in the primary school’s identity: 118 of the school’s 267 students are Indigenous Australians, and 12 members of staff are Aboriginal.

Way beyond the school gates, the Yoorrook Justice Commission is preparing to deliver its final report to the Victorian government following an extensive process of truth telling about past and current injustices to First Nations people since permanent colonisation began in the state 191 years ago.

To draw attention to this final stage of their work, and before negotiations begin for Australia’s first treaty, Yoorrook commissioner and deputy chair Travis Lovett will lead a 400-kilometre walk leaving from the far south-west city of Portland on Sunday to the Victorian parliament.

He expects to be the only walker for the entire route, with thousands of others joining for short stretches.

Yoorrook commission deputy chair Travis Lovett lends his hands to completing the banner.Credit: Justin McManus

Portland is the starting point for the journey because it was the setting for the first permanent European incursion into Victoria, first by sealers and whalers and then, in 1834 by the Henty family, who soon moved their interests inland, squatting and introducing sheep grazing to vast areas occupied for thousands of years by Aboriginal people.

It was also the beginning of long-running conflict between white settlers and the Indigenous Gunditjmara people, which became known around the district between Portland and Port Fairy as the “Eumeralla War”.

Guns, arsenic, disease and hunger became the familiar grim reapers of First Peoples’ lives and culture, and the toll rolled through numerous other First Nations clans for decades across Victoria.

About 4000 people have registered to take part in various stages of the walk that will traverse sites of ancient cultural significance and of terrible truths that were denied or kept secret for much of western Victoria’s modern history.

The children and staff of Reservoir East Primary School will be among the walkers for the final stage through the streets of Melbourne.

The school’s principal, James Cumming, said he believed it was important the school took part because it was so strongly representative of Melbourne’s shared communities, both Indigenous and non-Aboriginal.

More than that, however, at a time when there was such public focus on Acknowledgement of Country, he said it was important to recognise historical and current truths about that shared history across the state.

Lovett, a Kerrupmara Gunditjmara man, will unfurl the “walk for truth” banner at major cultural events held at numerous stops along the route of the trek.

He said he found himself “quite overwhelmed and emotional” when he visited the school at Reservoir East to paint the banner with the children.

Lovett and students at Reservoir East Primary School.Credit: Justin McManus

Lovett was one of only three Aboriginal children who attended his first primary school in Preston, and the other two were his brothers.

“We didn’t have the [Aboriginal] flag flown and of course we learnt about our history from all other parts of the world, but it was never about our people and about our culture,” he said.

Lovett, initially raised in the high-rise flats in Fitzroy before moving as a child to Preston, was one of 26 children in his blended family.

He remembers his father taking him as a child to visit areas around Portland and the old Lake Condah Mission, where many members of the Lovett and other Gunditjmara families are deeply embedded.

Lovett was young when his father, his most important mentor, died.

“When I’m standing there [in Portland on Sunday] about to announce the walk I’ll have him and my family members who are no longer with us in my heart and in my mind,” he said.

The walk will be the culmination of several years’ work by the Yoorrook Commission in gathering the first-hand stories of Aboriginal people throughout Victoria. But to Lovett, it is the culmination of 191 years of experiences since colonisation began in the state.

“Now the official public record will be told in our people’s voice for the first time,” he said.

“We get to write the full story around what happened to our people through the colonisation process.

“History is always told by the oppressor and now in Victoria we have the ability to be able to write an official public record in our voice that documents our lived experience in the state of Victoria – not just the trauma but the resistance and the contributions that our people have made.”

The Walk for Truth will end at Victoria’s Parliament House on June 18.

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