http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/brave-family-spurned-by-land-they-served/2007/05/27/1180205078964.html
The Lovetts are Gunditjmara people from Victoria's western districts. Known as "the Fighting Gunditjmara", they fought white settlers in what is known as the Eumaralla War and, having lost that one, fought overseas on the side of those who took their land.
Dozens of people from the Lovett, McDonald, Rose and Saunders families from Lake Condah Mission, near Hamilton, went to war. Reg Saunders, the first Aborigine to become an officer, fought with the 6th Division in the Middle East, New Guinea and then Korea. Others fought in Vietnam. Ricky Morris, grandson of Frederick Lovett, who served in both world wars, went with peacekeeping troops to East Timor.
Most of the Lovetts are descendants of Hannah Lovett, who died in 1946, aged 91. Five of her 12 children - Alfred, Leonard, Edward, Frederick and Herbert - served overseas in World War I.
Alfred, the eldest, fought with the 26th and 12th battalions on the Somme in 1916, including the battles at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm. Frederick served with the 4th Light Horse in Palestine. Leonard was with the infantry of the 39th Battalion, part of the 3rd Division, which fought around Passchendaele in 1917 and in the crucial struggle around Amiens in 1918. Edward served with the 4th, then the 13th Light Horse, which patrolled on the Western Front. Herbert was with the 5th Division, his machine-gun company fighting in the successful attack on the Hindenburg Line in 1918.
Hannah's youngest son, Samuel, was too young to go to that war but joined Edward, Frederick and Herbert in World War II. The three older men were too old to fight abroad but served in garrison and catering units.
Two female Lovetts - Alice and Pearl - are among the 20. Alice joined the WAAF in 1941; her son, Mervyn McDonald, was wounded in Vietnam. One of Granny Lovett's grandsons, Murray, was with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan, while three others served in Korea.
After World War II, Herbert Lovett put his case for a block of soldier-settlement land around the former Lake Condah mission, once the homeland of the Gunditjmara people. His application was refused; returned white soldiers were granted the land.
Johnny Lovett, Herbert's son, said the injustice still hurt, although he was pleased that the Aboriginal contribution was honoured yesterday. There was some consolation from the Federal Court in March, when it gave the Gunditjmara non-exclusive native title rights over 140,000 hectares of Crown land and waters.
According to Gunditjmara lore, there had been small consolation after World War II, too. Refused a drink in a pub, the Lovetts had taken control of the hotel, drunk what they wanted, shot bottles off a shelf, and retired in peace.
Source: The Sun-Herald
Working on my final Mouquet Farm Intro paragraph:
In the summer of 1916, Mouquet Farm would reap a harvest not of wheat, but of thousands of human corpses. The total casualties incurred in attempting to take the farm from 7 August to 12 September cannot have been much short of 20,000 men, and the fallen included Britons, Canadians, Tasmanians, but the bulk of the men lost were from Australia.
Also, at least one man who fought at Mouquet Farm, Private Alfred Lovett, was from the Gunditjmara Aborigines (known as the 'Fighting Gunditjmara') from Lake Condah Mission in the Victoria state's western districts, near Hamilton; it is possible, though not known, that some other Aboriginal men fought at Mouquet Farm; dozens of men from the McDonald, Rose, Saunders, as well as the Lovett families from the Mission joined the A.I.F. and fought on the Western Front during the First World War.
The Australian Imperial Force's casualties (including Tasmanians and possibly some men of Aboriginal ancestry)numbered 15,400 out of the 20,000 men killed or wounded.
No comments:
Post a Comment