Walkabout brings reconciliation through welcome and truth
This article was first published in The Melbourne Anglican on 27 October 2025.
Early on a chilly Melbourne Spring morning, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Christians departed on a walkabout of truth and healing from St Paul’s Cathedral.
Victoria’s Provincial Walkabout would see the group enter each Anglican diocese of the state to listen to the stories of local elders and First Nations leaders.
Bendigo Anglican diocese’s the Reverend Canon Shannon Smith said it was as important for the church’s First Nations leaders as well as non-Indigenous people to hear these stories.
“The clergy working in Victoria, they’re not Victorians,” she said. “We’re going to be coming and working on this country; we’ve got to learn.”
She said if the church wanted the First Peoples to walk with them, the church needed to learn to walk with First People before it extended the hand.
While some of the truths told were harrowing, Canon Smith believed God’s presence protected the group.
“I don’t think we would be going to these places if it wasn’t God’s will for us to be there,” she said. “Between God and our old people, they come along with us.”
She said it was as if Bunjil (Kulin language for Creator God) was there saying they would hear things but he was there to hold them.
“He just popped up everywhere,” she said.
Past and present bled together on the journey. On the first day the walkabouters were invited to join in Sorry Business for a slain young Indigenous man in Gippsland.
Canon Smith said the group was confronted by the visit to Portland and the Convincing Grounds, where the first recorded genocide of Indigenous peoples occurred.
“We were able to walk down to the waters, just walking out there thinking, this water was just once soaked in blood,” she said.
Yet while confronting harrowing pasts, many of the walkabouters found healing.
Gippsland’s Canon Aunty Phyllis Andy said the most significant part of the journey for her was being on country in Hall’s Gap, her mother’s country.
“That’s where I was able to connect because my mum, being removed as a young girl and not being able to return there…That was her country, which meant that through her, it was mine,” she said.
“Within that connectiveness I was able to walk on country,” she said. “I paid my respects to them [the ancestors] and, in turn, they received me with gracefulness.”
“You live here and you’re accepted. But it’s so different from being home, on your own country.”
Kyneton-Malmsbury-Trentham priest-in-charge the Reverend Lauren Lockwood-Porter said she wanted to be on country rather than just read books and see television shows about it.
For her it was meeting different people and experiencing the relationships on walkabout that helped her understand the history of the land.
She said she was blown away by the generosity of the people in sharing their stories and the detail and care with which they spoke about their culture.
Ms Lockwood-Porter learned about the trade of smoke eels and was amazed by the way in which the eel traps worked with the natural waterways and paths of the eels.
“It was such a smart system that it freed up a lot of time for culture and for storytelling,” she said.
Ms Lockwood-Porter said her parish held a lot of interest in Aboriginal culture and the reckoning with the history.
She said there were sites where terrible things happened, so she wanted to listen and understand, and find meaningful ways to acknowledge Victoria’s past.
Canon Smith said three Aboriginal clergy joined this year’s walkabout, and as they shared stories of their own country, the atrocities were often the same.
She said many of the places were recreating the spaces into healing spaces rather than trying to eradicate the history.
“This is a part of our history,” she said. “We need to accept it as well.”
“We need to walk it together.”
Image: Some of the Walkabouters on return to St Paul’s Cathedral. Picture: Lesa Scholl
For communications strategy and services contact Key Change Communications. Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn.
