Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prej

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Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 02 June 2007

A rare ceremony to honour Aboriginal war veterans was held in Sydney yesterday, reviving memories of how shabbily they were treated after they had fought for their country.

About 500 Aborigines volunteered for the First World War - a substantial number, given that the black population was just 80,000, and it was only in 1917 that "half-castes" were allowed to enlist. Up to 5,000 indigenous Australians joined up for the Second World War.

They included four brothers who fought in both world wars - and who were from a family recently recognised as having a service record probably unrivalled throughout the Commonwealth. In all, 20 members of the Lovett family, from Victoria, have served Australia - in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and East Timor, as well as in both world wars.

But when Aboriginal servicemen returned, they found that their social and political situations had not changed. They still could not vote, buy property or marry non-Aborigines. They were confined to reservations and church missions. They were turned away from some veterans' clubs, and could not drink in pubs.

Their white counterparts were given plots of land by the government. Blacks were not even allowed to settle on land they once owned, before white Europeans took it from them. Only in 1967 were they classified as citizens of the country they had fought for.

Five of the brothers - Edward, Leonard, Frederick, Herbert and Samuel - volunteered for the Second World War. While on leave, they returned to their community, at Lake Condah, in south-western Victoria. The brothers walked into the local pub, in uniform, and asked for a beer. The landlord refused to serve them.

Their parents, Hannah and James Lovett, had six sons in all. Out of them, Edward, Leonard, Frederick and Herbert fought in the Great War, along with their older brother, Alfred. They saw frontline action in France, Gallipoli and Palestine. Alfred was at the Somme, Leonard at Passchendaele and Edward on the Western Front.

When the Second World War broke out, they all enlisted again, apart from Alfred, who was too old. They were joined by their younger brother, Samuel, who had been too young the first time. The four older men were assigned to garrison and catering units.

All the brothers survived, as did family members who served in subsequent conflicts or, more recently, in peacekeeping duties in East Timor. The 20 include two women, Alice and Pearl. Alice was in the Women's Auxilliary Air Force during the Second World War

Nigel Steel, the chief historian at London's Imperial War Museum, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he knew of no service record to match the Lovetts'.

The family are from the Gunditjmara people, who are known as the "fighting Gunditjmara" because they fought white settlers who occupied their land In the 1830s and 1840s.

The Lake Condah Mission, the Gunditjmara's ancestral land where the brothers grew up, was carved into soldier-settlement blocks after the Second World War. "But my father didn't receive any block - him or his five brothers," according to Johnnie Lovett, Herbert's son. "When he'd finished his service for this country, he was given nothing."

Other Aborigines from their area went to war. They included the army's first indigenous officer, Captain Reg Saunders. Nathan Lovett-Murray, Frederick's great-grandson and an Australian Rules football player, told the Melbourne Age that his grandfather, Stewart Murray, later recounted: "The first time in uniform I felt good and better than in civilian clothes."

Some things have changed. In 2000, Australia's Department of Veteran Affairs renamed the Canberra tower that houses it after the Lovetts. In March this year, the Federal Court gave the Gunditjmara "native title" rights over 140,000 hectares of their former land. That means they can hunt, camp and fish there, as well as look after sacred sites.

Baptising the Lovett Tower, the then governor-general, Sir William Deane, observed: "Until comparatively recent times the approach of our nation's armed forces to indigenous Australians was far from generous. Indeed, too often it was grossly unfair and discriminatory." Sir William noted that Aboriginal soldiers were paid a low wage, or sometimes paid in tobacco or not at all.

The Aboriginal contribution to Australian military history is still not fully acknowledged. On this year's Anzac Day, - 25 April - when the country honours its war dead, indigenous veterans staged their own march through Redfern, Sydney's Aboriginal heartland, in protest at being ignored by veterans' groups.

Yesterday, Aboriginal children and ex-servicemen and women laid wreaths at the city's War Memorial. The New South Wales Education Minister, John Della Bosca, said: "Thousands of indigenous soldiers fought side by side with white Australians on battlegrounds across the world, and this ceremony ... gives us the opportunity to honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice."

Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice - Independent Online Edition > Australasia