It was at a moving unveiling of a memorial to the bushfires that so devastated parts of our community, that Heartland Pastor Mike Baimbridge was invited to speak recently. Mike was asked to speak on behalf of our Mayor Cr Fiona McAllister and as a member of the community. Other speakers included deputy Mayor Maria McCarthy, Wurundjeri Elder Joy Wandin-Murphy, artist Ernst Fries (pictured below) and Dale Ahern, who suffered the loss of his own parents in the Black Saturday tragedy. Mike spoke of the personal nature of recovery and healing, and that today’s unveiling doesn’t in any way end that journey, but rather does provide a place, a space to come, to sit, to reflect, to consider the enormity of what the 2009 fires meant for each of us, and to contemplate, as this art work depicts, how we continue to move from the wounds and scars that event left us, to that place of new growth, clear skies and fresh horizons.
