Lady of the Lake, is the story of Gunditjmara Elder Aunty Iris Lovett-Gardiner and her life at Lake Condah in the western districts of Victoria.

Aunty Iris’s story includes working at the showgrounds, life in the canneries and graduating from Deakin University. It also shows the hope, humour and compassion and courage of an Aboriginal Elder always mindful of the spirit of her Gunditjmara people and of the need to ‘tell the truth and tell it ever’.

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TRANSCRIPT

…Mission…my homeland, there were killings, there was blood, blood that flowed into the land…

My name is Iris Lovett-Gardiner and I am a …my clan is the Kerrupjamara from Lake Condah and I will try to explain to you this Diorama here of the place where my people lived and survived. The first thing that I’ll talk about was where they lived was near a mountain and the mountain threw out rocks…it was a volcano…so it threw out the rocks and they made use of the rocks that were thrown out to them. They made use of the rocks because of the way they lived an’ they made fish traps an’ they made their houses…stone houses…from the rocks. An’ all Aboriginal people have settled where there was something that represents a living structure to them…like some people lived near where there’s timber an’ stuff like that but our people lived beside the Lake.