Brave family spurned by land they served



This was published 14 years ago

Brave family spurned by land they served

FIVE Lovett brothers went to World War I and five signed up for World War II. All in all, 20 members of the Lovett family have served Australia in war and peacekeeping, from the Western Front to East Timor.

The most extraordinary point about the Lovett family's record of service, however, is that four of the five brothers who went to World War I also enlisted for World War II.

The saddest point is that while other returned Australians were offered blocks of land on which to settle and welcomed back to the bosom of society, the Aborigines had their applications for land rejected - even for land they once owned - and were turned away by some RSL clubs, pubs and other public organisations.

And dispossession of the first Australians continued. William Murray, a Gallipoli veteran, led the slaughter of up to 100 Aborigines in 1928 which became known as the Coniston massacre. Children were taken from their parents.

The happiest point is that all 20 Lovetts survived the various wars.


The outline of the Lovett story is uncommon knowledge - the Canberra tower that houses the Department of Veterans' Affairs was named after the family in 2000. But the unrivalled nature of their service was revealed only last week on ABC Radio National's Awaye! , when Nigel Steel, of the Imperial War Museum, said he knew of no service record in the Commonwealth to match it. John Connor, a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, said it appeared the Lovetts occupied a unique place in Australian military history.

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.

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