A WARM WELCOME FROM THE DEAN

The Cathedral has a wonderfully informative museum which is visited by many school children throughout the year.

The first exhibit they see includes this appeal to their imagination which grounds them in the long history of the place:

Imagine a bird flying across Whadjuk country (Perth) before the arrival of Europeans.

It would see Aboriginal camps along the banks of the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River). It would watch Aboriginal people fishing in the shallow waters and collecting food such as yanjid (bullrushes), milyu (samphire) and wida (zamia palm nuts).

And it would glide over the higher land of Wid’dogootogup (a place for storing zamia nuts), where St Mary’s Cathedral now stands.

The place on which our beautiful Cathedral stands was a place of gathering for millennia and the link of the Whadjuk people to this land endures.

‘How could it be otherwise?

That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?’ (Uluru Statement from the Heart).

This history was acknowledged in 2009 at the opening of the latest addition to the Cathedral:

Noongar elders welcomed the congregation to this place and the addition included a pathway designed by Noongar artist Laurel Nannup which depicted elements of traditional Aboriginal life and the coming of Christianity.

This celebrates the Cathedral as a place which draws together many people, including all of us ‘who’ve come across the seas’.

Our Cathedral is committed to the ongoing journey of reconciliation with the First Peoples of this amazing land.

I am grateful to our many supporters, parishioners, volunteers and staff who make the Cathedral a place of welcome.

With your support we shall continue to be a place of beauty, and gathering for generations to come.

I remain, your brother in Christ,

Fr

Sean

Fernandez Dean, St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth.

The Cathedral Diary

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