<p>At the top of a hill in south-west Victoria, surrounded by rolling green hills that fall<br />
away to the Southern Ocean, sits a grand old red-brick church. For more than 150<br />
years, these fertile volcanic fields have sustained the largest rural population of Irish<br />
descent in Australia. Built and paid for by the children of potato-famine survivors,<br />
St Brigid&rsquo;s is a symbol of faith and hope in an ancient land, by a cold, wild sea.<br />
<br />
In 2009, the Catholic Church put the church and hall up for sale, against the wishes<br />
of the local community. What began as a small local issue soon became a national<br />
news story, in a battle that went all the way to Rome.<br />
<br />
<em>Saving St Brigid&rsquo;s </em>is the truly unique story of a small Australian rural community who,<br />
in the spirit of their Irish rebel ancestors, stood up for what they believed in. Their<br />
fight for justice awakened the author to the richness of her Irish Catholic culture,<br />
and its lasting legacy on the community, and the Church, she grew up in. Through<br />
the lens of her Irish heritage and that of the local Indigenous people, she weaves<br />
together a lyrical narrative of song and story, and discovers just how much our<br />
ancestral traditions have to teach us if we are to transform the world we live in.</p>