Bush Chaplain Julia Lennon hopes the new Oodnadatta church and garden will bring security and healing to the community. Picture: Supplied
Lesa Scholl
6 July 2025
Aboriginal Uniting Church pastor Julia Lennon spent 20 years leading prayer and worship in rain, wind and heat, dragging heavy speakers from location to location to minister to her congregation.
Mosquitoes, flies and weather conditions were just part of the struggles of running her Oodnadatta church without a permanent home.
But in May Ms Lennon’s congregation was able to start having services in their own church building, with its adjacent community healing garden.
The church building gave the congregation a sense of security, Ms Lennon said.
“People could feel relaxed and warm or cool…no mosquitoes,” she said.
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Being able to shut the door and turn on the air-conditioning was also a new experience for them.
Ms Lennon said the architect deliberately designed the church building to have a sense of openness, of bringing the outside in and letting the inside out.
“We can have the best of both worlds,” she said.
Congregant Maxine Marks said she just looked around and felt blessed when she walked into the church for the first time.
Maxine Marks has played an important role in the Oodnadatta church community and garden. Picture: Supplied
“We have walls around us, we have a floorboard, we have a ceiling, and we have lights. We can go to the power and turn it on instead of dragging cords across the road,” she said.
But the congregation still valued worshipping in nature. Ms Marks said they enjoyed both and they would continue to worship outside under the stars.
“No matter whether we’re inside or outside, we still have that worship,” she said.
The Oodnadatta church and garden’s location was significant for the congregation because they saw it as reclaiming land and working toward healing from generational trauma.
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The church and garden were built where Colebrook Home stood, the first institution established by the United Aborigines Mission in 1924.
The UAM was a non-denominational evangelical organisation implicated in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 1997 Bringing them Home report for forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families.
Ms Lennon said the church and garden worked toward healing for that trauma by allowing people to know it was a place they could come back to.
“We just wanted to give it back to them,” she said. “We wanted them to know…you belong here no matter what.”
Although horrible things had happened there, she wanted it to be a home where everyone could find healing and forgiveness.
Volunteers constructed the garden beds. Picture: Supplied
“We are filling that gap and bringing the church in to help them find that healing within themselves,” she said. “It’s a unique thing…that we’re coming together as one in unity and in love and forgiveness.”
“That’s what we look forward to in this healing garden.”
Among the tomatoes, fruit trees and olive trees, native shrubs and bushes, there was a separate area set aside for a monument and fountain as a place of reflection.
Ms Lennon said she hoped when the fountain was built in the next stage, the waters would flow and people could come, think, pray and find healing.
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