Otways Climate Emergency Action Network (Ocean) formed in 2018. We are a not-for-profit community group of volunteers, frustrated and motivated by the lack of government action on climate change and the damage to our local Otway basin due to seismic blasting.

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SOS operates on lands of the Gadubanud, or ’King Parrot’ people, who lived for many thousands of years along the coast and forested hinterlands of the Otway Ranges. Their first recorded contact with Europeans was in 1842 and by 1846 no further contact with settlers was recorded.  Well documented massacres left perhaps only a few Gadubanud survivors escaping to nearby missions.

 

European settlement brought farming, fishing and forestry communities but for some decades, these communities were serviced only by boat and a treacherous Bass Strait.

 

The Gadubanud were known as fiercely independent and self-reliant people. Today's Otway communities are said to share this character, in part perhaps, due to the nature of the country and its climate.