More Than Mills & Boon

It’s amazing how a fragment of story can glitter when it’s brought into the light of day. The other day a friend sent me a coffee table book celebrating some amazing characters who’d been quietly serving the remote areas of Australia for a hundred years. Its title gives the game away, ‘Never Too Far, Never Too Few’ – it’s the story of a group humbly calling themselves ‘Bush Church Aid.’
 
It was launched at a time of crisis in Sydney in 1918 - the Spanish influenza pandemic was gripping the post-war world. Everywhere Australians were withdrawing into self-protection mode while some in the Anglican Church took this initiative to reach out to the forgotten people of the Bush.
 
The photo of a strong-featured face grabbed my attention. It was the image of a confident woman, upright and looking straight into the lens, full of conviction.  And the bones of her story say she was. With her good looks and a noble name like Madaline Rose Delacour de Labilliere, she could easily be the heroine of a Mills and Boon romance.
 
She was in fact a romantic, but a lady of a much more robust stamp than a paperback hero.

​Born in 1898 in Canada, college-educated in France, Switzerland and England, Madeline was
barely twenty when she trained as a driver for the Royal Air Force. She didn’t baulk at getting down and dirty - Madeline could service engines and ride a horse and was forthright in declaring she was at home with an axe, saw, spade or hammer. She was athletic - tennis, hockey, swimming, gymnastics were her games. She read novels and classics in her downtime.  
 
After the painful, destructive years of the Great War, the young teacher set her gifts to work, undaunted by driving a van across two to three thousand miles of lonely Canadian prairie. But it was more than mere adventure Madeline was seeking - she was energised by a higher calling. The faith she learned in her home, she publicly declared when baptised as a fifteen-year-old in Scotland.  This rector’s daughter was not drawn to a cloistered life, but a quest that would challenge her skills.
 
Madeline’s spirit showed when she wrote in her application to Bush Church Aid that what attracted her was ‘real pioneer work in the lonely parts of the Australian Bush’. Madeline had a passion to reach isolated families with the good news of Jesus., ‘When in Canada driving the van and visiting house to house with those great distances between, I had a great longing to be able to continue this manner of work when I arrived in Australia, if such a work existed, or even to start it if the way opened.  I found in many ways that I was very well suited to do this work on the prairies and that all my past experiences both in training at Ridgelands College and my outdoor work (with cars and horses) were of great value.’
 
During the tough years of the Great Depression, women scattered across back-country NSW in remote towns and isolated stations, welcomed the rumble of the BCA truck and the ready smile of the woman behind the wheel. Children anticipated the Bible stories and novelties that came as bright spots to break the routine of survival on the farm.  Workers and travellers along the road met with the same Christian kindness. It was not unusual to find Madeline with her head under the bonnet repairing the van or digging it out of a bog.
 
Some characters in the theatre only get a brief moment on stage. Apart from a few news clippings, the story of Madeline’s journeyings in the NSW Outback remains shrouded from sight. It would be intriguing to know more of her adventures.  These brief glimpses say she played more than a bit part in the epic of bringing the story of Jesus to life in the wider narrative of Australian spiritual life.

Footnote: 
​Since writing this blog, I came across this Facebook story of other courageous women doing something similar in the mountains of Kentucky during the Great Depression.
https://www.facebook.com/share/1EtCPinBnS/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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