Salvation Army in the Bush

In the 1880s,   the fluttering Blood and Fire flag, the booming drum and uniformed men and women singing and preaching, announced the arrival of General Booth’s Salvation Army on the street corners of Australia’s cities and country towns. It was mobilisation on an extraordinary scale. Barely fifteen years had passed since the Salvos first took religion to the poor and destitute in the streets of London with their offerings of ‘Soup, Soap and Salvation’ and they appeared half a world away in the Outback!

​Poet Henry Lawson immortalised their courage in fronting the rough crowd of shearers and drovers who jeered them outside the Carriers Arms Hotel in Bourke. He wryly noticed the instant transformation in the men when a pretty girl in Army uniform appeared.
 
Somewhere in the early eighties they had banged the drum to Bourke,
 Where the job of fighting Satan was white-hot and dusty work.
Oh, the Local Lass was withered in the heat that bakes and glares,
And we sent her food and firewood but took small heed of her prayers.
We were blasphemous and beery, we were free from Creed or Care,
Till they sent their prettiest Lassies and they broke our centre there.
 
In his years of wrestling with alcoholism that followed, Henry also experienced their big-hearted, ‘sleeves-rolled-up’ faith that picked him up from the gutter more than once. He left a graphic thumbnail sketch of the Salvo’s noble acts of mercy.
 
But they took us out of prison, and they took us out of Hell.
And they helped our fallen sisters who went down for such as we,
 And our widows and our orphans in distress and poverty.
And neglected wives and children of the worst of us that be;
And they made us fit for Glory or another Glorious Spree.
 
I imagine when the Army banged the drum in Hillgrove mining community near Armidale not long after, they were on the receiving end of some rough treatment from the miners there as well - maybe even including my grandfather. They earned respect the hard way. After preaching into the teeth of raucous interjections, more often than not they closed with the invitation, “If there is any man here who hasn't had a decent meal today, let him come home to tea with me."
 
I told the story previously of the Salvation Army lassie who reached out in love to my grandparents as they grieved the loss of their infant son. Our family never knew her name, but we are deeply indebted to that girl for her patient faith. The impact is still being felt after three or four generations.
 
So, a century and a half later, this is my salute to the men and women who marched to the beat of Booth’s drum to the remote and lonely bush towns like Bourke and Hillgrove.  Often it was thankless work. But by buttressing the faith of families like ours, they built something strong and fruitful into the life of Australia.