<![CDATA[THE OUTBACK HISTORIAN

<![CDATA[THE OUTBACK HISTORIAN - Stories]]>Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:13:32 +1000EditMySite<![CDATA[A Fiesty Aussie Saint]]>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:22:26 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/a-fiesty-aussie-saintMoorara Station on the Lower Darling, August 1896. It’s a moonless night. A dozen men, clothes turned inside out, faces and arms daubed with mud, oars muffled, row steadily across the river. Once on the opposite bank they wade silently towards the dark outline of a large riverboat moored in swampland.

At about 4 a.m in the morning, the boarders swiftly overwhelm the watchman. Someone reported that the forty scab shearers aboard “fell on their knees and begged for mercy.” An indignant Captain Dickson, plus the non-union labourers are hustled ashore into the hands of a waiting crowd of striking shearers.

On the spur of the moment, some of the exuberant boarding party pour kerosene on bags of chaff found in the hold and within minutes, flames are licking around the wheel house. Soon the 133-ton P.S Rodney - pride of Permewan Wright Company’s riverboat fleet, has burned to the waterline, drifts drunkenly, lurches and sinks with a hiss of steam.

And so, a rare casualty of inland piracy came to rest as a hulk on the bottom of the Darling River. The wreck came to encapsulate a tumultuous moment in the history of working class Australia. The central figure in this forgotten drama was a man of rare calibre – Scots immigrant William Guthrie Spence.

In the 1890’s a 2,500 km long Union battlefront stretched from Barcaldine in Central Queensland, South through Bourke, down the Darling to Wentworth and up the Murray to Echuca and Ballarat in Victoria. It’s remarkable that Spence, a Christian Socialist, was able to marshal squads of militant shearers along a line @that extended further than Emperor Napoleon’s army had marched from Paris to Moscow earlier in the century! And all with a very sketchy communication system.

It's true that some woolsheds were burned, machinery was destroyed and men were injured. Spence has been credited with extraordinary organising and negotiating skills that kept the sprawling new union movement largely moderate and conciliatory. The Methodist circuit preacher insisted he had given Union leaders strict instructions to do no violence and to refrain from extreme actions - the goal was the capture of the non-unionists. He was adamant there had been no plan to burn the Rodney. No-one was successfully charged with the crime.

The determined William Spence brought two sides to the struggle. He declared the strike is a fight. Pushing for justice often disturbs the peace. “It is not easy to say where moral suasion ends and coercion begins... It is warfare and must be judged by the ethics of war… The sheds had been mostly filled by ‘scabs’ and good staunch men had no chance whatever of work and were therefore penniless. They saw their work taken away from them by the scum of society in the cities.”

Throughout his long career both as a union leader and member of Federal Parliament he maintained that his deep concern for the down-trodden working people of Australia was an outworking of the Christian faith instilled into him by a mother who taught him to read and live by the Bible as he grew up in Jackass Gully on the goldfields near Creswick in Victoria. He wrote, “New Unionism was simply the teachings of that greatest of all social reformers … Jesus of Nazareth whom all must revere.”

He once urged a cheering crowd of several thousand labour supporters in Sydney to make the courageous Jesus their model leader. ‘In taking up the new unionism we must see if we cannot get back to the level of the founder of Christianity, imbibe some of His spirit and get rid of musty theology, for some of it is very musty!’

Nowadays, only the charred ribs of the P S Rodney remain poking from Darling River mud. I like to think they are a reminder that the hero who fired the strident voice that was a founder of the AWU and the Labor Party in Australia, was the towering figure of Jesus who threw himself selflessly into the task of rescuing the down-trodden peoples of the world.

And, whether they know it or not, Australians have adopted this Nazareth carpenter’s teachings as the basis for their shared values.

]]><![CDATA[Looking for a Story?]]>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 04:03:55 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/looking-for-a-storyThe humble backyard shed is usually where we park stuff and often , it's a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'. The Story Shed is the opposite - It's purposed to make our Australian faith stories both visible and accessible. Over the past few years, it's been a work space that has steadily produced a flow of great yarns and they're all true! I've taken time to craft them carefully so you can just lift them off the shelf and set them to work at your place. Why don't you open this blog and check out the list of stories on my Outback Historian website and become a real live storyteller yourself?

Don't let them just gather dust.

]]><![CDATA[The Missing Pastor]]>Sun, 31 May 2026 06:49:20 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/may-31st-2026Why on earth would the man who was highly respected as a civil rights leader, cheered as a champion footballer, selected as the first indigenous State Governor, honoured with an MBE for his service to his people and knighted by the Queen, insist that his most important title was ‘Pastor’?

It’s really intrigued me that the enormous publicity surrounding the two rounds of AFL football set aside in May to celebrate him, chose to call him only “ ____ Sir Douglas Nicholls’. Why the edit? Perhaps the humble descriptor ‘pastor’ was just too awkward for the hype.

That sent me searching for the reasons why the multi-talented Doug singled this out as the title that best described his career. Here’s what I discovered.

First, he grew up at Maloga on the Murray River in a community built by courageous Christian couple Daniel and Janet Matthews, who invested time, money and love creating a sanctuary there for the harassed indigenous peoples of NSW.

It was here Doug was nurtured in the home of his uncle, Mauritian Indian teacher/evangelist Thomas Shadrach James who made his school an incubator for training Aboriginal leaders like William Cooper and Bill Onus to stand up and fight for their civil rights. At fourteen he moved away from these influences seeking work and gaining recognition as a runner, boxer and AFL footballer.

A few years later his Christian mother Florence took him to Northcote Church of Christ in Melbourne and introduced him to Pastor Dick Saunders. Over a period of four years, Dick not only encouraged him to make Jesus the centre of his life and further his education, but coached him to become a lay preacher. This personal investment stamped the dignity of the title ‘Pastor’ in Doug’s thinking and launched his lifelong career as a lively, sought-after public speaker.

Then, outspoken activist William Cooper, also an uncle of Doug’s, would regularly walk nine kilometres from Footscray to wait outside the Fitzroy Football Ground, just to recruit him to the Australian Aborigines’ League. The champion footballer attributed his career as a civil rights leader to being ‘pastored’ this strong Christian man. “You’ve got through to the whites, Doug”, he would say; “they listen to you. Now you have to start wobbling your tongue on behalf of your own people. Lead them to better things.” Doug was emphatic. “It was William sticking to me … that fired me. I can see it now … Everything comes back to [him] … he fired me to follow through.”

It was no surprise then to find Doug among the small band of activists who took a stand at the Sydney parade marking 150 years of settlement on Australia Day 1938 demanding citizenship rights. It became a landmark moment for Australia’s Aboriginal people. He was flanked by two men of Christian calibre, William Ferguson and William Cooper who, like the famous pastor, Reverend Martin Luther King, a quarter of a century later showed that bold Christian faith was not an impediment. Doug declared his personal conviction that day in plain terms. ‘After 150 years our people are still influenced and bossed by white people. I know we can proudly hold our own with others if given the chance’.

He worked tirelessly over the next thirty years to realise that dream. In 1939 Aboriginal people had shifted in increasing numbers to Fitzroy and Doug was withdrawn from the Army to serve his community. Two years later, when churches in Sydney opened their platforms and invited Aboriginal leaders to speak, Doug was a lively performer.

In 1942 it was the Northcote Church of Christ that stepped up to back him, renting him a Sunday School Hall and recognising him as a pastor. Over the next 27 years Pastor Doug’s church provided vital spiritual and social support to a congregation of Indigenous Australians navigating city life. He developed it into more than a place of worship. It became a hub for training in practical Christian service emphasizing welfare, activism and reconciliation.

To combat the problem of Aboriginal homelessness, he formed a committee, which became the Aborigines’ Advancement League to help raise funds for the purchase. In effect, he co-pastored with his wife Gladys who taught Sunday school, undertook fundraising, managed the church’s finances and was a leading spokesperson on women’s rights. She organised a hostel for Aboriginal girls opened in 1958 and 1962 a similar hostel for boys was begun, followed in 1967 by the ‘Douglas Nicholls Centre’ containing recreational and meeting facilities.

Doug’s insistence on acceptance and reconciliation when crusading for Aboriginal rights has Jesus’ stamp about it. He asked white people: “…is there a reason why we should not march beside you? Do you extend to us the hand of friendship?” I suspect this was a deciding factor that, when looking for a new Governor, South Australia turned to Pastor Doug.
Contemplating being knighted by the Queen, he was absolutely unashamed of announcing his core belief. “Jesus made me a great footballer, and now Jesus will take me to Buckingham Palace.”

It seems right to me that this needs to be placed centre stage – not shuffled into in the background. Thirty years later it's Doug’s pastoral legacy that remains most visible.

His church was declared a heritage site in 2020 by the Minister for planning with the words “Pastor Doug Nicholls and his wife Gladys turned this humble church into a place that galvanised the Aboriginal community in their fight for basic human rights.”
The sculpture of the two of them outside Parliament in Melbourne captured the pastor’s characteristic gesture - his hand is held out permanently in welcome.
Finally, he chose the mission cemetery at Cummeragunga where they began, as the last resting place for he and Lady Gladys. Here, Pastor Doug ‘s self-chosen epitaph makes his final declaration of the priorities in his life story and it’s not football fame, distinction as a leader in civil rights or even royal honour that he names. He says simply,

“WE PRESSED TOWARD THE MARK FOR THE PRIZE OF THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS”

See other blogs on this website.

Flames of Hope From Cummeragunja
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/flames-of-hope-from-cummeragunja

Leading and Writing
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/leading-and-writing

A Visit to Cummeragunja
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/a-visit-to-cummeragunja

Daniel Matthews, "Mr Maloga"
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/daniel-matthews-mr-maloga

An AFL Champion
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/an-afl-champion

A Compelling Double Act
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/a-compelling-double-act

]]><![CDATA[The Heavens Declare the Glory of God]]>Sat, 23 May 2026 07:34:03 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/the-heavens-declareI was excited when a missing link in the fascinating story of Australia’s homegrown astronomer John Tebbutt surfaced this week. It’s an extraordinary lecture delivered to an audience of men at the YMCA in Windsor in 1878, where this world-renowned scientist detailed his conviction that the starry skies above our Great South Land shout the wisdom and genius of the Creator every night. It was the product of fifty years close observation.

John Tebbutt was known for being meticulous in his search for truth and on that Monday night in July, nearly 150 years ago, he declared to an audience of young Australians in ringing tones, that the Author of the universe had visited our planet in none other than the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who had once majestically commanded the waves of Lake Galilee to be still.

I think 21st Century generations need to hear this brilliant scientist’s voice again. Click Read More to find the link to my original blog on John Tebbutt and also a selection of quotes from his lecture in 1878.

For more information about John Tebbutt, go to my original blog.
https://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/the-aussie-boy-who-reached-for-the-stars

Hawkesbury Council - Tebbutt's Observatory Virtual Tour
https://simply360.com.au/blog/portfolio/hawkesbury-council-tebbutts-observatory-virtual-tour/

The following quotes are from John Tebbutt's lecture in 1878.

THE TESTIMONY WHICH ASTRONOMY FURNISHES TO THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR.
Lecture by John Tebbutt, ESQ, F.R.A.S. of the Windsor Observatory, delivered to the Young Mens Christian Association on July 15, 1878.

Page 3
“The Great Father of the Universe has revealed himself to his creature man by a grand and noble book. That book consists of two volumes. ... The first first volume of God's great book of revelation is the volume of Nature, and the second that commonly known as the Bible.“

Page 5
“And this Heavenly Father has written His character in the sky above and in the earth beneath, so that we are left without excuse if we do not have faith in Him.”

Page 12
"The mind is struck with the marvellous adaptation of the great to the small, and the small to the great, in the comprehensive scheme of creation".

Page 14
"I allude to the rainbow - that beautiful symbol of God's condescension and love to man. What can be more magnificent and at the same time more beautiful in colours than this specimen of Divine handiwork. If we are not struck with admiration at the sight of it, it is because we are so familiar with it. Look again at the exquisitely beautiful tints with which the summer sun frequently paints the western clouds.

Page 20
"Of the dizzy height to which future generations of astronomers shall rear the scientific scaffold we have no conception, but this we do know, that when the great temple shall be completed, it will have inscribed over its mighty portals the beautiful words of the Shepherd King and Astronomer, ... "
‘THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE SKIES PROCLAIM THE WORK OF HIS HANDS.' (PSALMS 19:1)

Page 21
"As the wise men from the east were guided to the adoration of the Infant Saviour by the leading of a star, so let the starry heavens which we have contemplated this evening lead us to crown Jesus as the Saviour and the Lord of All."

]]><![CDATA[The Claypan Anthropologist]]>Mon, 04 May 2026 00:53:02 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/the-claypan-anthropologistIt’s 1918 and Brother John Consterdine is jogging steadily West out of Bourke in his sulky doing the rounds of a parish roughly the size of his home country, England. He’s got rations on board that should last him a couple of months. He is one of the young clergy known as the Bush Brothers who had answered a call to venture out to the very edges of settlement in NSW and Queensland.

Their university degrees weren’t guaranteed to win a hearing with station families or the shifting population of shearers, stockmen, well sinkers and fencers – mostly graduates from ‘The School of Hard Knocks.’ But, by nicknaming him ‘Brother Connie’, the bush people signalled they thought he wasn’t a half-bad bloke. Loneliness can make people inventive and Connie had turned the long tedious stretches through the Gidgea, Mulga and treeless salt pans of back country NSW into a rich university education of his own. He wrote,

When it is remembered that Australia is perhaps the only country in the world where a 1918 motor tyre may easily be punctured by a Paleolithic or Old Stone Age spear head, which in other countries would take deep digging to find and that these remains are fast disappearing, it will be easily seen how important and fascinating it is to collect what remains before it is too late.
(Pictured are some of the Bush Brothers at their base in Dubbo.)

Beside him on this journey was a young, Maitland-born priest on stress-leave from his parish in Armidale. This man of the cloth had been struggling to reconcile his Christian world-view with his reading of Charles Darwin’s explosive Origin of the Species which argued life began without a Creator.

As the sulky rolled through the red country, Connie opened his friend’s eyes to search for clues to an ancient culture. Water holes, dry creek beds, rocky outcrops, eroded sandhills became archives of information. Stones, knocked into tiny flakes, smoothed by grinding or blackened by fire on a claypan, were rapidly fading lines in a fascinating story. Here were hunter-gathers who had skilfully used stone and wood to enable them to survive in arid conditions for thousands of years, remote from other civilisations.

The searching young priest was enthralled. His traveling companion’s infectious enthusiasm for surface archaeology lifted him out of his ‘dark night of the soul’ by lighting a flame in him that was to burn bright for the rest of his life. It made him one of Australia’s leading fighters for justice and citizenship for the Aboriginal people – Professor A. P. Elkin of Sydney University.

Back in Bourke, he learned that Connie was a perfectionist. Axes in his collection were polished and arranged in size, fragments of stone sown on cards and labelled, fragile articles wrapped in cotton wool. It was a labour of love. He explained, ‘Every specimen of ceremonial stones should be picked up and sent with a note stating the exact locality of its discovery, to the Sydney Museum.’

All across Australia at the time, amateur archaeologists were conscientiously doing their best to ‘rescue’ the remnants of Aboriginal culture they saw littering the landscape, sending them to museums for safekeeping. (Currently there is a repatriation policy to return the artefacts to their communities of origin to be cared for on country.)

After years of gathering a vast store of knowledge in this field, Elkin selected ten founders of social anthropology in Australia, all of whom he described as skilled amateurs. They did it out of a natural love for it, not for money. Five of them were people of active Christian faith who lived among the indigenous people.

The Bourke tour of discovery launched Adolphus Elkin to become one of them. Over the following decades he explored developments in anthropology, sociology and functional psychology that gave him a plausible framework for his practical and ritual work as a priest. He learned Aboriginal people did have a spiritual awareness that included a Creator. He saw how religion uniquely ministered to the whole personality.

He met traditional Aboriginals during field-work in the Kimberley, Western Australia in 1928. The brutal clash between settlers and indigenous tribes shocked him, the missions seemed ambivalent and government policies aimless. That launched him on his own long campaign of social justice for the Aboriginal people.

During the 1930’s Elkin used his position as the head of the Anthropology Department at Sydney University to drive a significant shift of immense proportions in thinking about the Aboriginal people. Where many had predicted they were a dying race needing protection, Elkin, with others pressed for assimilating them into the white community.

Assimilation seemed at the time to be what Aboriginal Christian activists like Bill Ferguson in Dubbo and William Cooper in Melbourne and David Unaipon in Adelaide were asking for – the ‘uplift of the Aboriginal race’ and a future. Today it can seem patronising and racist, but with all its shortcomings, it was a move in a positive direction for a disenfranchised native people.

Elkin differed from the evolutionary anthropologists who saw the Aboriginals as less evolved and unable to adapt. As one of the new breed of social anthropologists, he believed they could adapt and take their place in the Australian community as equal citizens.

Elkin had his own interpretation of the Aboriginal cause and spent decades championing it before State and Federal governments. His heart conviction was simply that all human beings as children of the Creator must adjust to their circumstance. Humility, reverence, communion, courage and goodness would help White adapt to Black, and Black to White.

I suspect Brother Connie would have been quietly proud that his travelling ‘Bourke Bush University’ had produced a champion of such high calibre. Professor A. P. Elkin was from the start ‘the self-made anthropologist’. There was virtually no school of anthropology in 1920’s Australia – he had to more or less make it up as he went along by independent study and practical field work, while working as a clergyman. His career has been summarised by AI;

“During his 23-year tenure as Professor of Anthropology at Sydney University he
dominated the field in Australia and essentially defining the profession as it transitioned from amateur pursuit to an academic discipline.”

]]><![CDATA[John Flynn's Easter Gift]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:05:24 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/john-flynns-easter-giftOur vast Southern continent lies safe beneath one of the most remarkable security blankets in human history. While Israelis crouch beneath the protection of the ‘Iron Dome’ that stands sentinel over their tiny country – the wide-spread Australian population rests confidently beneath the kindly ‘Mantle of Safety’ first spread over them by the visionary clergyman John Flynn, almost a century ago.

Every day of the year, 87 RFDS aircraft and team of pilots, nurses, doctors, counsellors, drivers and administrators stand ready to reach the farthest corner with the finest care. It’s a level of medical service unparalleled anywhere in the world. So many families from the west, including my own have reason to be deeply grateful for these mercy flights that save lives.

On May 17th 1928 in Cloncurry Central Queensland, a leased Qantas De Havilland DH.50 biplane named Victory took to the air. It was piloted by Arthur Affleck with Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch on board. At the time, a mantle of safety across Australia’s 7.69 million square kilometres seemed an impossible dream and Flynn, just a wild-eyed optimist.

But since then, all across the backcountry, people have dug deep in their pockets when asked to fuel Flying Doctor aircraft or to fund ‘Flynn’s Angels’- the nurses who manned remote medical outposts. Over the years, punters at Louth Races on the Darling haven’t hesitated to invest their ‘hard-earned’ to keep the air ambulances aloft, often in a race against death. For decades, patrons of the Royal Mail Hotel at tiny Hungerford on The Dog Fence have regularly flung $20 notes bearing John Flynn’s image skyward, papering the ceiling of the bar with a tangible tribute to a great Australian.

They know what we owe that hard-working dreamer. Most of us are proud of this iconic medical service, but how many in The Land Down Under realise that this protective cloak was woven from thread spun in Galilee in Israel, over two millennia ago?

Why not ask John Flynn himself how he wove the fabric?

He would say he gathered the first threads roaming the beautiful countryside around his home in the village of Moliagul Victoria and then riding in the rugged Gippsland mountains as a travelling missionary. The bush and bush-people won his heart. As a young man he had soaked up the narrative of Jesus’ life at his local Presbyterian church and wove this into a lifetime of practical faith, bent on living out the way of the young rabbi from Nazareth in Australia’s lonely places.

Around 1910, a small, linen covered book titled The Bushman’s Companion began circulating in back country shearing sheds and droving camps. It was John Flynn’s first effort to forge a link with men and women out on the edges. They liked the way he spoke as a comrade rather than a preacher, offering everything from first aid, recipes, poetry, homespun philosophy, a calendar and even a funeral service!

He included spiritual help – prayers, hymns and pieces of wisdom from the Bible. He singled out the spectacular Easter story of Jesus’ return from the dead as the historical truth that motivated him most. John Flynn was certain that the confidence of being resurrected changed a person’s whole outlook on life. Being busy mending broken bodies was helpful, but when individuals yielded their maimed souls to the one who brought hope to the world by dying on a Roman cross, it meant renewal of the whole person for eternity.

As he toiled at building the Flying Doctor Service, John Flynn set himself to dismiss the accusation he’d heard from the hardened men around the bush that this ‘pie-in the sky’ stuff robbed a man of his manhood. He asked,

“And what of today? Who are the most eager to spread material blessings amid the barren stretches of the earth? There is no place for argument. Always those who are most deeply moved by the risen Jesus are found in the front ranks.”

Take the medical student Clifford Peel as an example – a young airman inspired by John Flynn’s dream and convinced in his Christian faith. The Flight Lieutenant poured his thoughts out in a letter while on a troopship headed to the War in France in 1917 which, to Flynn’s delight, set out a ground-breaking manifesto for an airbourne medical service – probably the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

It would soon become the pattern for Flynn’s mantle of safety, spurring nurses, doctors, padres and pilots who shared the same vision and faith, to stretch it across Australia’s remote Inland places. Sadly, the brilliant young Clifford was shot down over the Western Front and never saw his dream realised.

New generations living in Australia urgently need to hear foundational stories like this. Twenty years ago, I sat listening in a forum where a battery of highly intelligent thinkers were reminding us of the way Jesus’ footprints and fingerprints are discoverable in every corner of our country. I was challenged by one historian’s stark statement.

It is not that we knew it once and have forgotten it. We never knew it. Nobody has ever told us. Our Christian heritage has never been identified as such and therefore is in danger of being totally lost before it has been found.

As I was thinking this story through in the early hours of the morning, I heard the roar of a twin-engine Beechcraft taking off from the nearby RFDS Base in Dubbo, most likely to retrieve a sick or injured patient. It stirred me to pray that bringing the fabric of John Flynn’s ‘mantle of safety’ out to be examined in the open daylight, will cause you to stop this Easter and reflect on the multiple blessings Australia owes to Jesus.

]]><![CDATA[An Extreme Bishop]]>Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:21:21 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/an-extreme-bishopOn September 20th 1870, a small canoe was towed across the quiet lagoon of the tiny island of Nukapu in the Santa Cruz group and left to drift towards the schooner Southern Cross, anchored outside the reef. It carried the body of a man carefully wrapped in a mat and on his chest, a palm leaf with five knots. On the corpse were five wounds – seemingly one for each of five village men recently kidnapped by ‘blackbirders’ as slaves for the Queensland sugar plantations.

This reprisal was a double tragedy. First, because it was part of the sad 40-year chapter where more than 62,000 Kanakas were either enticed by false promises or taken by force to work as ‘indentured labourers’ in Australia’s North. Second, because the murdered man had worked tirelessly to create a positive future for the peoples of the myriad islands North East of Australia.

A brilliant linguist, John Coleridge Patteson learned twenty-three of the many Melanesian languages he met as he sailed thousands of kilometres of the Pacific. At 28 years old, the gifted Oxford scholar had been inspired to leave a comfortable English lifestyle to join Bishop Selwyn in the hazardous adventure of bringing the message of Jesus to the 2000 islands stretching from Papua New Guinea to Fiji in nearly a million sq kms of ocean. Strenuous travel over sixteen years led to bouts of malaria and exhaustion.

In spite of threats and a flight of poison arrows that killed his companions, John sustained a passion to communicate with the wild and warlike islanders on their own terms. He sailed around the islands preaching to the communities he discovered and setting up schools. He held a deep respect for the cultures and customs he encountered and put his exceptional linguistic powers to work collecting grammars and vocabularies and translating some gospels into the Mota dialect. In one four-month stretch he systematized and put into the printer's hands grammatical studies of 17 languages besides working up ten or more in manuscript.

He was unique in his determination to empower locals by training indigenous clergy rather than imposing British culture. He rated it seriously unfair and wrote, "I have for years thought that we seek in our mission a great deal too much to make English Christians of our converts…we encumber our message with unnecessary requirements."

At a large public meeting in Sydney March 1864, he stirred wide public support for the Melanesian Mission, with Anglican Churches agreeing to meet the annual expenses of the Southern Cross. It was Patteson's gentleness that drew him to the family of the enterprising Thomas Mort who became a personal friend and generous benefactor. Patteson’s strategy of empowering locals by training indigenous clergy surely appealed to Mort’s own vision of having management personally engaged with workers to make progress. (Thomas’ daughter Anne later plunged into life as the wife of the next bishop of Melanesia.)

Rather than imposing British culture with long-term white settlement, Patteson focused on taking Islanders to training centres and established the Melanesian Mission base on Norfolk Island. His most brilliant native scholar, Edward Wogala, distinguished him from the blackbirders. “He did not live apart, he was always friends with us and did not despise in the least a single one of us.”

By making St Barnabas a culturally integrated learning environment, the dedicated teacher redeemed the previously dark reputation of the infamous convict settlement. Dynamic and practical he had native foods such as yams grown, he taught his scholars to speak English, tend livestock and even play the game he loved - cricket! Girls came to the school so that family units could be formed and then couples returned to their home islands.

It seems the blackbirders may have deceived the native population of Nukapu by using Patteson’s name to gain a foothold on their island. Most likely, the kind itinerant bishop was clubbed twice in the head and stabbed three times as symbolic retaliation for the kidnapping of local men. The chief of the island pursued the murderer, who fled to the island of Santa Cruz, where the islanders killed him. The women of Nakapu, who knew and loved Patteson, were horrified by his murder and a group of them washed and prepared him for burial.

What makes it doubly sad is that throughout his 16 years of service, John Patteson was known through the islands, New Zealand and Australia as a staunch opponent of the slave trade. But triumph came from the tragedy. Wide reporting of the bishop’s death in the British Press shocked the public and forced the government to act on his criticism of the slave trade by passing the Imperial Kidnapping Acts of 1872 and 1875. These brought the trade under control along the lines he had suggested.

The martyrdom of John Patteson and several of his native companions has been called the seed that produced the strong and vigorous Church which flourishes in Melanesia today. His legacy of training locals has continued.

Sydney remembered him with a noble sculpture in the beautiful downtown Christ Church St Laurence, but a more fitting memorial stands under the palms on the beach of the tiny island where he died at just 44 years old. Round the simple iron cross run these words.

“In memory of JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON Missionary Bishop whose life was here taken by men for whose sake he would willingly have given it.”

]]><![CDATA[Shared Songlines]]>Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:20:30 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/shared-songlinesOver the last year I have been in the studio recording the audiobook for Tell Me Another. It has been a slow process but it is nearing completion at last! As we approach Australia Day, aware of the controversies of recent years, I thought I'd like to share with you Chapter 7, relating my own experiences living alongside the indigenous people of Bourke and Dubbo. We hope that the whole audiobook will be available in the next few weeks.

Copy the link below and insert into your browser to listen to Chapter 7 of Tell Me Another.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14vIdbjyTb2CBJSlvvWKPyXrl4R85NieZ/view?usp=drive_link

]]><![CDATA[Grandfather James' Letter]]>Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:53:59 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/grandfather-james-letter“As I hold these bits of folded paper
I wonder what it is I keep them for.
A flimsy pen and ink connection
To a bloke who isn’t with us anymore.”
Colin Buchanan

I heard my grandfather’s voice very clearly the other day, which was surprising since I’d never met him and his body had been laid to rest seventy years ago in a Maitland cemetery! In one of those quiet days after Christmas, as the old year shrivels away, I found myself in what used to be called ‘a brown study.’ That means you absent-mindedly drift into reflections on things past.

In this case memory was triggered by a three-page letter my widowed grandfather Jim Roe penned to his grand-daughter late in 1951. He wrote with a pretty neat hand considering he’d left school at 12 to join his father working in a coal mine under Newcastle Harbour at Stockton.

But the handwriting and lack of punctuation took second place to warmth of spirit that spilled minor doings of life around his weatherboard miner’s cottage in Telarah onto the yellowing page. He’d been following Nancye’s family’s road trip to Sydney, praying over every stage. He knew neighbourhood kids by name, reporting with interest on the threads and scissors Joyce Baldwin had shown him that her mother had searched out for her new sewing basket. He knew she’d got all her sums right as well and might even do better than her brother Herbert.

I suspect my grandfather’s own lack of education made him urge the kids around him to make the most of their schooling.

Emphysema from his lifetime of work in dark mines weakened his lungs but hadn’t dampened his spirits nor his faith. His gift for telling entertaining stories drew children around him in the street on his way home from work. He brought the Bible to life for scores of kids in Cessnock and Maitland in a way that stayed with them for a lifetime.

I knew from my Dad that his mother and father were chronically kind, in spite of being poor. So, it’s no surprise to hear Jim tell how friends had gifted him a package of fresh fish for his lunch or that neighbour Mrs Baldwin had insisted on coming over to wash all his linen and scrub his floors while he entertained the baby. Others were picking him up for a fishing holiday weekend.

Standing on the brink of a new year, Jim Roe’s humble letter spoke to his grandson out of the past, reminding me to appreciate the simple things, to be thankful for daily bread from the Father’s hand and to bring life into the lives of those around me.

Thanks Grandfather. I hope I can report I’ve done the same when we meet next.

”Not all of us can do great things but we can do small things with great love.”
Mother Teresa

]]><![CDATA[How Angels Came To Tragedy Corner]]>Fri, 19 Dec 2025 09:16:02 GMThttps://www.theoutbackhistorian.com.au/stories/how-angels-came-to-tragedy-corner“If you want to commend your gospel to men, first of all do something for them they understand.” (Rev. John Flynn’s favourite saying.)

A century ago, ‘Tragedy Corner’ was an undefined space where the borders of South Australia, NSW and Queensland and the 5000 km long dingo fence, jostled each other. Scorching winds, summer heat and the fitful flows in the Diamantina River and Cooper’s Creek had made it a graveyard for exploring parties like those of Charles Sturt and Burke and Wills.

It was the tragic toll it took on families that caught the attention of the Rev. John Flynn in the war years, 1914-18. Twice he had received anonymous letters containing the white feather suggesting he was a coward for not going to the War. But he believed the remote Inland was his battlefield and threw himself recklessly into the effort to raise money for a hospital and recruit high grade nurses for the tiny settlement of Birdsville. The conquest of Tragedy Corner had begun.

Lou Reese, who drove Grace Francis and Catherine Boyd on the last leg from Brisbane in 1923, was hugely impressed watching them treat illnesses during the journey to Birdsville. He wrote to Flynn, ‘If ever angels came on earth, I’d say these were two.’ Others in the Corner country remained unconvinced; “We don’t want no bloody missionaries round here!”

Conditions were crude – but the two women won the hearts of their neighbours by cheerfully setting up camp in a refurbished pub built with hewn stone, mud walls and an iron roof. The nearest telephone was 400 km away, so they were the decision makers on the cases that they treated. These nurses soon became known as ‘the border sisters’ or ‘Flynn’s boundary riders’, covering long, hard miles as they tackled ‘Tragedy Corner.’

Grace’s experience nursing wounded soldiers on the Western Front in France, equipped her with diagnostic skills and she made a deep impression by being the kind of ‘angel’ who didn’t mind getting down and dirty. When a rotting horse carcass threatened the town water supply, she rolled up her sleeves and removed it.

The children suffering with inflamed eyes caused by Sandy Blight (trachoma) particularly distressed the two women. It had the potential to cause blindness but their careful treatment was soon saving the sight of bush kids.

When John Flynn drove into town in 1925 on the long circuit that was to take him through Bourke and Cobar, the nurses showed their records for the first 14 months of their stay. The pioneering padre was brought to tears as he scanned the records of the 2000 patients these women had treated without a doctor’s help. The saving of children’s eyesight moved him in particular. The combination of intrepid Christian faith and unflagging kindness in ‘the angels’ he’d recruited was changing the character of ‘Tragedy Corner.’

Following John Flynn’s urging to generate a sense of family, they brought the children together in a Sunday School and offered sewing classes. They arranged table tennis competitions, organised picnics and laboured to create a tennis court, drawing the scattered community together. They were in the centre of the action at the Birdsville Races and their ‘Brisbane Home’ became a popular gathering place offering cups of tea and a library.

The creative nurses announced a Christmas party. They appealed to their city contacts to send gifts and mobilised a team to prepare food. On Christmas Eve 1923, sixty-four people gathered around Birdsville’s first Christmas tree – a desert ash. Sister Francis reported great excitement among kids who’d never seen a decorated tree or received gifts from Santa. “They are all satisfied it is the best Christmas yet in Birdsville,” she reported.

These ‘angels’ functioned without wings. More often than not, medical supplies and equipment arrived painfully late by camel train from Adelaide. The two women treated a steady stream of bush folk with broken limbs, wounds, diseases and rotten teeth, often making arduous trips on rough tracks by car or buggy. Flat tyres, breakdowns and bogging were all in a day’s work.

They delivered babies, offered palliative care to the dying, prepared and wrapped the dead, read the burial service and then comforted the bereaved. This tough experience ignited a lifelong passion in them to help John Flynn spread the wings of his impossible dream of an airborne medical service across the skies of Australia.

When the time came for Grace and Catherine to depart, people travelled from all across ‘Tragedy Corner’ to express their gratitude to the ‘angels’. In the words of author Ivan Rudolph, “The ‘bloody missionaries’ had been successful at Birdsville and left behind them a legacy of love and healing that prevailed right into the following millennium.” (Flynn’s Outback Angels, Vol 1. Casting the Mantle)

John Flynn made it clear that this vision of stretching a ‘mantle of safety’ over the whole Australian continent was his way of following in the steps of Jesus as described in this eyewitness account. “That evening, after the sun was down, they brought sick and evil-afflicted people to him, the whole city lined up at his door! He (Jesus) cured their sick bodies and tormented spirits.” (Mark 1:32-33)

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