​The scene is a small house set between the sea and the Australian bush. Picture a lone man wrestling in prayer between tall, white gumtrees in the moonlight. It’s 1953 and the country is just beginning to recover from the battering of war. The forty-two-year-old Methodist minister’s name is Alan Walker and he’s full of fear at setting out on a nation-wide mission. His convict ancestor had arrived in Botany Bay in 1810 and 20 years later, through the preaching of a travelling Methodist, his alcoholic son John decided to follow Jesus and began preaching in the Windsor district with powerful effect.
 
And now his great-great grandson Alan - the thirteenth evangelist from that line – is praying for strength. A sudden rustling of the gum leaves in the night-wind made his spirit soar. A vivid image of Jesus challenging Rabbi Nicodemus to allow the wind of the Holy Spirit to flow through his life, gave the shrinking preacher the courage he needed to undertake the preaching ministry to his native country, half a world away from Israel.
 
His preaching had a powerful effect – just as his great-great grandfather John Walker’s  had in Windsor 150 years previously.  Decades later, Labor parliamentarian Bill Hayden dubbed Alan Walker, ‘The Conscience of the Nation.’ Others called him ‘Mr Methodist.’ What did that mean?

A few rotting timbers are all that remain of a shipyard where the three-masted barque Royal Tar was built from local timber in 1873. I stumbled across the story walking along the Nambucca River in Northern NSW and the name rang a bell with me. It called back to mind a strange tale about an idealistic union man called William Lane recruiting bush workers in Bourke to join him in creating a Utopian settlement - in Paraguay of all places!
And here I was standing on the birthplace of the same Royal Tar that carried this Australian ‘Moses’ 10,000 km across the Pacific and round Cape Horn to build a ‘new Australia’.
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In December 2007, a crowd of 500 people outside Victoria’s Parliament building gave a lengthy applause as of one of Australia’s most unusual statues was unveiled. The bronze figures of a husband and wife stand arm in arm – he with a welcoming smile, an open stance and a hand extended – she, erect beside her man, looking at him with an expression of love and pride.
Sculptor Louis Lamen had gifted Australia with a warm and lasting image of one of the most unique teams in its history. A journalist dubbed them ‘a compelling double act’ and he was right – they were!   The memorial describes them as,
‘River People who turned the tide of history and injustice to progress the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander  peoples.
This is the first memorial statue in Melbourne dedicated to two Aboriginal community leaders, Pastor Sir Doug and Lady Gladys Nicholls. They vigorously fought for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across this country and are an eternal symbol of our ongoing history and commitment to human rights in Australia.’

​If you asked an ANZAC returning from the Western Front in France in 1918 what a ‘telling a furphy’ was, he’d tell you it was the kind of yarn you heard being swapped when the soldiers gathered around the watercart behind the front lines.
 
The news was always supposed to have come from reliable sources, but when received second or third hand, it was usually drained of truth. So, the Furphy family name eased into Australian slang as a way of describing suspect information being passed on by dodgy people.
 
Oddly enough, the Furphy watercart itself is linked with a couple of brothers fiercely dedicated to speaking truth and encouraging people to live at their best. 

On the bookshelf in front of me I can see several rare books I hunted down in VINNIES shops as I travelled around the bush. The thrill of chasing a bargain blinded me to a richer story hidden in those humble stores. Behind those kindly, ageing volunteers who serve you, stand two gifted young men who challenged poverty across the world with robust Christian faith.
 
Europe was torn by revolution, war and crippled by disease in the early decades of the 19th century. The streets of Paris had flowed with blood as the ruling aristocracy were guillotined in the name of Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood. When a brilliant young student named Frederic Ozanam arrived at University in that city, he found religion on the decline and atheism increasing.
 
He had struggled through doubt himself and was confronted by sceptics who demanded more than the intellectual proofs for the Christian faith he presented. The challenge jolted Frederic and a group of friends to start providing food and firewood for starving people flooding in from the country, even as a cholera epidemic swept through the slums. They saw themselves following the example of a priest named Vincent de Paul who had left his mark on France two and a half centuries earlier. 

 ​This is the story of a humble teacher who turned a wooden building on the Murray River into a kind of bush university – one that grew leaders who changed Australia. Thomas Shadrach James, was born in 1859 in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa known for its diverse racial make-up, mixed cultures and variety of religious faith. His parents were poor people determined to educate their children. His father worked his way from being an indentured labourer to serving as an interpreter for the British colonial government and a teacher in the Anglican Church. So, it’s no surprise that at the age of fourteen, Thomas was tutoring other boys and fluent in French, English and Tamil.
 
Discouraging family events drove 20-year-old Thomas to leave home to seek his fortune alone in Australia. His obvious ability saw him enrolled in medicine at Melbourne University in 1880, but a bout of typhus left him with shaking hands. The new immigrant made a disconsolate figure walking Brighton Beach on Port Phillip Bay on January 3rd 1881, his aspiration to be a surgeon shattered.    READ MORE ...

​I first met David Bussau in Narromine in the Far West of NSW. He was flying in the Outback Patrol Cessna visiting isolated inland towns. I was impressed that this successful entrepreneur would make that kind of effort. Quietly spoken and unassuming, he sat for an hour sharing his story with 20 or so local men over dinner in the RSL Club.
 
 A friend was working with Opportunity International, so I was keen to meet the man who had dreamed up the radical idea of micro-enterprise in the first place. Simon was advising people living in the rubbish tips of Manila on starting their own businesses and I’d heard moving stories of people being liberated from crushing poverty. Hearing David tell the story of his single-handed climb out of a difficult past showed me the beating heart of the movement he pioneered.
 
A friend and I later had lunch with him in Centennial Park in Sydney and he gave himself freely to discuss entrepreneurial plans we were making. I felt honoured that he gave us time. It was the measure of the man – maintaining a vision for the world and having time to focus on individuals.

In late January 2022, a single headline dominated papers across Australia. People reading the Blue Mountains Gazette, Townsville Bulletin, Naracoorte Herald, Port Stephens Examiner, Bega District News and Deniliquin Pastoral Times and even the Manjimup-Bridgetown Times, learned of the passing of an elderly nun in Adelaide on Australia Day.
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​AUSTRALIA’S SINGING NUN, SISTER JANET MEAD, DIES AGED 84.

Most focussed on the remarkable fact that in 1974, this young music teacher had scored a hit on the pop charts with a rock-version of what is known the world over as ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’  The single was distributed to 31 countries and sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Janet Mead became the first Australian recording artist to have a gold record in the United States and it was the only Top Ten hit in history with lyrics entirely taken from the Bible. The humble singing nun from Adelaide was nominated for a Grammy Award, but lost out to Elvis Presley!