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!
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Just before the turn of the twentieth century, a young Australian and a young English immigrant landed in the South Island of New Zealand, both destined to become remarkable storytellers. At thirty, Henry Lawson had already carved his name into the minds of Australians hungry for a storyteller who could speak to them about themselves with an authentic, native voice. Tragically, his stay in ‘Maoriland’ as he called it, was a disaster and his personal life spiralled down into alcoholism from this point on. He was bitterly disappointed with the critics’ reception of his torrent of writing. Just the same, a century or more later, his poems and short stories are still being studied by school children across Australia. Twenty-five-year-old Frank Boreham arrived in Dunedin, an unknown English clergyman with a sharp eye for characters and an untried gift for crafting the humblest event into a tale of cosmic significance. The pulpit of his tiny congregation of craggy Scots in Mosgeil on the Southern-most tip of ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’, became the springboard which launched him as ‘the greatest Christian essayist of all time.’ (Gordon Moyes) Yet, today he remains mostly unknown. |
AuthorJoin The Outback Historian, Paul Roe, on an unforgettable journey into Australia's Past as he follows the footprints of the Master Storyteller and uncovers unknown treasures of the nation. Archives
January 2025
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