One Woman's Letter

​“Jessie Sinclair Litchfield (1883-1956) is well known in the Northern Territory yet barely appears as a blip on the radar of people south of Alice Springs.”
 
Sydney born Jessie Litchfield lived life in the Northern Territory as ‘a pistol packing momma’, often alone when raising children in isolated jungle mining camps. In time she became a crack shot with a rifle. She grew into an unflinching spokeswoman for the Northern Territory. She proved a prolific writer, authoring five books, plus numerous short stories and poems.

​She earned a reputation as a feisty Darwin journalist known for her fighting words. “A self-trained photographer and historian…she crusaded for Darwin, which she envisaged as 'the Great Front Door of Australia', and for Territory self-government.” (Barbara James https://www.loststory.net/australianwomen/jessie-litchfield)
 
But it was on June 3rd 1909 that Jessie loosed the shot that still reverberates across the Australian continent. Sitting on a meat case in a hessian walled shack under an iron roof, looking out across mud flats of Darwin Harbour’s West Arm, the 26-year-old mother fired off a stirring letter to her Presbyterian Church in distant Melbourne.
 
The self-taught researcher reeled off statistics which painted a grim picture of spiritual and social neglect in the 1.3M square kilometres Northern Territory. In particular, she was shocked and saddened by the use and abuse of Aboriginal girls and women by the lonely white male population. “I know that drink, drugs, and lubras are responsible for nine out of ten hospital cases and also for seven deaths out of ten,” she wrote. The sad fate of many ‘half-caste’ children caught between cultures grieved her. Her church’s absence spoke volumes.

Her passionate plea, published in The Messenger, called for a hard-working man ‘committed to the cause of Christ’ to serve the people of the remote North. It struck a chord in a young John Flynn on his way to Korea as a missionary. Her bold words “sounded a challenge that was to haunt him for years.” (Apostle to the Inland, Scott McPheat, p 42) Jessie turned his gaze back to see the needs at the heart of his own country.

​Flynn’s wide-ranging imagination was fired and he carried her letter everywhere with him as he set about stirring coastal Australians to reach out to care for the Inlanders. That solitary woman’s voice speaking out of isolation, jolted him onto the path that led him to pioneer the legendary Flying Doctor Service as a means to secure family life, etching compassion across the rugged face of remote Australia.