When you drive streets in Maclean lined with tartan telegraph poles and hear the skirl of the bagpipes echoing in the main street, you know the town is definitely a stronghold of Australia’s Scots history. And mine for that matter. Over two million of us claim Scots ancestry – my grandchildren have the blood of the Baird, Carey, Murray and McDonald clans in their veins.
So, I spent a day or two there recently, looking under the ancestral kilt to see why big numbers of Scots moved here in the mid-1800’s. I was heartened to discover that the claim we Australians make for having one of the best lifestyles in the world, could well have been built on a bedrock of purposeful duty to God mined out of bare hills and heather half a world away in Scotland.
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For forty years I’ve worked alongside half a dozen or more Aboriginal elders and appreciated their courage and compassion. Most of them have been men and women of strong Christian faith who didn’t just talk about reconciliation, but practised it. This YouTube clip was produced for this NAIDOC week which has the theme 'For our Elders'. It is my tribute to elders of the past who were also men and women who followed Jesus along paths marked by suffering, stood for justice and gave a voice to their people. They shone because of their faith. In this picture I'm standing with my friend Phil Sullivan near the rock paintings at Mt Gundabooka National Park where he was serving as a National Parks Ranger. Phil is a respected elder of the Ngemba people and unafraid of articulating his Christian convictions.
‘For Our Elders’ is the catch cry of NAIDOC WEEK 2023. This story is told to honour brave and compassionate men and women who pioneered the cause of Aboriginal civil rights in Australia.
In May 1937, a remarkable event took place in Melbourne. The grand finale of the concert marking the city’s foundation was an aboriginal choir singing ‘Burra Phara’, an African- American spiritual translated into the Yorta Yorta language. The Cummerugunga choir had learned it from black American students from Fiske University in Tennessee, who visited their Maloga mission near Echuca in 1886. The passionate music, expressing the yearning of the oppressed Hebrew people for freedom from Egyptian slavery, reached across 3000 years to touch the hearts of Australian aboriginals. Almost certainly in the audience was a young William Cooper, the man destined to become one of the great Aboriginal elders who, like Moses, led his people on the long road to freedom. Wherever he went rousing support for his people’s civil rights, he was accompanied by a quartet who sang biblical songs like this. William Cooper, with his distinctive moustache, is pictured here with family members who supported him. With Australia planning to accept 190,000 immigrants over the next two years, I thought that it would be good to hear the story of a newcomer who became more than just a ‘naturalised citizen’ on paper.
In 1962, Christodoulos Gryllis arrived in Australia as a teenage immigrant from the island of Patmos off mainland Greece. His name Χριστόδουλος means ‘servant of Christ.’ He’s very proud of the fact that his birthplace is linked to John, the apostle of Jesus who was exiled there during Roman times. He’s even had cuff links made featuring the eagle which is supposed to have guarded the evangelist. He’s equally proud of his adopted home and has taken every opportunity to create symbols that tell its story. Chris dived headlong into the life of Orange in Central West NSW. Twenty years as a local councillor gave him opportunity to put some of his many ideas to work. In his 60 years in country Australia he’s proved it was possible to be proactive in assimilating without giving away his heritage. So, it’s no real surprise when you enter his real estate office to be confronted by busts of Alexander the Great and Banjo Paterson! Teachers are on the cutting edge with new generations. In the classroom they face the continual demands of rapidly shifting cultural norms. It concerns me to hear that an increasing number of them are leaving their profession and that stirs me to do what I can to resource and encourage them. They are key players in shaping the future of Australia.
Over the past 12 months I’ve been involved with Pacific Hills Schools and Dubbo Christian School working with teachers and students, crafting and telling energising faith stories. Listening to voices from the classroom-coalface sharpens my focus. An interview I did with a very perceptive senior History teacher, Poppy Gee from Wycliffe Christian School, came back to mind. She introduced an arresting phrase that one of her students had used after hearing Wiradjuri elder Riverbank Frank Doolan tell his story. The girl said she felt ‘empowered by the hope that young people could bring positive change.’ “Greatness on the sporting field is wholly compatible with the highest standards of conduct and I can think of no finer example of these characteristics than Brian Booth.”
Sir Donald Bradman When former Australian Test cricket captain Brian Booth died on May 2nd this year aged 89, some would say we lost our last gentleman cricketer. Larrikin commentator, Kerry O’Keefe declared his former team mate, “a truly great human, with strong claims to captain ‘Australia’s Best Blokes Eleven!’” Brian Booth was one of my heroes. When I was ‘wanna-be’ boy cricketer, he was the friendly man who coached a bunch of us at a Sports Camp. I have a lasting memory of sitting in the stands at the SCG marvelling at his elegant and forceful batting as a blue capped New South Welshman in the Sheffield Shield. Years later, I sat rivetted opposite him in the 2WEB studio in Bourke, as he told tales of being battered black and blue by legendary West Indian fast bowlers Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith on the way to a courageous century. For me as a sport-tragic, that was the stuff of legend! What really heartened me was his next statement – ‘But those are scrapbook memories now. The moment when I decided to follow Jesus Christ has energised my whole life.’ My Baird clan genes came fully to attention as I swung down the aisle behind a kilted bagpiper at the Scots School in Bathurst a few years ago. I was the guest speaker and it was stirring stuff! So, my dormant William Wallace rose again, sword in hand, when I read the motto of 130-year-old Scots College Sydney, ‘Brave Hearts, Bold Minds!’ This expresses their commitment to making boys’ education adventurous. I love that idea.
I knew historian Dr Hugh Chilton had been using the stories I’d recorded as ‘Australia’s Invisible History’ in his role as Director of Research and Professional Learning at Scots. So, it was great to catch up with him at the recent Evangelical History Association conference in Parramatta. He’s the Vice-President of this group of researchers who are uncovering great Australian faith stories. Here Hugh gives a window into the way he sets these to work in his classroom. I didn’t realise that the story of a native-born piano would jump at me out of the clean-up we were doing to prepare for our Storytelling Centre in Dubbo. Octavius Beale’s masterpiece was sitting dusty and neglected in a back room and here I was, asking myself, “Do I really need that thing in here?” How ignorant! It was my colleague, OJ Rushton, who opened my eyes to this story of a unique Aussie icon.
I discovered that apart from being a traveller skilled at languages, President of the NSW Chamber of Commerce and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Beale, an Irish-born Quaker just happened to design the first piano purpose-built for Australia! The Quakers were a small Christian sect known for building industries focussed on caring for their workers. So, it was no surprise to learn that in 1893 Octavius established Australia’s first piano factory in Sydney and grew it into the largest, not only in the southern hemisphere but also the British Empire in the early 1900s. This weekend’s AFL indigenous round is named for Sir Douglas Nicholls. Australian Football’s webpage makes a significant comment about the champion Fitzroy footballer, “Arguably one of the most famous, and undeniably among the most important, Australians of the 20th century, Doug Nicholls' most significant accomplishments transcended football.”
What were they? A few weeks ago, I stood in the humble weatherboard schoolhouse at Cummerugunga where a young Douglas had hidden under the floorboards for fear of the police who were taking the young girls away to the Cootamundra Girls Home. In later life, he said that Jesus’ message of forgiveness enabled him to rise above bitterness. In July 1985, nearly 2 billion people across 150 nations joined in a rock concert. Organisers employed satellite technology to make it possible for forty percent of the world’s population to raise $127M in a phenomenal humanitarian effort to bring relief to Ethiopians dying from famine. Rock-star Bob Geldoff explained his purpose for the massive ‘Feed The World’ event. “We were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus." It's a forgotten fact however, that long before, in a less connected world, an innovative visionary in Australia had hit on this same possibility of feeding the world. Twenty-one-year-old Englishman Thomas Mort stepped off The Superb onto the docks in Sydney Harbour in 1838, burning with the ambition to reverse his family’s financial ruin. In the space of forty years, his bold pioneering ventures had changed the face of Australia. He became one of NSW’s wealthiest men, but was never content to merely accumulate wealth. Someone summed him up as ‘perhaps Australia’s most ingenious early entrepreneur and greatest social benefactor.’ ![]() |
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
October 2023
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