Q- R- S- T- U- Surname List

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277. Conrad RABARABA Lutheran Pastor, Finke River Mission, NT

Conrad RABARABA -

'In 1964 the first two Aboriginal pastors were ordained: Conrad Rabaraba and Cyril Motna.' Finke River Mission 135th Anniversary

277.a. Fred REBELL (aka) Kārlis Paulus Christian Julius SPROGIS (1886 ~ 1968) pacifist, spiritual and political emancipist, adventurer, Jonah (lone sailor), visionary, free man, Christian mystic, Evangelistic Tract writer, Pentecostal preacher

Alternative Names: Sproge, Paulus Christian Julius; Sprogis, Paul
Birth: 22 April 1886 Ventspils, Latvia
Death: 10 November 1968 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Cultural Heritage; Latvian; German Language and
Religious Influence: Lutheran past, Assemblies of God
Occupation: adventurer (general)


In his small appreciation 'Fred Rebell and Elaine', Alan Lucas writes : "Fred was famous for sailing his small open boat, Elaine, from Sydney to Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Unwittingly, he was also seeking God despite spiritual aspirations being alien to the younger, fiercely independent Fred whose disrespect for governments at all levels seemed absolute. He worked on the basis that if something is too difficult to obtain through normal sources you forge it – especially in the unstable political atmosphere of pre-Great War Europe.
Fred was born Paul Sproge in Latvia, 22 April 1886. As a young man he avoided compulsory enlistment in his country’s defence forces by crossing into Russia where he sought a passport. When refused, he went to a religious organization for help and, on being refused again, he says in his book, Escape to the Sea: “Charitable organizations are supposed to supply the needy: surely that means supplying them with what they need. But they are limited in their ideas, and I have yet to learn of any organization that hands out passports to those who need them.”
That seems to say it all for this somewhat confused but very strong-willed young man who would not be blocked by silly things like protocols and regulations, so he went to a criminal hangout and bought a passport for half a dollar. Hoping to find a country “not under the rule of paper”, Fred decided to be a merchant sailor, his ‘new’ passport needing a little adjustment before it could be used to obtain the necessary papers: It seems that his passport’s previous owner was wanted by the law!
Not to be discouraged, Paul Sproge forged a new name on his second-hand passport and in this way he became Fred Rebell. To quote his marvellously logical rationale, he writes:
“Papers do not mean anything. A man means something, and work means something. If government is so crazy that it will not let a man have work unless he has papers, then it is only rational to humour that crazy government like you humour any other sort of lunatic.”
No doubt about it, Fred was born to cruise."

Rebell, Fred (1886–1968)

by Gillian Fulloon

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, (MUP), 1988

Fred Rebell (1886-1968), lone sailor and rebel, was born on 22 April 1886 at Windau, Russia (Ventspils, Latvia), son of Heinrich Sproge, teacher, and his wife Johanne, née Schultz, and named Paul Christian Julius. After attending college he worked as a bank clerk before fleeing to Germany in 1907 to avoid conscription. Calling himself Fred Rebell, he obtained a seafaring permit and worked as a stoker before stowing away in a Sydney-bound ship in 1909. He found work at Maitland as a railway construction worker, then went to Western Australia, where he won a land grant at Balbarrup. After working in a sawmill for two years, he began clearing and farming. On 4 July 1916 at Bridgetown registry office he married Emily Krumin whom he had brought out from Latvia; she soon bore a son. Selling his farm in 1925, he worked as a carpenter in Perth and joined a damp-proofing business, but left after his wife petitioned for divorce in 1928 (decree absolute 1940).

In Sydney, on the dole and desperate, Rebell decided to emigrate to the United States of America. Undaunted when refused a visa, and inspired by the lone voyages of Harry Pidgeon, he worked at poorly paid jobs and saved enough to buy and fit out a second-hand, undecked, 18-foot regatta boat. He named her Elaine for a Perth girl, strengthened the hull, fixed an outside keel, enlarged the sail area and built a canvas shelter. He practised sailing on the harbour, studied navigation in the Public Library of New South Wales, and copied outdated maps. With a home-made sextant and patent log, two cheap watches for chronometers, an old navigation manual, and six months supply of dried food, he sailed from Sydney, unannounced and without official papers, on 31 December 1931.

Fair, with blue eyes and a deep voice, Rebell was frank and simple in manner. Slimly built and 5 ft 8 ins (173 cm) tall, he had 'the physical resistance and insensibility almost of an animal'. His sailing 'was blind and automatic', usually 'no look-out was kept'. Often battered by gales, he dealt calmly with mishaps. Having no pump, at times he was forced to bail; once he caulked seams at sea. After his watches stopped, he claimed to rely on dreams and prayer for guidance. In fine weather he 'considered his soul' and enjoyed Longfellow's poetry, the Bible or Wells's Outline of History. He spent five months on Pacific islands, resting, repairing his boat and enjoying island hospitality. But he was never tempted to 'go native', 'the necessity of struggle' being all important.

Rebell sailed into San Pedro harbour, California, on 8 January 1933. His voyage was the first recorded west-east, lone crossing of the Pacific. When his boat was smashed by an official launch in a gale, he sued the government for damages. Meanwhile, he was detained by the immigration authorities who refused to accept his home-made passport. With a Hollywood writer standing surety he found work as a yacht fitter, read books on 'psychic and religious' matters and explored the teachings of various sects. In mid-1935 he received £85 compensation for the Elaine and in November was deported to Latvia. Living with his parents at Piltene, he completed his book Escape to the Sea (London, 1939); it was translated into French in 1951.

Refused recognition as a Latvian national, Rebell decided to return to Australia in 1937. Buying an old 23-foot fishing boat, the Selga, he decked her in and built an outside keel of reinforced concrete. But after twice being forced back to the English coast for repairs, he abandoned her and joined H. H. Brache and his family in the Guernsey yacht Reine d' Arvor, bound for Australia. Again using a home-made sextant, he was navigator, baker, sailmaker and general handyman. In 1939 sailing from Jersey via the Panama Canal, they reached Sydney on 15 December.

Tired of wandering, Rebell settled in Sydney. He was naturalized in 1955. Living quietly, he worked as a carpenter, wrote religious tracts and was a Pentecostal lay preacher. Described as an 'unassuming ascetic', he died on 10 November 1968 and was buried according to the rites of the Assemblies of God.

Select Bibliography

* J. Merrien, Lonely Voyages, translated by J. H. Watkins (Lond, 1954)
* Fiji Times and Herald, 3 Mar, 19 Apr 1932, 13 Oct, 2, 3 Nov 1939
* Sydney Morning Herald, 9 Oct 1936, 16 Dec 1939
* Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 16 Dec, 31 Dec 1939
* Naturalisation file, A446 55/48210 (National Archives of Australia)

WIKIPEDIA -Fred Rebell (born Kārlis Sproģis;[1] 22 April 1886 – 10 November 1968) was a Latvian born in Ventspils, Courland, Russian Empire (now Latvia), fled to Germany in 1907, and stowed away on a ship to Australia in 1909. In 1930, he decided to emigrate to the United States. Fred Rebell was not his original name but one he assumed when he forged seaman's papers to escape from Germany to Australia about 1907. Lacking a passport, he was unable to obtain a visa and decided to make his own way. He purchased an 18' sailing regatta yacht and sailed single-handed from Australia to Los Angeles starting around 1931. Lacking funds for navigation instruments, he made his own sextant from scrap parts including using a hacksaw blade as a degree scale. He did so with a self-created passport. He landed on various Pacific islands en route — spending as long as five months repairing his boat. He arrived in San Pedro, California, in 1933 and is recorded as the first ever solo crossing of the Pacific Ocean from west to east.

Without legal papers, he was eventually deported to Latvia and returned to live with his parents in Piltene, where he wrote of his adventures in his book Escape to the Sea.

In 1937 Rebell decided to return to Australia and purchased an old 23' fishing vessel for the journey. This boat proved inadequate for the task and was abandoned on the British coast. He eventually joined a family on another small yacht as a crewmember, crossed through the Panama canal and back to Sydney, Australia in 1939.

Back in Australia, he worked as a carpenter and a lay preacher. He took Australian nationality in 1955 and died in 1968.

FRED REBELL - References

"The Boats They Sailed In" by John Stephen Doherty, pub. W.W. Norton & Co. 1985 ISBN 0-393-03299-X

"Escape to the Sea" - The Adventures of Fred Rebell WHO SAILED SINGLEHANDED IN AN OPEN BOAT 9,000 MILES ACROSS THE PACIFIC. Published by "Digit Books" R475 - Brown, Watson Limited London
"Rebell, Fred (1886 - 1968)" Australiand Dictionary of Biography
Gillian Fulloon, 'Rebell, Fred (1886 - 1968)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp 345–346.
Jump up ^ Agrīnie latviešu iebraucēji Austrālijā Laikraksts Latvietis

278. Gustav Julius RECHNER (1830-1900), Webersohn, Clerk, Schoolteacher, Lutheran pastor -b.Leignitz, Silesia

Rechner, Gustav Julius (1830–1900)

by H. F. W. Proeve

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, (MUP), 1976

Gustav Julius Rechner (1830-1900), Lutheran pastor, was born on 29 December 1830 at Liegnitz, Silesia, eldest child of Friedrich Rechner, cloth-weaver, and his wife Wilhelmine, née Maiwald. He studied for teaching but was apprenticed to a clothier and then assisted his father as a clerk. He decided to migrate before military call-up, and arrived at Port Adelaide in the Victoria on 7 November 1848. His parents and two surviving sisters followed in 1854.

After a variety of work in the Tanunda district, in June 1850 Rechner became schoolteacher and cantor of the Lights Pass church under Rev. A. L. C. Kavel of Langmeil. He took services on three nights of the week and evening classes in English on three nights for children and adults. He won renown as a teacher and the Lights Pass school grew from 45 to more than 100 pupils. On 23 October 1850 he married Josepha Louise Bertha Bergmann of Liegnitz.

Doctrinal differences between Kavel and his fellow-pastor, G. W. Staudenmayer, came to a head after Kavel's death in February 1860. Rechner, responsible to Staudenmayer for his school but holding to Kavel's views, resigned as teacher and became a clerk of George Fife Angas. Twenty-five families seceded from Staudenmayer in November and called Rechner as their pastor. His ordination by J. C. Auricht on 3 February 1861 was initially opposed by all other groups of the Lutheran Church in Australia.

An energetic and able organizer, Rechner often worked an eighteen-hour day. For forty years he ministered in three churches: Strait Gate (Lights Pass), Grünberg (Moculta) and North Rhine (Keyneton); as members of these churches moved in the 1870s to more remote, newly-opened areas of the colony, he organized churches and served them till additional ministers arrived. In 1874-1900 he was president of the Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Synod of South Australia.

Rechner maintained a lifelong interest in the Aboriginals. In 1863-1900 he was treasurer of the Mission Committee; also chairman in 1874-1900, with confident trust he encouraged his branch of the Church to open or take over a number of areas: Bethesda or Killalpaninna Mission, Cooper's Creek, among the Dieri in 1866; Bloomfield Mission, south of Cooktown, Queensland, in 1883; and Hermannsburg Mission, Central Australia, among the Aranda in 1894.

Rechner died on 21 August 1900 at Lights Pass, survived by his wife, four sons and two daughters; seven children predeceased him.

Select Bibliography
* Gustav Julius Rechner, ein Erinnerungsblatt (Tanunda, 1903)
* Th. Hebart, The United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, J. J. Schultz ed (Adel, 1938)
* Rechner papers and autobiography (Lutheran Church Archives, Adelaide).

278.A. Louis RECEVEUR, Franciscan, Astrolabe chaplain & Naturalist (?1788) Botany Bay

Louis Receveur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Claude-Francois Joseph Louis Receveur (1757 – 17 February 1788) was a French Franciscan priest, naturalist and astronomer who sailed with Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. Receveur was also considered a skilled botanist, geologist, chemist, meteorologist, and philologist and has been described as being as close as one could get to being an ecologist in the 18th century.[1] Expedition In 1785, La Perouse was appointed by Louis XVI and his minister of marine, the Marquis de Castries, to lead an expedition around the world. Receveur was one of two priests on the expedition and was stationed aboard the ship L'Astrolabe; the other was Jean-André Mongez. At some stage during December 1787 or January 1788, the La Perouse expedition arrived at Tutuila in the Samoan Islands. Those who made land-fall came into conflict with the local indigenous people. Receveur was gravely injured, receiving what was described as a “violent contusion of the eye”. [edit]Arrival in Australia The expedition continued to Australia where it arrived at Botany Bay six days after the First Fleet. La Perouse erected a camp on shore and established relations with the British, who sailed around from Sydney Cove to visit his camp. However, Receveur never recovered from his injuries and died on 17 February 1788. He was buried at the camp. Receveur was the first Catholic priest and the second non-indigenous person to be buried in Australia. His obsequies are considered to have constituted the first Catholic religious ceremony held in Australia.

Modern recognition

Local churches of La Perouse in Sydney hold a special memorial mass in February each year to recognise the historical religious significance of Receveur's arrival, death and burial.[2]

Abbe Receveur Place in Little Bay, New South Wales was named in his honour.
See also
List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

References

~ La Perouse Community

~ Laperouse Museum

279. Joseph REED, architect

280. Mary REIBY 1777-1855 convict, pioneer, businesswomen, philanthropist,

281. Fred REYNOLDS Lilydale, VIC. Indonesia

282. =William RIDLEY, missionary & anthropologist, NSW

283. Natalie Anna Leuba ROBARTS (b. 1866 Colombier, Brazil & Charles Alfred ROBARTS, born 1867 Bung Bong, Victoria. Superintenants of Corranderk, Healesville


284. "GABARLA" Barnabas ROBERTS, Roper River NT

"GABARLA" Barnabas ROBERTS

From: Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography -

GABARLA -or - Barnabas ROBERTS

by Keith COLE

GABARLA - also known as BARNABAS ROBERTS (c.1898-1974) was an Aborigine of the Alawa tribe from Ngukurr (Roper River) the son of Ned Weari-wyingga, well known to the Church Missionary Society missionaries who founded the Roper River Mission in 1908.

Garbala grew up at the the mission and then worked as a stockman for a number of years on the surrounding cattle stations. He married Norah and later Judy (widow of Long Tom). He had six children, Phillip, Silas, Jacob, Mercy, Vera and Maisic. Phillip became well-known through Douglas Lockwood's book 'I, The Aboriginal.' Silas worked for many years at the government settlement of Maningrida.

Garbala became a convinced Christian as a young man and maintained this stance throughout the rest of his life. He was closely associated with James Japanma(Jibanyima), helping him in his work as lay reader and an evangelist visiting the nearby pastoral properties. Garbala became the main lay reader on Japanma's death and continued to take services and visit the cattle stations for the rest of his life. He was a great help to Margaret Sharpe in her recording of the Alawa language.

Gabarla died on 27 May 1974. The Ngukurr community mourned his passing. Many spoke of him as a faithful Christian, a man of gentle bearing and gracious mannner.

Sources:
* D. Lockwood, I, The Aboriginal 1862;
* K. Cole, Roper River Mission 1968
* Records of St Matthews's Church, Ngukurr
* CMS Records, Melbourne

285. Phillip Waipuldanya ROBERTS & his brother Silas ROBERTS - Sons of GABARLA or "Barnabas ROBERTS" Phillip became well-known as Medic campaigning to treat and control leprosy and through Douglas Lockwood's book 'I, The Aboriginal.' Silas worked for many years at the government settlement of Maningrida.




285+. George Augustus ROBINSON TAS- Chief Protector of Aborigines, VIC


286. Filomeno Francisco RODRIGUEZ - Pearler, Ship's Captain, Shipping to Catholic KImberley Missions

Filomeno Francisco RODRIGUEZ -

Philipino-Australian Pearler, Ship's Captain,
Hotelier, Broome councillor, Businessman & Philanthropist,
provided Ship-transports to remote Catholic Kimberley Missions; active Catholic Layman & Mission Support in North-western Australia;
Attended 1931 Melbourne Eucharistic Congress

Filomeno Francisco RODRIGUEZ
Birth: 24 August 1864 in Bantayan, Cebu, Philippines (then part of the Kingdom of Spain)
Christianity: Catholic
Qualities: Courage; Faithfulness, Zeal for his Faith, Generosity
Cross: Suffered 'Alien' ostracism & persecution as a Filipino-Australian
Marriage: 20 March 1890 Schoolhouse, Cossack, Western Australia
Wife: Maud Gwenevere Winifred MILLER
Family: 1. Gwenevere Matilda RODRIGUEZ 1891 Cossack WA– 1956 Broome WA
2. John Filomena Percival RODRIGUEZ 1893 Broome WA – 1917 WW1 Noreuil, The Somme, Picardie, France
3. Joseph Patrick Holland RODRIGUEZ 1894 Broome WA – 1973 Sth Australia
4. Caroline Verona RODRIGUEZ 1895 Broome WA – 1976 Kensington, London
5. Elsie Edith Christiana RODRIGUEZ 1897 Broome WA – 1986 Perth, WA
6. Albert Clarence RODRIGUEZ 1898 Broome WA – 1952 Gingin, WA
7. Richard Patrick Gerald RODRIGUEZ 1900 Broome WA – 1964 (noted footballer, Barrister & then City Coroner for Perth, WA]
8. Frances Muriel RODRIGUEZ 1901 Broome WA – 1964 Chelsea, London
9. Eileen Maria G RODRIGUEZ 1905 Western Australia – 1958 Wales
10. Thomas Angelo Tim RODRIGUEZ 1908 Broome WA –

Death: 4 January 1942 in St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, Perth, Western Australia

Burial: Karrakatta cemetery, Perth, with his Second Wife. His first wife Maud is buried in the Broome Pioneers Cemetery, Western Australia

Legacy: 1. Pioneer of Filipino-Australia goodwill; 2. Catholic duty and Faithfulness in leading his community to take up public duty & giving; 3. an Example of patriotic & generous service to Australia (He lost his eldest son in WW1 France); 4. he pioneered a family of Catholic lay leaders in support of the Faith.

FROM: - Filomeno Rodriguez, Master Pearler (1864-1943) - by Michel Prevost (Rodriguez family history)

EMIGRATION

What is known from Filomeno himself is that he came to Cossack, on the west coast of Western Australia, in 1886 from Thursday Island and the pearling grounds in the Torres Straits, the North-West Cape and New Guinea waters. At the time, pearling in the Torres Straits had become exhausted and the majority of boats sailed west to work on the Northwestern coast of Australia. The major pearling centre in Western Australia was Cossack and Filomeno worked there as a hard-hat diver reaching depths as much as 40 fathoms.

MARRIAGE
Whilst pearling in Cossack, Filomeno met the Miller family, John Samuel and Caroline, who had moved to Western Australia from South Australia and formed a partnership. In 1890 Filomeno married their eldest daughter Maud in the Cossack schoolhouse

Filomeno worked as a diver in the Cossack region for some time before setting up on his own account. Starting in a small way, he gradually extended his business until he became owner of a fleet of 14 luggers with an accompanying schooner acting as ‘mother’ ship.

BUSINESS in BROOME
He personally superintended the work of his fleet, which for many years were held principally in his wife’s name. His first three children were born on board his main ship (possibly either the ‘Voladora’ or the ‘Aurora’) before he purchased the 112 ton schooner/brigantine ‘Sree Pas Sair’ previously owned by the Streeter consortium. The fourth of his ten children, Verona, was born on board this new acquisition on Christmas Day 1895.
[Most of his luggers were named after Filomeno Rodriguez's children: Donna Matilda, Don Percival, Donna Verona etc. Don Joseph† named after his second son, disappeared at sea.] Having acquired considerable property in Broome, Filomeno practically retired from active participation in the pearling industry although he retained an interest in a couple of boats. His fascination for the industry in which he had been so deeply concerned was too great to let him relinquish his involvement altogether

- Daisy Bates wrote: " In July, the two priests and I were under way for the port of Broome, from which we were to tranship to Beagle Bay. At Broome the Sree pas Sair, at one time the yacht of Rajah Brooke, was placed at our disposal. It had been stripped of every comfort. Cleanliness there was none, as it was the "feeding-lugger" of the pearling-boats owned by a Manila-man (Filomena Rodriguez), and brought back the shell from the luggers. After an interesting voyage round the fleets in the Sree pas Sair, we returned to Broome, and with three of the Trappists waiting there, loaded up the yacht... We all worked hard at the loading and packing of the lugger, and in the
beginning of August the Sree pas Sair set out northward. There were eight of us on board-the Bishop, the Dean, the acting abbot, two brothers, Xavier and Sebastian, the owner and helmsman, his Malay uncle and a small Malay child. We reached Beagle Bay on the high tide that rises thirty feet in a few hours, and the whaleboats took us, and eventually the stores, to land." from : The Passing of The Aborigines

Elizabeth Salter, biographer of Daisy Bates, writes: "THE LONELY MISSION: - It was to be a crucial three months, beginning with an even longer boat trip of a thousand miles up the west coast to Broome. They were met by the acting aboot, Father Nicholas (EMO) and Filomena Rodriguez, skipper of the Sree Pas Sair that was to take them in three days time to Beagle Bay." from 'Daisy Bates'

COUNCILLOR & PROPRIETOR
At the turn of the century (1900) Filomeno served on the Broome Municipal Council. He retired on the 24 th December 1905. At the same time, in about 1904 the house called 'Gantheaume' was built on the Fremantle-Perth Road (now Stirling Highway). His parents-in-law, John and Caroline Miller moved down to Perth to live and to take care of the Rodriguez children as they reached school age. Filomeno and Maud would travel down to Perth during the lay season when the boats were laid up for maintenance and repair during the cyclone season.
In time, Filomeno’s properties included the Weld Club Hotel, which burnt down in 1905. A new hotel named the Continental Gardens Hotel was immediately built on the same site, though over time the ‘Gardens’ in the name was gradually dropped. The hotel became the centre of the town’s social life with patrons sipping cooling drinks in the sumptuous tropical gardens and live stage shows. Later films were presented on the verandah and the stage that was erected central of the gardens and which eventually became a fernery. Pearlers were notorious for holding lavish celebrations on the slightest pretext. Filomeno also owned a number of houses and about 10 building blocks sited in desirable locations.

The Rodriguez family were well known and respected in Broome for their charitable work. Maud was involved in a wide variety of fundraising and charitable activities; a brief article in the Broome Chronicle dated 4th January 1915 typifies this philanthropy:

Mr and Mrs Rodriguez invite all the children of Broome to the Continental Gardens on Monday evening next, when a number of pictures will be screened and toys from a heavily laden and brightly illuminated New Year’s Tree will be freely distributed. It will be remembered that a similar evening last year was well attended and highly appreciated.

Filomeno’s beloved wife Maud died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1921 and she is buried in the Broome Pioneer cemetery. Filomeno is listed as living in the Continental Hotel in the 1925 electoral rolls. New licensees placed the hotel under independent management. In 1928 Mr and Mrs Alf Locke became owner/managers of the hotel and stayed in possession until 1950.
In 1931 Filomeno married Mary Mathews whom he had met onboard ship on the way to Melbourne to attend a Eucharistic Congress. They lived in a small cottage in Barnfield Road, Claremont, alongside the railway line. Mary developed severe diabetes resulting in the amputation of both lower limbs. A live in carer was arranged to look after their needs.
Filomeno died 4th January 1943 aged 78 at Barnfield Road, Claremont, Perth.

286+. = Rosendo SALVADO O.S.B. (Order of Saint Benedict) Founder & Abbot of New Norcia, Western Australia
Birth: 1 March 1814 - Tuy, Spain
Cultural Heritage: Spanish
Religious Influence: Catholic
Occupation: Catholic bishop, Catholic missionary, Catholic religious brother, composer, Indigenous culture recorder, protector of Aboriginals
Death: 29 December 1900 Rome, Italy

From ADB Online

Salvado, Rosendo (1814–1900)

by Dom William

Rosendo Salvado (1814-1900), Benedictine monk, missionary and author, was born on 1 March 1814 at Tuy, Spain, the son of Peter Salvado and his wife Francisca Rotea. The Salvado was a long-lived and musical family. Wealth at home favoured Salvado's musical bent, but he pledged his vigour and talent to a higher cause. At 15 he entered the Benedictine abbey of St Martin at Compostela, was clothed in the habit on 24 July 1829, and took his three religious vows a year later.

In the new monk, music found more than a dilettante. The distinction won after a two-year course in organ-playing secured for him the post of first organist at St Martin's in 1832. He was also an accomplished pianist and a composer. None of his music was printed but there are extant some of his sacred compositions written for his Western Australian Aboriginals and for convicts in Fremantle gaol, and a major work Fantasia, with variations and finale.

At 18 he added the study of liberal arts and philosophy to his duties as organist. The repose of the cloister was disturbed by the Spanish revolutionaries, who in 1835 decreed the closing of convents and the secularization of monks. Three years of patient waiting saw no end to the conflict, so in September 1838 he set out for Naples to be incorporated with the abbey of La Cava. There he was ordained priest in February 1839, and was instrumental in giving the abbey an organ which for mechanism, range and tone could rival the best in Europe.

This was the prelude to Salvado's great epic. His philanthropy prompted him to flee his organ and its glory and to choose instead the retreat of a distant mission field. The Sydney mission under Bishop John Bede Polding was first proposed, but Dr John Brady's consecration in Rome for the new see of Perth led to a change of mind. Salvado and his Benedictine confrère, Joseph Benedict Serra, were assigned to the bishop's missionary party. They sailed from London in the Elizabeth and landed at Fremantle in January 1846.

Salvado was dedicated to what he believed the highest ideal in life, the reclaiming of souls. Monk first and apostle second, he wanted to use his talents on behalf of a raw colony where things had to be created. As an apostle he set up a system of Aboriginal education that surprised learned men, and as a monk he poured out his heart in prayer and applied the Benedictine Rule that made labour a duty of existence.

With Serra, whose main associate he was, he wound his way along a hundred miles (161 km) of bush track to a spot in the Victoria Plains, where on 1 March 1846 he established a mission for the training of Aboriginals; it was first named Central as the centre of proposed outlying Aboriginal missions, and later New Norcia, after Norcia, Italy, the birthplace of St Benedict. Hunger soon drove him back to Perth to give a one-man piano concert for which he was paid £1 from each of his audience of seventy music lovers. That saved his mission, but all through the formative years of New Norcia, 1846-67, he lived by 'the sweat of his brow'. Dressed in dungarees, he looked nothing like the Catholic prelate of Protestant imagination. He drove his bullock cart, felled trees, ploughed, sowed and planted to turn the desert into a land rich in corn, wine and honey. Through his Rule he became a mystic, but a sociable one, fervent in seeking the Aboriginals, roaming with them and sharing their bush life. With a physique 'enduring as marble' he set hard standards that only Serra, out of a party of five, could share. But Serra too had to quit when he was appointed to the see of Port Victoria in 1848 and next year coadjutor in the diocese of Perth, and Salvado was left to shape anew the mission.

The change from nomadic to settled life started with the building of an abbey, round which the village came to be built. Here he gathered his Murara-Murara, Victoria Plains Aboriginals, and set about teaching them to work and to be Christians. By the method of inference he built ideas on ideas, his Western culture upon Aboriginal culture. Through their spears and boomerangs he taught the value and meaning of property and ownership. Soon his pupils were adept in husbandry, handicrafts and stockwork, many of them becoming first-class ploughmen, teamsters and farm workers. However, their poor physical strength and indolence hindered them from developing into responsible farmers.

According to Florence Nightingale, it was in Salvado's school that 'the grafting of civilizing habits on unreclaimed races was gradually accomplished'. The stone-age man had held his own against his surroundings; when the nimbleness, skill, endurance and rhythmical motion of the race were guided from the corroboree to the bat and ball, to brass and string music, the Murara-Murara became the heroes of the cricket field and of the music room. Salvado's Aboriginal colony supplied Mivart with the strongest argument to refute his opponent Charles Darwin on 'the essential bestiality of man'. It also gave to the world the first two black post-mistresses and telegraph operators, the one half-caste, the other full blood.

From the beginning Salvado believed that progress at New Norcia was checked by dependence on the bishop of Perth. Sent to Europe in 1849 to raise funds he also pressed the case for New Norcia's home rule. In August he was consecrated bishop of Port Victoria in the Northern Territory. The closing of the garrison settlement deprived him of subjects before he left Italy and, while he waited in Naples for new orders from Rome, he wrote his Memorie Storiche dell'Australia Particolarmente della Missione Benedettina di Nuova Norcia (Rome, 1851); the first part was historical but the second and third dealt con amore with New Norcia and the Murara-Murara. This large work was published in Spanish in 1853, French in 1854, but never in English. Contemporary reviews judged it 'a liberal book appealing to the mind and to the heart'.

In 1853 Salvado was sent back to Western Australia. He administered the see of Perth while Bishop Serra was absent in Europe. Four years later he returned to New Norcia with renewed zeal to pursue his purposes for the mission of which he was named temporary administrator in 1859. But his prayer for home rule was not answered until 12 March 1867 when a papal decree gave Bishop Salvado of Port Victoria the additional title of Lord Abbot of New Norcia for life.

With greater freedom the mission entered a second period, 1867-1900, in which Salvado gave wider expression to the part of agriculture in monastic labour and took a leading part in shaping legislation on behalf of the Aboriginals. He and his monks had grown their daily bread by labour; now his journeys across a far-flung wild country looking for pastures and water and opening new tracks were to be as important for colonial expansion as for the mission. His efforts in seeking legal equality for whites and blacks in matters where the two races were equally concerned influenced the amendment in 1875 of the 1871 Bastardy Act and the addition of clause 5 to the 1874 Industrial Schools Act; the one could be invoked to enjoin an Aboriginal child's maintenance on its putative white father, and the other ensured the education of an Aboriginal minor by enabling mission managers to become the child's lawful guardians. His election as protector of Aboriginal natives in June 1887 was a deserved distinction and it made legal what had long been accepted in practice.

Never content with his empty title of bishop of Port Victoria, Salvado was relieved when it was changed to the titular bishop of Adriana in March 1889. In the work of reclaiming some seven hundred of his uncircumcised Murara-Murara and providing them with a means of living, he finally broke through tribal boundaries and won over to him 101 of the circumcised across the border. He loved them all to the end. After securing the future of his mission, he died in Rome on 29 December 1900, calling his distant piccanninies one by one. His remains were brought to Western Australia in June 1903 and re-buried in the tomb of Carrara marble behind the high altar in the church of his beloved New Norcia.

Select Bibliography
F. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals (Lond, 1863)
J. Flood, New Norcia (Lond, 1908)
H. N. Birt, Benedictine Pioneers in Australia, vol 2 (Lond, 1911)
Royal Commission on Condition of the Natives, Report, Parliamentary Papers (Western Australia), 1905 (5), evidence 2021-93
R. Rios, History of New Norcia (Archives, New Norcia)
Salvado papers (Archives, New Norcia).

287. Bob’ Bartolemeo A. SANTAMARIA , Brunswick VIC ~1998

288. Saunders sisters: NELLIE 'Nellie' Harriet Eleanor SAUNDERS - a Missionary, from Melbourne, Australia. Martyred as a China Inland Missionary. Killed by the 'Vegetarian Fanatics' in Kucheng, CHINA on the 1st August 1895.

Harriette Elinor (Nellie) Saunders was born in Brighton, Melbourne, on April 17th, 1871. Nellie, unusually for an Australian missionary, had
matriculated.

Nellie Saunders

TOPSY. Topsy SAUNDERS from Melbourne, Victoria. China Inland Missionary. Killed by the mob of 'Vegetarian Fanatics' in Kucheng, CHINA on the 1st August 1895.

Elizabeth Maud (Topsy) Saunders was born on July 30th 1873, also in Brighton, Melbourne, Victoria. Their father was John Alexander Saunders, a London-born merchant, who died in 1876. Their mother was Eliza née Arabin Saunders, born Westmeath, his second wife. After her husband’s death Mrs. Saunders moved the family to ‘The Willows,’ Normanby Road, Kew, in the then outer northeastern edge of Melbourne’s metropolitan area. Topsy Saunders may have been the youngest missionary ever sent by the Australian Anglicans to China, or anywhere else for that matter.

Topsy Saunders

289. = John SAUNDERS, baptist Sydney NSW

290. 'GAHGOOK’ Mr Joseph SHAW ~ Yelta and Coranderrk missions

'GAHGOOK’ Mr Joseph SHAW
Born: abt 1839 Bradfield, Yorkshire, England, Great Britain
Father: Joseph SHAW (1804 - ?) farmer on 76 acres with on Labourer, Bradfield, Yorkshire
Mother: Elizabeth BUCKLEY (1909- ? )
Christianity:
Cultural Influence:
Emigration: maybe? Arr: Melbourne in December 1861 per 'COMMODORE PERRY" age 22
Marriage: 1871 Victoria, Australia
Wife: Jessie Nivison 'Hamilton' SMITH (1842 Dumfrieshire, Scotland – 1925 Healesville). Daughter of Thomas Smith & Jessie Nevisiin & young widow of Thomas Hamilton
Children: 1. Joseph Ernest SHAW (1873 Sth Melb.– 1957 Healesville); 2. Grace Marion Ethel SHAW (1874 Tarnagulla, Vic. – 1956); 3. Margaret Alice Priscilla SHAW (1876 Tarnagulla, Vic.– 1943); 4. James Alexander SHAW (1877 Tarnagulla, Vic. – 1880 Poonindie Mission Station); 5. Herbert Albert SHAW (1879 – 1945); 6. William Buckley SHAW (1880 – 1880)Poonindie Mission Station, SA.

Mission 1. Yelta, Lower Murray, opposite Wentworth, NSW
Mission 2. Poonindie Mission Station, Flinders District, South Australia
Mission 3. Coranderrk, Healesville, Victoria

Death: 14 March 1909 in Healesville, Upper Yarra valley, Victoria,

291. = 'Rod' Samuel Rodolphe SCHENK, Wongutha, Laverton WA
Son of John Francis SCHENK (born Scotland) & his wife Elizabeth née BELL (born Newlyn, nr Creswick, Victoria)
Born: 29 October 1888 Macorna, Kerang, in the Murray Valley of Victoria, Australia
Died: 7 August 1969 Esperence, Western Australia
Heritage: Scots-Australian

ADB ONLINE
Schenk, Rodolphe Samuel (1888–1969) - by R. H. W. Reece

Rodolphe Samuel Schenk (1888-1969), missionary, was born on 29 October 1888 at Macorna, Victoria, son of John Francis Schenk, a Scottish-born stationmaster, and his Victorian-born wife Elizabeth, née Bell. He attended a New South Wales interdenominational theological college and in 1917 joined the United Aborigines' Mission. From Walgett, where he built a bag church and a wooden hut for himself, he ministered to Aboriginal communities, travelling long distances by motor cycle, addressing meetings and making converts. In 1920 he spent four months in Melbourne preparing for a new mission on the Western Australian goldfields.

Choosing the old Mount Margaret goldfield, he leased its common and began to erect huts and raise goats to finance provision of rations. Soon groups of Aborigines came to 'sit down' at the mission and helped to build fences, shepherd goats and pull sandalwood. His success in attracting Aborigines and his policy of paying them modest wages antagonized local pastoralists who tried to sabotage the mission and have it moved into the desert.

In Melbourne on 14 October 1922 Schenk married Isobel May Johnston, a typist; at Mount Margaret she taught crafts to the women. The products helped to finance the mission, as did the publication of Schenk's 'prayer letters' by the U.A.M. and concerts given by the Mount Margaret Minstrels. School classes began in 1926 and from 1932 Mrs Mary Bennett taught there; it was in basic literacy and numeracy, craft and vocational training that the mission made its greatest impact.

Mount Margaret had been secure from 1927 when police began to entrust Aborigines of part-descent who were state wards to Schenk's care rather than to the Moore River government settlement north of Perth. This was approved by the chief protector of Aborigines Auber Neville, who strengthened Schenk's hand by making the mission a central rationing station. Thirty children were accommodated in the first Graham Home by 1930; parents were encouraged to settle at the mission—unlike the dormitory-based régimes of other Aboriginal institutions. The mission used a 'no work, no rations' formula; earning opportunities expanded with the installation of a small ore-crushing battery, and low-grade alluvial ore was exploited by Aboriginal miners. Others learned carpentry, shearing and station work.

Schenk originally purchased miners' huts and building material which he reassembled at Mount Margaret; the Depression allowed him to buy more buildings. Water was a problem but medical facilities were provided by Mrs Bennett's gift of the Christison Memorial Hospital in 1936. By 1933 the European staff at Mount Margaret numbered ten, there were forty-one students at the school and the mission had the appearance of a regular township.

Difficulties surfaced when Aboriginal elders resisted Schenk's unsympathetic and fundamentalist interference with traditional practices. He opposed infanticide, the ritual drinking of blood, the use of sacred boards (which he thought were deified), and in-law avoidance laws which undermined his mass meetings. While not conversant with the local languages, he advised his subordinates to learn them and his daughters became fluent.

Mount Margaret was visited in 1930 by Adolphus Peter Elkin and Phyllis Kaberry who hoped to conduct field-work there. Elkin later criticized Schenk's attitude to traditional Aboriginal beliefs; in turn the missionary accused the anthropologists of fostering 'works of darkness' and 'the resurgence of the devil'. However, J. B. Birdsell and Norman Tindale, who came in 1939, thought Mount Margaret 'the best solution to the pressing half-caste problem'. Supporting the mission's assimilationist approach, Tindale predicted that it would become less relevant to Aborigines as they entered white society. Nevertheless, Schenk bitterly opposed the 'merge' and 'absorb' policy for Aborigines of mixed descent which Neville advocated; he resented the chief protector's complaint that the growing Mount Margaret population was undermining assimilation.

After World War II outside employment attracted many older residents but they were replaced by tribal people from the Central Reserve. Schenk had contributed to setting up another U.A.M. settlement at Warburton Range in 1933.

In 1954 Schenk retired to his farm near Esperance where he died on 7 August 1969, survived by his wife, three daughters and son. He had been one of the best mission administrators, his management skills ensuring his unpaid staff's continuity of service. His reading on developments in Africa influenced his educational policies and he was regarded as an authority on Aboriginal affairs. Many Mount Margaret people found responsible jobs and the mission became an important reference point for Aborigines' emerging identity.

Select Bibliography
H. P. Smith (ed), The First Ten Years of Mt Margaret, W.A. (Melb, 1933)
R. M. and C. H. Berndt (eds), Aborigines of the West (Perth, 1979)
R. W. Schenk and M. R. Morgan (compilers), Father's Photos (Albany, WA, 1983)
M. R. Morgan, A Drop in the Bucket (Melb, 1986)
S. Judd and K. Cable, Sydney Anglicans (Syd, 1987)
University Studies in Western Australian History, vol 3, no 4, 1960
West Australian, 14 Aug 1969
J. E. Stanton, Conflict, Change and Stability at Mt Margaret: an Aboriginal Community in Transition (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Australia, 1984).

Ian Duckham writes: 'Victorian Rodolphe Schenk began evangelising the Wongutha Aboriginal people of the Western Desert in 1921. When he departed the
area 32 years later, he left behind a small town with a school, store, garage,
hospital, Aboriginal-owned cottages, and an industrial training facility.
Was he a social visionary, an unsalaried government ‘vassal’ doling out
welfare services, or a cultural ‘vandal’ responsible for the wilful destruction
of tribal culture? The common theme in scholarly analysis of Australian
missions is that of failure and cultural destruction. However, in 1996 more
Western Desert Aborigines per capita claimed the Christian faith than non Aboriginal Australians.'

REFERENCE: -1. Ian Duckham - Visionary, Vassal or Vandal? Rod Schenk - Missionary: A Case Study in Western Desert Missions. - published in 'LIMINA' Volume 6, 2000 - Online
2. John HARRIS - 'ONE BLOOD:

292. Johann Theophilus SCHLEICHER -

Johann Theophilus SCHLEICHER was born abt 1816 in Schreibersdorf, Kreis Lauban, Schlesien, Preussen. As a young man from Silesia, Prussia, he found his way with missionary purpose, first to Berlin, and then by 10th August 1842 to Hamburg for departure to England, arriving in Hull ten days later. In England he was trained and sent to the East, and it was in West Bengal, British India in 1843 that he received Holy Orders of the Church of England, ordained by the Bishop of Calcutta. He afterwards became a Missionary of the Society For The Propogation of The Gospel in Foreign Parts, in British India, Burma and the Far East, until about 1853.
During that time he married twice; first at Allahabad, Benares, India, on the 7 October 1844 to Sophia Maria Dorothea WEHNER (1819-1845), who, sadly, died on 16th October 1845 at Christs Church, Cawnpore, India after giving birth to a son, 1. Theodore Athanasias Schleicher.
In about 1850, he married Caroline Maria SCHULZE (1822-1897), who was to bear him nine Schleicher children.
They were:
2. Adalbert Theophilus Schleicher (1851-1924 Hunters Hill, Sydney);
3. Alfred Waldemar Schleicher, born 1852 Cawnpore, West Bengal;
4. Caroline Henriette Schleicher, born 1852 Cawnpore, West Bengal and died in 1865 on the Merri Creek, Melbourne;
5. Hermann Erdmann 'Edmund' Schleicher was born 1853 at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa;
6. Marie Sophie Schleicher born in 1855 at Myniong, Ballan, nr Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia.
7. Salome Theodora 'Selma' Schlecher 20 November 1857 Myrniong-Ballan,
8. Bernard Alexander Schleicher 30 July 1859 Myrniong-Ballan, Bacchus Marsh
9. Hulda Caroline Schleicher b.6 Sept 1861 Myrniong, Vic., - 1925 Ryde, NSW
10. Clara Theophilia Schleicher b. 1865 Sydney, New South Wales

From 1861 to 1870 Rev. J. T. Scheicher became the Clergyman-Minister of "All Saints" - Hunters Hill Church of England Chapel, near Ryde, Sydney, NSW.

In 1867 the Rev. J. T. Schleicher was the Reader in German Language and Literature at the University of Sydney.

In late 1868 the Rev. J. T. Schleicher was appointed as Anglican Chaplain to the Prison establishment at Cockatoo Island, NSW.

Rev. Johann Theophilius Schleicher was Church of England Chaplain to the Hospital for the Insane at Gladesville until about May 1870.

During an interim in 1871 he was doing church work at Islington, London, England.

From the 31st January 1877 he became the Rector at Castle Hill, Sydney, NSW a position he served in until 30 November 1885.

In retirement he served as Minister at large in Sydney. Rev. John Theophilus Schleicher died in his 77th year on the 2 May 1892 at 'Johannesberg,' Gladesville, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Schleicher's second wife Caroline Maria survived him, dying at age 75 on the 2nd March 1897 at Gladesville, Sydney, NSW. Both he and his wife were buried in the Church of England cemetery at the Field of Mars, Sydney

His son Bernard Alexander Schleicher followed his father into the church and became the Reverend B A Schleicher. Rev. B. A. Scheicher gave great honour to the parentage of Christianity from the Jews, and had a particular ministry with Hebrews through the Y.M.C.A. in Pitt Street, Sydney, where he honoured Abraham as "The Jew who Blessed the World." "He said that the promise given to Abraham 'In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed" had been fulfilled, and was being increasinly fulfilled in the spread of the knowledge of the true Messiah. To a great extent the Christian religion was the same as the religion of Abraham. The real difference between Judaisim and Christianity was the difference between the seed and the flower..." He became a Professor of New Testament (and Biblical Criticism), then Principal of the Moore Park Theological College and Seminary (Church of England) in Newtown, Sydney. In 1893 he was a vigorous Christian Apologist and defender of the Gospels as the 'inmost Citadel of Christianity.' by giving public lectures courtesy of the Lay helpers association on the historial evidence for the Early Origin and Authenticity of the Gospels. Reverend B A Schleicher was the Anglican Primate of Australia by 1893. He died suddenly in late February 1897. On his death the Anglican Synod recognised "the loss to the church in Australia that has been sustain by the death of the Rev. B. A. Schleicher, Principal of Moore's College, and expressed its sympathy with the widow and family...He was recognised as a man of deep piety, learning and ability, calculated to a great work in the church..."

His son Theodore Athanasias Schleicher became a Licensed Surveyor, working with Messrs Atchinson & Schleicher, from the Eldon Chambers, Sydney, and stood for public office and was elected alderman for Hunter's Hill in 1894 and was twice Mayor of Hunters Hill, in 1896-1897 and 1914-1915. Theodore Athanasias Schleicher died at Fig-Tree Road, Hunters Hill in September 1924. He was also buried in the Church of England cemetery at the Field of Mars, Sydney.

From the Schleicher family Tree

In 1855 John Theophilus and Caroline Maria (nee Schulze) Schleicher arrived on Australian shores from Cape Province South Africa, having spent the previous two years in South Africa. It was here that my grandfather Herman Edmund was born. The Schleichers had come with their two young sons Adelbert Theophilus and Alfred Waldemar from India, where the two boys were born in Cawnpore, West Bengal, in 1851 and 1852 respectively. The parents had been missionaries in India for ten years and John T. was ordained into the ministry of the Church of England church by the Bishop of Calcutta. He married Sophia Wehner in 1845, and a child was born to them in that same year.. I have not yet seen any records as to the fate of mother and child, but feel that they may not have survived, as John T. married my great grandmother Caroline M. in 1850..

Soon after their arrival in Australia Rev. John T. Schleicher took up his appointment as officiating minister in Ballan near Bacchus Marsh Victoria. He applied for his Naturalisation and was granted the privilege of being a British subject in 1857. Five children were born to the couple, Mary Augusta, Selma Theodora, Bernard Alexander, Hulda Caroline and Clara Theophila. Two of these girls would be the first two Deaconesses ordained in the Church of England in Australia. Bernard attaining the highest degree of achievement at Oxford University, and as the Rev. B. A. Schleicher in Spitalfields and Sheerness parishes in UK, and Principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney 1891-1897. Adelbert T. also was a well known member of Sydney business world, as a Surveyor (Atchison and Schleicher in Pitt St Sydney) and was an alderman and Mayor of Hunters Hill for two terms. Schleicher Street in the suburb of St. Mary's is named after him. Alfred W. lived in Sussex and Denbighshire in UK and died there. My grandfather Herman E. married my grandmother Elizabeth Jane Laws in Sydney 1895 and soon after came to live in Western Australia. These were "goldrush days", and they settled in Brown Hill, a small suburb of Kalgoorlie/Boulder (East Coolgardie) which was in the hub of goldmining activities near Fimiston. There they raised a family of six children and one grandchild,(Florrie Johns). Maud, Herman (Snow), and Winifred were born in Sydney, and Clara(decd), Cyril (father of Esme and me), and Doris (Doll), were all born in Kalgoorlie/Boulder district. After the death of Elizabeth Jane, the family broke up - Maud, Herman Jnr. and Winifred were already married, but Herman Snr. and Doris moved on to the Wagin/Katanning area, and Cyril remained in Kalgoorlie (he was only 16 at that time). He later married a Brown Hill girl, Vera Lyon, fathering my sister Esme Carolene, and myself. This is the beginning of our particular family line. My sister Esme now has two daughters and four grandchildren, and I have 3 children , 12 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Maybe there will be a budding "family historian" ready to take up the history from here? I sincerely hope so!!!

REFERENCE:
1. Schleicher Family Tree on Ancestry.com
2. Australain Newspapers
3. Rev B.A. Schleicher- the historic Episcopate : a sermon preached in St Stephen's Newtown on Sunday 19th May 1895 by he Rev. B.A. Schleicher [State Library of NSW)

293.

294. = Luis Ludwig Gustav SCHULZE, Hermannsburg, NT

Pastor Louis Gustav SCHULZE,– Lutheran Missionary & Clergyman
Pastor Louis Gustav SCHULZE, son of Gustav Adolph SCHULZE born 1st Marz 1851 Kleinvoigtsberg, Sachsen, Deutschland. Graduated Hermmansburg Free Church Seminary, Ülzen, 1877/ To Australia – Finke River Mission 1878-1891. To Victoria: Germantown (grovedale) 1893-1912. At the age of 29 Luis Ludwig Gustav Schulze was married to 25-year-old Charlotte Elisabeth Henriette Margarette GUTMANN, daughter of Wilhelm Gutmann, at the Lutheran (Evangelische ) Kirch at Bethanien (Bethany), in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. Children were: 1. Maria Charlotte Dorothea Schulze – born 25 Feb 1882 in the MacDonnell Ranges, Central Australia. 2. Gustav Wilhelm Johannes Schulz – born 18 Aug 1884 at the Hermannsburg Mission Station, Central Australia; 3. Heinrich Friedrich Christian Schulze – born 28 April 1887 Hermannsburg (NT); 4. Anna Maria Schulze – born 21 July 1889 at Hermannsburg Mission Station (NT); 5. Christiane Marie Louise Schulze – born 26 March 1891 at Hermannsburg, NT; 6 . Hermann Luis Wilhelm SCHULZE – born 1893 Geelong, Victoria; and 7. Dorothea Henriette Louise Schulze – born 1897 Geelong, Vic. Pastor Luis Gustav SCHULZE died in 7 November 1924.

295. Clamor W SCHÜRMANN Torrens River, SA, Hamilton, VIC

296. Wilhelm Friedrich SCHWARZ,Hermannsburg, NT

Pastor Wilhelm Friedrich SCHWARZ,- Lutheran Missionary & Clergyman
Pastor Wilhelm Friedrich SCHWARZ, son of Johann Friedrich SCHWARZ, was born 20 March 1842 Duermenz, Königreich Würrtemberg. Graduated Hermmansburg Free Church Seminary, Ülzen, Deutschland. To Australia. Schwartz was a Missionary at Finke River Mission 1870 - 1889. On the 31st May 1878 at age 36, Pastor Schwarz was married to Miss Anna Wilhelmine Charlotte Dorothea SCHULZ, daughter of Heinrich SCHULZ at the Hermansburg Mission Station in the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. Their children were: 1. Karoline Rosine Dorothea SCHWARZ born 19 March 1970 at the Hermannsburg Mission station in the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. 2. Hermann Wilhelm Friedrich SCHWARZ born on the 11th July 1882 Hermannsburg Mission station in the MacDonnell Ranges of Central Australia. 3. Christian Heinrich Johannes SCHWARZ – born 22 Febriary 1886 at Hermannsburg NT; and 4. Paul Heinrich Ernst SCHWARZ – born 27th November 1887 at Hermannsburg Mission Station.
Schwarz was sent to the Upper Moutere, New Zealamd 1891-1901. He was then the Travelling Missionary in South Australia 1905-1915. Pastor Wilhelm Friedrich Schwarz Died 20 March 1920 at Eudunda, South Australia, age 78. His wife Wilhelmine Dorothea Schwarz survived him to die at age 83 at Eudunda on the 16th November 1934.

297. James SERVICE - Church of Christ lay-leader, Co-Founder of the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Political Leader, Premier of Victoria

From ADB Online

Service, James (1823–1899)

by Geoffrey Serle

James Service (1823-1899), businessman and politician, was born on 27 November 1823 at Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland, son of Robert Service (1799-1883), sewing agent, and his wife Agnes, née Niven.

About 1838 Robert moved from Kilwinning to near-by Saltcoats and then to Glasgow; he was converted from Presbyterianism to the Churches of Christ via the Baptists, and became a rash and zealous preacher on the Glasgow Green.

James was educated at Kilwinning and at Glasgow College, and was intended for the kirk. He was about to enrol at the University of Glasgow when his father was converted but, emulating his piety and devotedness, he became a schoolmaster after a brief period in a Glasgow office. James was reared on the Charter: his father was a staunch 'moral forcer' and supporter of Joseph Sturge, and his uncle William Service was a 'veteran reformer'. James opened his own small school at Saltcoats but about 1845 he contracted tuberculosis, had to rest for twelve months and abandoned teaching. In 1846 he joined the tea and coffee business of Thomas Corbett & Co. in Glasgow, and became a partner in the early 1850s.

Possibly largely for his health, Service migrated to Victoria in 1853 in the Abdallah, as a representative of Corbett & Co.; he bought a 'marvellously assorted' range of goods well suited to inflated demand. His parents soon followed him, and for thirty years his father was active in the temperance movement and in radical politics; a leader of the Churches of Christ, he edited their weekly Melbourne Medley, preached every Sunday on the wharves and was a founder of the Sunday Free Discussion Society about 1870. James began as a general importer and indentor in Bourke Street; in 1854 his former pupil James Ormond joined him and about 1860 they moved into distribution and developed a large country business. R. J. Alcock in 1886 became the third partner in James Service & Co., which specialized in Robur tea and became agents for companies such as Bryant and May, the German Australian Steamship Co. and the Standard Oil Co. of New York. Located by 1872 on a corner of Collins and William streets, the firm rebuilt after being burned out in 1892; by this time it had opened a London branch. In the 1870s Service was also linked with another former pupil Archibald Currie in his steamship line trading with India and the East.

Service had spent his first weeks in the colony in 'Canvas Town'; he gained experience in the local politics of near-by Emerald Hill, becoming the most prominent leader in the campaign for emancipation from the Melbourne Town Council. Emerald Hill was the first to break away and he was chairman of the 'model municipality' for its first two years and of the local bench of magistrates. In 1855 the locals refused to pay Melbourne rates any longer and the Melbourne Council sent the bailiffs to remove Service's furniture; in his absence John Nimmo rallied a crowd with a fire-bell to repulse them. When the Hobson's Bay Railway Co. planned to bypass Emerald Hill on its line to St Kilda, Service brought the company to terms by using regulations to place obstructions in the way and threatening to have anyone arrested who removed them. He was remembered twenty-five years later as the great local hero when he received a reception on the laying of the foundations of the new South Melbourne municipal building. In 1856 he was chairman of (Sir) Andrew Clarke's committee of electors, and was well known as a red-hot Chartist radical who, for example, had led the cheers for John Dunmore Lang when he spoke in Melbourne in January 1855 on the land question. In March 1857 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for Melbourne and next month seconded the motion that defeated the first O'Shanassy ministry. He was prominent as an anti-Catholic in the Constitutional Association opposing the second O'Shanassy ministry, lost the contest for Emerald Hill in 1859, but was then elected for Ripon and Hampden. He had succeeded William Westgarth as the spokesman for advanced liberal mercantile thought, and joined William Nicholson's ministry in October, as president of the Board of Land and Works.

The land bill which Service introduced in January 1860 largely met the demands of the Land Convention. Its main features were sale of 80- (32 ha) to 320-acre (130 ha) blocks, after immediate survey of four million acres (1,618,760 ha), at £1 an acre with deferred payments of up to three-quarters of the amount and severe penalties for non-improvement. Auction was to be retained only for town lots and country land of special value; some selection before survey was envisaged. He was sincere in his desire to wipe out the 'social evil' of land monopoly; in the meantime the squatters were to be helped to buy more of their runs as a last chance. The bill passed the assembly without difficulty, but when returned from the council it had 250 amendments. The assembly stood firm on the vital points but the council refused to budge.

Service was 'miserably disappointed': the council's behaviour had produced a 'monster grievance'. He now carried a motion that the bill be returned intact to the council, and threatened the squatters with an obscure Order in Council of 1850 by which governments could state the conditions of tenants on leaseholds. With council adamant, Service and James Francis resigned from the ministry on 3 August knowing that their colleagues were prepared to submit. Nicholson then resigned and Duffy and Richard Heales almost succeeded in forming a ministry which Service refused to join. Nicholson returned to office, the left overplayed its hand by storming parliament on 28 August, with the result that the Nicholson Act was passed in a travesty of its original form and proved almost useless. Service had allied himself with the conventionists on the land question in an attempt to make Nicholson fight the issue out. 'Had they secured a single principle for all the fighting and blood and dirt through which they had been dragged?', he asked. He refused the lands portfolio in the Heales ministry of 1860-61, probably because of its protectionist leanings. He also rejected a place in the O'Shanassy ministry in 1861 and fought to radicalize the Duffy Act of 1862; O'Shanassy several times urged him to join the Opposition. Service lost by only one vote an amendment to limit pastoral tenure to three years.

He proved to be an advanced liberal in several other fields. In 1858 he carried provision in the estimates for state aid to the Jewish religion. In 1862 he worked closely with Heales and George Higinbotham in forcing through the Common Schools Act against the O'Shanassy government. With the support of the Chamber of Commerce, the same year he carried the Torrens reform of land transfer as a private bill against the government and the lawyers. In 1859 he was chairman of a select committee which examined the possibility of a harbour trust for the port of Melbourne.

In August 1862 Service took the first of three breaks from politics caused by health worries. For more than two years he enjoyed himself, spending most of his time on the Continent, especially in Italy. On his return he was at odds with most of his former radical associates, deploring the McCulloch-Higinbotham government's protectionism and its coercion of the Legislative Council. As a fighting free trader he lost West Ballarat in 1865, Collingwood in 1868 and West Melbourne in 1871; he was active in the Constitutional Association in the late 1860s. A founder of the Commercial Bank of Australia in 1866, he was chairman of directors in 1871-81. Prominent in the foundation of the Alfred Hospital in 1868-70 he long remained a very active chairman of its board; in 1876 he had a prolonged public argument with 'The Vagabond', who respected his management but considered he was far too active.

Service was returned for Maldon at the election of 1874 and in August became treasurer in G. B. Kerferd's ministry. He was now wealthy, more deliberate and less aggressive, but the Age still approved of him as a reformer of the most advanced type despite his free-trade views. He had to prepare a budget in three weeks and accepted protection by eliminating only a few useless duties and reducing others which only hampered trade. Denounced as a traitor, turncoat, renegade or rat, Service deplored the 'egregious folly and blundering tactics of ultramontanists of the free-trade party'. In his 1875 budget he made a far too ambitious attempt to resolve the taxation question and systematize the tariff. Some form of direct taxation was overdue and he proposed progressive land and house taxes, bank-note and stamp taxes, and increased duties on alcohol and tobacco. But many imposts on necessaries were to be abolished, and some reduced on the ground that the relevant industries were no longer 'infants'. An unholy alliance of the McCulloch faction, the liquor interest (which deplored such treachery by one who dealt in wine and spirits), and extreme protectionists and extreme free traders combined against the government. The Age turned and denounced him and his taxation proposals were blasphemous in the eyes of the Argus and pure free traders. When the government's majority was reduced to one, Kerferd was refused a dissolution by the acting governor, Sir William Stawell. Kerferd resigned: it is likely that Service, said to be dominant in the ministry, had most to do with the unnecessary decision.

After a brief interlude while (Sir) Graham Berry was premier, Service was disgusted when Kerferd and most of his former colleagues joined McCulloch in a new ministry. On 25 November 1875 he scored possibly the greatest of his few oratorical triumphs, described as a crucifixion, when in a four-hour speech he pilloried McCulloch as a man who had wrecked two ministries and wasted four months, as a 'mere pirate' with no convictions and a 'slovenly financier'. 'Is there not one voice in the Assembly to say that Sir James McCulloch was justified?', he repeatedly asked, and was met with silence. Throughout 1876 he deplored Berry's 'stonewalling' tactics and the government's 'gagging', tried to conciliate the parties and 'voted as his conscience dictated' in alliance with James Casey and Angus Mackay. It appeared possible that he and Higinbotham might combine and sweep all before them but the great tribune was disillusioned and retired from politics. In 1876 Service in a private bill amended the law relating to bills of sale and fraudulent preferences to creditors, and chaired a board of inquiry into charges against R. Brough Smyth.

In the 1877 election campaign, Service broadly supported Berry by proposing a land tax on properties of more than 300 acres (121 ha). Berry delayed formation of his cabinet hoping that Service would become treasurer, but he preferred to be a friendly neutral opposing Berry only on protection and payment of members. 'Black Wednesday', which Service christened, the dismissal of the judges, magistrates and civil servants gazetted on 8 January 1878, was the parting of the ways which also marked the rebirth of the Constitutionalist party. On 31 January, Service dissociated himself from the government, deploring its inflaming of passions and setting of class against class. When McCulloch retired from the triangular struggle for power with Service and Berry, and Francis withdrew as his health declined, Service emerged as undisputed leader of the numerically insignificant Opposition. He astutely ridiculed the excesses of Berry's lieutenants, and whittled away Berry's supporters without pandering to the Catholic vote. He soon antagonized the governor, Sir George Bowen, who reinforced his support of Berry by gossip about Service's private life. In the conflicts between the council and Berry's government over proposals for council reform, he steadily won support from the waverers for moderate compromises. Eventually, through his condemnation of Berry's proposal for an Upper House of nominees as 'a Council of crawlers', he defeated the reform bill in 1879 and the assembly was dissolved.

Service won the election of February 1880 with a nominal majority of twelve, but his six months premiership was almost unproductive. He proposed a reform bill which provided for a wider council franchise, a double dissolution if the council twice rejected a bill passed by the assembly in two consecutive sessions and then a joint sitting of the Houses. When the bill was rejected in the assembly by two votes Service was granted a dissolution, in full confidence that he would win an election; but he was defeated on 14 July largely by the Catholics, who, for the first time, were organized en bloc, and by the unscrupulous use of a garbled newspaper report that he had said that a working man could live on 5s. a day. He and (Sir) Henry Wrixon refused to join Berry. Service was now in bad health and resigned his seat early in 1881 in order to go overseas.

Service was consistent throughout his political career. Part of the explanation of his success in the 1870s and 1880s is that he was a free trader who did not go conservative. From at least the mid-1870s he knew the fiscal issue to be overrated; his 1889 remark that free trade produced greater wealth but protection ensured fairer distribution was like a breeze of fresh air over the swamp of political rhetoric. He was a classic, old-world advanced liberal and almost the perfect colonial liberal (protection aside). He was strongly anti-Catholic, though not a sectarian bigot; he recognized the papal encyclicals for what they were, basic attacks on liberalism. In 1871 he argued vehemently as a secularist for the separation of church and state: 'place our state education on a purely secular basis, and let the words Protestant and Catholic be heard no more as watchwords of strife and dissension in our political assemblies. Let our motto be, Equal rights to all, Special privileges to none'. He defended the Education Act against the Catholics but underestimated their sense of outrage; his remark that their agitation was not a question of conscience but a question only of cash was long held against him. He would not submit to the Bible in Schools League, but relaxed the Education Act in 1883 by allowing teachers to stay after school to keep order during voluntary religious instruction by outsiders.

Service's taxation views reflected his marked egalitarian tendencies. He believed that every man should start fair and have reasonable equality of opportunity; he deplored attempts to perpetuate social inequality, and sincerely asserted that 'a working man is as good as any man possessing rank and riches'. He believed that the state's powers should have limits: the first thing was 'to remove from the path of honest men all obstacles that impede their progress, and let each one do the best he can for himself'; the state should aid the working man to elevate and improve himself. But he was flexible: he saw the factories bill of 1885 as interfering with the liberty of the subject, but observed that parliament was doing it every day; still, the less it did so the better. He materially supported the rights of trade unions, the eight-hour movement and early closing of shops. But he stopped short of completely democratic views: he rejected payment of members which, he believed, tended to replace some of the better, more useful men with opportunists. He believed that every man was entitled to the vote and detested plutocratic rule, but considered that property was a rough index of education and ability; hence property-owners deserved greater political weight than loafers, drunkards and criminals. In his old age he supported the dual (but not a multiple) property vote; he consistently backed the council's right to a suspensory check, not merely because he reverenced the Constitution, but because he wanted sustained public demand for reform. Perhaps his most vital liberal tenet was belief in the mutual interests of classes. He believed that employers had nothing to fear from employees reaching for equality and fraternity, provided they were fair, just and honest and observed the golden rule. To his employees he distributed bonuses pegged to the firm's profits. As he fairly said in his Castlemaine speech of February 1883, he was 'a liberal of the Gladstone stamp' and 'never was within a thousand miles of being a conservative'.

On his return from overseas in 1882 Service was regarded very much as a saviour. At the election in February 1883 he was returned for the two-member seat of Castlemaine. A coalition government was being recommended in many quarters to replace the futile O'Loghlen ministry. Service was the obvious leader, as the Constitutionalists had fared slightly better than the Liberals in the election and his friendship with Berry had survived even the traumatic conflicts of the late 1870s. His three years as premier and treasurer were a triumph. His immediate aim was to reform the civil service and railways and to eliminate patronage: the Public Service Board and the Railways Commission were both established in 1883. As treasurer in the early prosperous years he negotiated necessary loans but, aware of the dangers of over-borrowing, he did not allow the boom to get out of control. He was, however, over-optimistic about the finances of the railways, though the extensive construction of new lines was justified. Important land legislation, preparatory royal commissions on agriculture and irrigation, the Factories Act, legalization of trade unions and a mass of long-delayed minor legislation were other achievements. The Age conceded in 1886 that 'no parliament can show a more imposing record of great public utility'. Alfred Deakin, a junior minister, remembered very well the energy and accessibility of Service as his model premier and the business-like conduct of cabinet in which nothing was swamped or muddled.

Service's main contribution as premier was to drag the Australian colonies on to the international stage and to originate the first sustained campaign for federal union. Possibly during his holiday in Europe in 1881-82 he had sensed the emergence of a new imperial spirit. He backed Sir Thomas McIlwraith's attempt to annex New Guinea in 1883, and used the French threat to annex the New Hebrides to force a federal 'convention' in Sydney in November on to an unwilling and preoccupied New South Wales government; he was largely responsible for the proclamation of an Australian Monroe doctrine for the South Seas and agreement to confederate in a Federal Council. He refused to admit that he might die before 'the grand federation of the Australian colonies'. Appointed executive chairman of the premiers for subsequent negotiations, on return to Melbourne he criticized the apathy and timidity of New South Wales politicians and hostile reactions followed. New South Wales and South Australia refused to join the Federal Council which was hamstrung from the start. Meanwhile, his alarm was partially vindicated by the German annexation of north-eastern New Guinea and the French occupation of the New Hebrides.

Service admired William Bede Dalley's coup in sending a New South Wales contingent in support of the Sudan campaign. Like most other colonial liberals he deplored his idol Gladstone's imperial policies, found it intolerable that England was always yielding and feared that indecision would lead to the decline of the empire. He believed in the empire's civilizing mission and in Australia's imminent destiny as a great nation. Part of the empire's 'great and noble mission' was to elevate the South Seas' savage through its Australian colonists. But the British government had to recognize both the legitimate regional interests of the colonies and their right to consultation. The Colonial Office officials saw him as a disloyal, ignorant blunderer, until German and French actions in the Pacific induced some review. He was indeed unaware of the wider diplomatic context; but he was a harbinger both of new imperial enthusiasm and of the definition of Australian regional interests. His move towards Federation might likewise be judged to be ill-prepared and insensitive to the complexity of intercolonial hostility; yet he came close to effecting a unanimous confederation which might have proved a viable and rapid path to Federation.

In 1885 Service had decided to retire from the premiership; in the same year his doctor gave urgent warning and he resigned on 18 February 1886. He presided over the first meeting of the Federal Council in Hobart, before setting off again for Europe. His retirement was met with an outburst of popular gratitude for the political peace and prosperity to which he had made such a notable contribution. A fund was created for his portrait (now in the La Trobe Library) to be painted by G. F. Folingsby and he was farewelled at a public function on 16 April. Service spent fifteen of his eighteen-month tour on the Continent, but was a trenchant ally of Berry and Deakin as a delegate to the Colonial Conference of 1887 in London. He was a member of the general committee of the Imperial Federation League and later of the executive committee, but supported it for its encouragement of unity of policy rather than from conviction in any short-term chance of union. He was satisfied that the conference indicated a basic alteration in the future relations of the colonies with the mother country. Salisbury approved the offer to him of a privy councillorship; but he rejected it as he had already refused the offer of a knighthood. An enthusiastic banquet on 7 December, with the Earl of Rosebery in the chair, farewelled him for the last time from Britain in the full conviction that he was one of the empire's leading statesmen.

Service now enjoyed a unique position as a popular elder statesman. He took little part in the management of James Service & Co. after 1881, and did not become involved in any important speculation or boom business activity, although he was a director of the City Road Property Co. Ltd and with William Kernot and F. Pirani formed the New Australian Electricity Co. in 1882. He rejected opportunities to rejoin the assembly, but took a seat in the council in June 1888. A very useful adviser to the Gillies-Deakin government, by late 1889 he was issuing grave warnings about public finance. In the following years of crisis he was again and again under pressure, particularly from the Argus, to resume a leading role in politics, especially in 1892-93 when many fervently hoped that he and Berry would revive their successful coalition. In April 1893 Howard Willoughby of the Argus praised his extraordinary role as a confidential adviser of nearly all parties and factions. In 1890 and 1891 his fellow legislative councillors had urged him to represent them at the federal conventions. He refused on health grounds: possibly he also remained convinced that the Federal Council was still viable; and he may have been unwilling to confront Sir Henry Parkes who poured such scorn on the council in the mid-1880s, had attacked him so bitterly and until 1889 rejected almost every proposal for intercolonial co-operation. But he gave the first speech at the banquet to the delegates in 1890 when he described the tariff as the 'lion in the way'. Gilbert Parker, the Canadian, was correct in his prediction that although Service was the 'father of Australian Confederation' and originally 'the real leader', 'yet Sir Henry Parkes is called, and will be called, the chief maker of Australian Union'.

In 1889 Service had been mainly responsible for persuading the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce to contribute £500 to the striking London dockers. 'Perish the commerce that cannot stand without trampling underfoot of our fellowman', was the conclusion of his fine emotional speech. In 1890 and 1891 he was one of the most prominent conciliators of capital and labour in Australia. On 16 September 1890 he set the tone of an unusually moderate council debate on the maritime strike when he urged the employers' organizations to meet the unions in conference. He began a nation-wide movement with a letter to the Argus of 29 June 1891, headed 'The Labour War', in which he stated that although the unions had been in the wrong and he would not waver in his belief in freedom of contract, yet the pastoralists were totally at fault in refusing to confer and were embittering class relations. He dominated the Legislative Council in the early 1890s and did much to reduce the incidence of ultra-Tory behaviour; at the same time he led it to revive dangerous claims to its rights as against the assembly.

In his last years Service devoted himself quixotically to saving the bankrupt Commercial Bank of Australia: old loyalties, sense of duty and his friendship with Henry Turner had prevailed. The difficult decision to become chairman of directors was followed out with fixity of purpose, and his support probably enabled the bank to survive. His successful 1893 reconstruction proposals preceded a further scheme in 1896. His last years, which must have been agonizingly self-questioning, were typical of those of his generation who had to live through the 1890s.

Service's constant health worries were crucial in his public career. He was clearly a 'worrier', a man who fought all his fights with everything he had. After a major illness in October 1898, he died on 12 April 1899 from a general breakdown of the system. He had been the last of the first parliament to be still a member. The funeral procession from his home in Balaclava Road to the Melbourne cemetery was 1½ miles (2.4 km) long; he was buried in his parents' grave in the Baptist section. He had been a sceptic since he was a young man, although he retained a keen intellectual interest in religious questions; he occasionally attended services conducted by the Unitarian and other leading preachers and investigated spiritualism with Turner. But he believed Sunday to be no more sacred than any other day and was occasionally denounced by the Daily Telegraph for his 'atheistic proclivities'. He left the residue of his estate of £284,000 to his numerous family in the belief that the 10 per cent estate duty and his frequent generous donations to charity had absolved him from further responsibility.

Jaunty and sprightly, Service was a tallish, slight and spare man, full-bearded with a crest of baldness, mild-looking but with a touch of pugnacity round his large grey eyes. Deakin summed up his appearance and character as essentially those of a 'sturdy, stiff-necked, indomitable and canny' Scot. He showed in his later days that he had learned to compromise and had become far more flexible without ever being a 'trimmer'. He rarely tried to be an orator: most of his speeches were unaffected and earnest in homely simple language, but he had a gift for lucid, logical, precise exposition and for incisively striking to the heart of the matter. Traces of the former teacher and preacher remained in his analytic approach and the biblical echoes in his language. His accent was not marked, although occasionally he threw in some Scotticisms for fun or for effect. He could be a remorseless and caustic critic but his exposure of the ludicrous and absurd was usually good-humoured and did not rankle. He had a taste for epigram, often signalled by a peculiar oratorical shrug of the shoulders. After his early years in parliament, he abhorred personal invective and aimed always to be courteous. His apparent coolness and command of temper allowed him to control even the rogue politicians on the floor of the House, but the strain of damping down his highly emotional reactions was marked. As a parliamentarian he had few equals in Victoria.

Service, in Bernhard Wise's words, was `a merchant of large views and fine culture—at once a scholar and a man of business', a colonial phenomenon not so uncommon among educated Scots. He had strong interests in general philosophy, metaphysics and economic and political theory. James Anthony Froude found that he 'talked well, like a man as much accustomed to reflect seriously as if he had been a profound philosopher or an Anglican bishop'. He raised the question whether mankind had improved morally and spiritually over 2000 years, 'argued his point very well indeed, brought out all that was to be said on either side and left the conclusion open'. As a politician, he was constructive, diligent and business-like, with the supreme virtue of common sense. There was no trace of the snob in him. He had the faculty of making men like him and his influence on younger men, like Deakin, was profound. He could the play the party game with consummate skill but came to abhor it; he was primarily a moderator and conciliator and few politicians can have provoked so little party hate or have been so little maligned or misrepresented. Possibly no other Victorian politician has ever held such widespread public confidence and affection. Nevertheless, his domestic life was irregular. His early marriage to Marian Allan, by whom he had two daughter, broke up in the mid-1850s. From the early 1860s he lived with Louisa Hoseason Forty, whom he never married and by whom he had several daughters. His public reputation over a long period enabled him to live down the gossip. Serviceton, a railway hamlet, is named after him but, as one of the three or four of the great founding fathers, he has been strangely neglected in the nomenclature of Canberra.

Select Bibliography

H. G. Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria (Lond, 1904)
G. Serle, The Rush to be Rich (Melb, 1971)
Table Talk, 2 Sept 1892
Review of Reviews (Australasian edition), Nov-Dec 1892
Argus (Melbourne), 13 Apr 1899
'Death of the Hon. James Service', Times (London), 13 Apr 1899, p 10
Australasian, 15 Apr 1899
Service newspaper cutting books (State Library of Victoria and Royal Historical Society of Victoria).
Citation details
Serle, Geoffrey, 'Service, James (1823–1899)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/service-james-4561/text7483, accessed 12 November 2011.

297.A. William SHELLEY, Parramatta,

298. =George SHENTON WA


299. + Ella SIMON, Purfleet NSW

From - Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography

SIMON, Ella (1902-1981)
by
John Harris

SIMON, ELLA (b. Taree, NSW, 1902; d. Taree, NSW, 13 Feb 1981). Aboriginal community worker.

Born of an Aboriginal mother, and a white father, Ella was raised by her Aboriginal grandparents. Her grandmother, Kundaibark was a Christian and through her Ella grew up a Christian. In the year of her birth, Ella's grandfather moved his family, together with several other Aboriginal families from the crowded and depressed fringe camp at Taree to a new site further out of town. They constructed their own homes, and a UAM missionary was appointed to work there. A church and school were built, the beginnings of the Purfleet Mission. Ella attended the mission school, and then, in the 1920s, went to Sydney to work as a domestic.

Ella returned to Purfleet in 1932 just in time to experience the heavy-handed takeover of Purfleet by the Aborigines Protection Board, armed with new powers to 'concentrate on reserves people of Aboriginal blood, with definite control over them ... They were not to be at liberty to leave without permission'. (Aborigines Protection Board Report, 1932) It was with her initial confrontation with these officials that Ella began her long life of fighting for justice for her people, and of working positively for their future.

After her grandmother's death, Ella married Joe Simon. She became one of the most prominent citizens of the Taree district. Ella Simon's efforts often met with frustrating official opposition and pettiness, but she also succeeded on many occasions in cutting through the bureaucratic restrictions. She led the movement which succeeded in gaining a preschool at Purfleet, and set up a branch of the Country Women's Association. She opened a gift shop at Purfleet to sell Aboriginal artefacts and other locally produced items. In 1962 she became the first Aboriginal woman to be made a JP in NSW.

Throughout the whole of her life, Ella Simon maintained a strong Christian faith. She was associated from childhood with the Aboriginal church at Purfleet, and continued her active commitment to it until her death. Her life was also marked by a strong sense of Aboriginality, of the distinctiveness and worth of her Aboriginal heritage. This, with her Christian faith, she attributed to the nurture she was given by her grandmother.

Ella Simon could be described in the words she used to describe her grandmother: 'She had a deep sense of faith—a Christian in the real sense, as well as knowing what it is truly like to be Aboriginal ... She showed me that it just isn't enough being Aboriginal; you have to know all about being Aboriginal and go on from there, ... putting into practice the Christian teaching of forgiveness and love instead of meeting hatred with hatred.' (Simon, 1987: 1-2).

This philosophy enabled her to accept people for what they were, irrespective of racial or cultural background. This was how she always wanted to be accepted herself. The personal tragedy of Ella Simon's life was that she died feeling that her mixed ancestry had always meant that she had never been accepted totally by either the Aboriginal or the white community. Although a huge crowd of Aboriginal and white people attended her funeral, her dying request was respected: the hearse bore her coffin to the crematorium, unaccompanied.

Ella Simon, Through My Eyes (Melbourne, 1987)

JOHN HARRIS

THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN's REGISTER : - Ella SIMON (1902 - 1981)
Born: 1902 Taree, New South Wales, Australia
Died: 13 February 1981 New South Wales, Australia
Occupation: Aboriginal community worker

"Ella Simon went to school on Purfleet Aboriginal reserve, New South Wales, until the age of twelve. She then worked in Gloucester and Sydney, but returned to Purfleet in 1932 to nurse her sick grandmother, Kundaibark. She married Joe Simon in the mid-1930s, and they travelled around New South Wales, helping Aboriginal people. In 1957 Ella was granted her ‘certificate of exemption’ from the restrictions imposed by the Aborigines Welfare Board. In 1960 she formed a branch of the Country Women’s Association on Purfleet reserve and became its president. She opened the Gillawarra gift shop selling Aboriginal artefacts. She improved the living conditions on Purfleet, by supplying new stoves and introducing electricity. She continued caring for Aboriginal children and the sick. In 1962 she was named Lady of Distinction by Quota and appointed a justice of the peace. She dictated her life story for the book Through My Eyes during 1976-78."

Dr John SINGLETON -medical evangelist, indefatigable vice crusader YMCA, YWCA Melbourne 1808-1891

300. = Brother Percy SMITH

301. John Thomas SMITH, 1st aborigines teacher, Mayor of Melbourne ??????????


302. + "MUM SHIRL" Shirley Coleen SMITH (1921–1998) - Cowra, Grenfell, Kempsey & Sydney

Smith, Shirley Coleen (Mum Shirl) (1921–1998)

BIOGRAPHY: -"Mum Shirl: An Autobiography" , with the assistance of Bobbi Sykes, Heinemann Publishers Australia Pty Ltd, 1981, Richmond Victoria

SEX: Female SEX: Female FIRST LANGUAGE: English

BIRTH : 22 November 1921 Erambie Mission, Cowra, NSW
DEATH : 28 April 1998 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

CHRISTIANITY: CATHOLIC, MAVERICK CATHOLIC

SIGNIFICANT LOCALITIES:

Erambie Mission: A ‘mission’ near Cowra. Mum Shirl lived there with her family, until her Grandfather was expelled from the mission when she was six.
Cowra: A small town in Central Western New South Wales, which was close to the Erambie mission. Mum Shirl had numerous connections to Cowra, however she felt discriminated against in the town itself.

Grenfell: The town where Mum Shirl’s parents were working as drovers when she was very young. One of Mum Shirl’s earliest memories was travelling with her grandparents from the Erambie Mission near Cowra to Grenfell.

Sydney: Mum Shirl remembers moving from Cowra to Waterloo in Sydney around the time when King Edward VII abdicated. Her Grandfather didn’t like Sydney, so they moved back to Cowra. (p.17) When Mum Shirl got married, she and Darcy moved to a house in Surry Hills. They paid ten pounds a week rent, and Darcy’s manager furnished the house. (p.23) Mum Shirl spent most of her life in Sydney. She lived around the inner west, including in Erskineville and St Peters, and worked mainly in Redfern, the hub of Aboriginal political activism in the 1970s.

Kempsey: Mum Shirl moved to Kempsey on the Northern New South Wales coast to live with her husband’s family when she was pregnant. She returned to Sydney when she discovered that the local hospital was segregated. Her daughter and husband later returned to Kempsey; however Mum Shirl stayed in Sydney.
Condobolin: Mum Shirl worked briefly in the Local District Hospital. (p.40)

Darwin: The Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Sydney sponsored Mum Shirl’s first interstate trip to Darwin in the late 1960s. Up until this point, she wasn’t aware of the existence of the Northern Territory. (p.73) After her first trip, she visited a number of times, and met with Aboriginal elders such as Vincent Lingiari and Claude Narjic. (p.85)

EXPERIENCES OF RELIGION:

Mum Shirl was raised on a ‘mission’ where, according to her, all the residents were Roman Catholics, and her parents were both converts to Christianity. Mum Shirl claims that many Aboriginal people have a “hang up” about Christianity, in particular Catholicism, because of their hypocritical attitude towards Aboriginal people.
Mum Shirl also implies that the Erambie residents of the mission had only superficial Christian convictions, which masked their deeper spiritual connection. (p.37)
However, Mum Shirl also points out that her mother, like many Aboriginal women, turned to Catholicism as a source of consolation in a harsh world.
Mum Shirl abandoned the Catholic Church when a priest in Grafton discriminated against her during Mass. She did not attend sermons for the next fourteen years (p.15). She maintained her Christian convictions and continued to pray, particularly to St. Martin de Pourre, a Dominican priest from Peru (p.16).
Eventually, Mum Shirl decided that she could not hold the whole Catholic Church responsible for one priest’s actions. (p.16) She began attending church again: taking an active role in the church community, and finding solace in church sermons of various denominations. (p.69)
Mum Shirl later described herself as a ‘M.R.C’, like her mother, which stands for ‘Mad Roman Catholic’ or ‘Mad Roaming Catholic.’ (p.14) In the late 1960s, Mum Shirl began as a Adviser for the Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Sydney. (p.73)

RELATIONSHIP WITH PARENTS:

Mum Shirl described her mother as a “very pious woman.” (p.14) She was known in the mission as the ‘Mad Roman Catholic’. (p.14)
Mum Shirl’s father was one of the Aboriginal councillors at the Erambie mission. His powers were, however, limited to the point that he was unable to prevent his own father being expelled from the mission. When this happened, Mum Shirl left the mission and lived with her grandparents at Ryan’s place, and her father stayed at Erambie: trying to campaign for better conditions for the Aboriginal people who were living there. (p.12)

303. =John SMITHIES Wesleyan Perth WA

304. William Guthrie SPENCE - Champion of the Dignity of the Working Man, Unionist, Founder of the Australian Labor Party

William Guthrie SPENCE, Bible Christian Democrat, Methodist Unionist, Presbyterian Politician

From the Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography

SPENCE, William Guthrie (1846-1926)

by Robert D. Linder

SPENCE, WILLIAM GUTHRIE (b. Eday, Orkney Islands, Scotland, 7 Aug 1846; d. Terang, Vic, 13 Dec 1926). Trade unionist, politician, and Methodist local preacher.

The son of a stonemason father (James Maxwell Spence) and a deeply religious mother (Jane Guthrie Spence), W G Spence migrated to Australia with his family early in 1852. After spending their first year in Geelong, the Spences became one of the pioneer families to settle the Ballarat-Creswick area. As a small boy, Spence observed the Eureka uprising of 1854, and later maintained that it had a profound impact on his mature thought. Equally important for his formative years were his experiences of marginal living as a shepherd, butcher-boy, shearer and miner. Largely self-taught, he became well-versed in the Bible and the classics, and in the political and economic thought of the day. In particular, he claimed to have studied Robert Blatchford, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, William Morris, Edward Bellamy, Karl Marx, St Paul, and Jesus.

Spence is best known as the greatest union organiser in Australian history. It was in 1878, in the Clunes district near Creswick, that John Sampson and Spence revived an almost defunct miners' union (est 1874) that would shortly thereafter form the basis of the Amalgamated Miners' Association (AMA) of Vic. He was the general secretary of the AMA in 1882, and the foundation president of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia in 1886 (president, 1886-93). Moreover, he was the principal founder in 1894 of the colony-wide Australian Workers' Union (AWU), of which he was the general secretary from 1894 to 1898 and president from 1898 to 1917. Spence's only major setback as a union promoter came in the heady, difficult days of 1890, when he helped to precipitate the ill-fated maritime strike which broke out on 15 Aug in NSW and ended on 2 Nov 1890 with the workers, including those in his own union, soundly defeated.

Spence recovered from this reversal and quickly adjusted to the need to adapt labour to urban politics and strategies. He envisaged the AWU as the industrial wing of the newly formed labor party (est 1891, NSW), and threw himself into electoral politics. Moving his headquarters from Creswick to Sydney in 1895, he served as a Labor member of the NSW Legislative Assembly from 1898 to 1901, when he was elected to the newly-constituted commonwealth House of Representatives (MHR for Darling, NSW, 1901-17 and for Darwin, Tas, 1918-9). He was Postmaster-General in the Andrew Fisher (ALP) cabinet, 1914-5, and Vice-President of the Executive council in 1916-7 under Hughes.

In the Labor Party conscription crisis of 1916-7, Spence was ill and, according to his daughter Gwynetha, was tricked by Hughes and others into supporting conscription. Because of his declining health and years of honourable service to trade unionism, Spence was the only Labor politician allowed to resign instead of being expelled for his action. After serving Darwin as a Nationalist Party member, he was defeated in a bid for the seat of Batman, Vic, in the 1919 election, and retired from politics a disappointed man.

Spence's long record of public service and union activities were founded on his evangelical Christian faith. His mother taught him to read from the Bible before he was six and took him with regularity to the St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Creswick as a child. Nurtured on the Westminster Confession of Faith, he became a lay leader and Sunday school superintendent of his church in the period before 1883. On 20 June 1871, Spence married Ann Jane Savage, a native of Derry, Ireland, and a fellow Presbyterian, in the church manse in Creswick. However, apparent Presbyterian indifference to the plight of the Creswick area miners, especially at the time of the Creswick Australasian Mine disaster of December 1882, when 22 miners perished, led Spence to break with the Presbyterians and join the Primitive Methodists. Shortly after the Australasian tragedy, Spence's name appeared on the rolls of the Primitive Methodist Church as a local preacher, and he soon was in demand as an evangelistic and inspirational speaker in Primitive Methodist, Wesleyan and Bible Christian churches in Vic and NSW. Because of a longstanding commitment to working class causes, Primitive Methodists were especially warm in their support of Spence's union activities, and large numbers of miners and shearers were themselves Methodists in background and belief. Further, Spence's church pulpit experience was invaluable to him as a union recruiter and political leader.

Spence's evangelical faith was also the basis of his civic-mindedness prior to leaving Creswick in 1895. Not only was he active in the local churches, but he was also a leader of the Creswick Sunday School Union and the Creswick Temperance Society, a regular participant in the town debating society and the local self-improvement society, a borough councillor, a justice of the peace, and a member of the area militia and the Creswick Havilah Lodge. Likewise, his Christian faith was the foundation of his trade unionism. In an era when Social Christianity was still widely embraced by postmillennial evangelicals, Spence almost effortlessly made the connections between the teachings of Jesus and his populist-socialist ideals. His political rhetoric was also that of the nineteenth century revivalist. Unashamed of his allegiance to Christ, Spence frequently spoke from the union political platform of his debt to Jesus. Thus, on 23 May 1892, at a crowded public meeting at Bourke, Spence declared: 'Individualism has brought the worst and most selfish natures in humanity to the front. The New Unionism is simply the teachings of that greatest of all social reformers, Him of Nazareth, whom all must revere'.

Few Australian union leaders and Labor politicians were as well-known personally by so many people and so well-liked as W G Spence. Honest, genial and imperturbable, he lived a consistently godly life to the end of his days. In the last few years of his life, according to family members, he dabbled in spiritualism - as did many Christians of that era, especially those, who, like Spence, had lost a son in World War One. He also died largely disillusioned with people, politics and organised religion. However, this did not diminish his commitment to humanitarianism, the principles of the Labor Party, or the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Spence succumbed to pulmonary oedema at his son's home in Terang, Vic, not far from Creswick, on 13 Dec 1926, and was buried without fanfare or public acclaim in the Coburg Cemetery, Melbourne. His wife, Ann Jane Spence, died shortly thereafter on 12 Dec 1927, and was laid to rest beside him.

ADB 6; C M Lansbury, 'William Guthrie Spence', Labour History 13 (1967), 3-10; R D Linder, 'Australian Evangelicals in Politics in the Victorian Age: The Cases of J.D. Lang, W.G. Spence, and J.S.T. McGowen', Lucas 13 (June 1992), 34-60; J A Merritt, The Making of the AWU (Melbourne, 1986)

SELECT WRITINGS: The Ethics of the New Unionism (Creswick, 1892); Australia's Awakening: Thirty Years in the Life of an Australian Agitator (Sydney, 1909); A History of the A.W.U. (Sydney, 1911)

by ROBERT D LINDER

From ADB ONLINE

Spence, William Guthrie (1846–1926)

by Coral Lansbury and Bede Nairn

William Guthrie Spence (1846-1926), trade unionist and politician, was born on 7 August 1846 at the island of Eday, Orkney, Scotland, son of James Maxwell Spence, stonemason, and his wife Jane, née Guthrie. He came to Geelong, Victoria, with his family probably in February 1852. Next year they moved to Spring Hill near Creswick and as a small boy he reputedly observed the Eureka rebellion in 1854, later claiming that he had vivid and formative memories of it. At 13 he was a shepherd at G. Bell and P. McGuiness's station, Corong, in the Wimmera, and in 1861 he was a butcher-boy, having had a miner's right at 14. In 1912 he recalled that goldfields life had 'made such a deep impression on my youthful mind that nothing but the grave will efface it'. Spence had no formal schooling but 'at odd moments' was taught by a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin; he read 'in a curiously miscellaneous way' including, as he matured, the works of Bellamy, Blatchford, Ruskin and Morris. He became secretary and Sunday school superintendent for the Creswick Presbyterian Church and in the 1880s often preached with the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians. On 20 June 1871 at the Presbyterian manse, Creswick, he married Ann Jane, daughter of William Savage of Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Spence's mining experience included work as a 'shift boss' and manager. In the Clunes district in 1874 he initiated an ephemeral trade union that was part of the process of the formation at Bendigo in the same year of the Amalgamated Miners' Association of Victoria. In 1878 as secretary of the Creswick Miners' Union, with John Sampson president, he led 600 men into the A.M.A.: both were later black-balled by the mine-owners. In 1882-91 Spence was general secretary, and under him the association 'was moderate and conciliatory but firm on fundamentals'; he claimed it never refused a conference, but it had twenty-nine strikes before 1890. A superb negotiator, he wanted a union that would cover all kinds of miners in Australia and New Zealand, and from 1884 several unions, including New South Wales coalminers, affiliated loosely and the union became the A.M.A. of Australasia.

Spence co-operated with the Melbourne Trades Hall Council but could not convince his union of the need of political organization, although in 1886 he secured several amendments to the colony's Regulation of Mines and Machinery Act. At the second Intercolonial Trades Union Congress, Melbourne, 1884, he gained unanimous approval for the establishment of an Intercolonial Federal Council of Amalgamated Trades, but nothing came of it. A teetotaller, in Creswick he became a member of the militia and a leading temperance advocate; prominent in the debating society, he was a borough councillor from 1884 and a justice of the peace from 1888: a recent historian has said of him, 'Genial and quite imperturbable, he stands out as the most remarkable man in the remarkable town of Creswick in the eighties'.

Spence's great repute as an industrial organizer of widely dispersed workers led to his appointment in 1886 as foundation president of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia. With great skill and zeal, and against aggressive opposition from many pastoralists, by 1890 he had unionized most shearers in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales and had gained the 'closed shop' in about 85 per cent of the shearing sheds. With main objectives of recruiting the Queensland shearers and obtaining the complete 'union shed', this work took him for the first time consistently among city unionists; in the late 1880s he encouraged his New South Wales branches to join the Trades and Labor Council in Sydney.

On 17 May 1890 he dominated a conference in Brisbane at which the owners of Jondaryan station recognized the Queensland Shearers' Union in the face of a putative united front of maritime unions which had refused to handle their wool. This victory led Spence to intensify his efforts for maximum unionism in New South Wales and Victoria. In a verbose manifesto of 12 July which put great pressure on non-union pastoralists, he claimed incorrectly that the Wharflabourers' and Seamen's unions had agreed to back his campaign with direct action. His plans excluded strikes by shearers; but he exacerbated inflamed industrial relations in the intercolonial maritime industries, especially in New South Wales and among ships' officers, and helped to precipitate the maritime strike that broke out on 15 August and ended on 2 November 1890 with the workers defeated. Against his vote on the Labor Defence Council the shearers were partially involved in September for one week.

Spence's ineptitude resulted in part from his heavy work load. In September at a critical stage of the strike he gave valuable evidence in Melbourne to the royal commission on gold-mining, but essentially his great success with bushworkers had limited his industrial understanding and enlarged his populist longings. Some of his pastoralist opponents shared his mysticism; they believed their own propaganda that somewhere in the outback 'Spence's station', allegedly acquired by levies on the workers, was the ultimate in luxury and wealth. His unique mixture of inspirational socialism and hard-headed unionism evoked a confused vision of all employees in one big union but produced little understanding of the problems of city workers. He emphasized the primacy of the A.S.U. in Labor political action, and broke with the A.M.A. in Victoria in 1891-92 when it drew up its own programme in opposition to that of the Progressive Political League; in 1892 he ran for the league at the by-election for the seat of Dundas in the Victorian Legislative Assembly but lost narrowly. At the seventh Intercolonial Trades and Labor Congress of Australasia in Ballarat in 1891, he backed the scheme for the Australasian Federation of Labour, which envisaged a firm link between industrial and political organization.

Spence took no part in the determined work of the Trades and Labor Council in Sydney in 1890-91 that produced the Labor Electoral League and spectacular success at the 1891 general elections. More than most of his contemporaries, he was muddled about the connexion between the 'New Unionism' and the old. In Sydney on 12 June 1892 his lecture on 'The Ethics of the New Unionism' (published 1892) confused its relationship with political action, but revealed his own millennialism: 'It is useless', he said, 'to go on preaching from Sabbath to Sabbath asking men to be better but … the New Unionism is to deal with those evils in a practical manner'. In the 1891-93 conflicts in the Labor Party in New South Wales he used the Federation of Labour to oppose the 'solidarities'; when they triumphed in 1894-95 his prospects of assuming a leading political role had evaporated and he was lampooned by the bright young city Labor men, especially William Holman and Billy Hughes in the radical newspaper the New Order.

Spence's industrial success continued. In 1894 he helped to combine several small bush unions with the A.S.U. and to found the Australian Workers' Union; as its secretary in 1894-98 and president 1898-1917, he saw the union as the industrial wing of the Labor Party. He held the mining-pastoralist seat of Cobar in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1898-1901, but made little impression in parliament though he was accorded the deference merited by past achievement. A supporter of Federation, he pointed to the successful organization of the A.W.U. He was elected to the first Federal parliament in 1901 as member for Darling in far-west New South Wales. In Sydney in 1909, helped by his son-in-law Hector Lamond, he published Australia's Awakening, which stated that the organization of the bushworkers and the 1890 strike marked the foundations of industrial trade unionism in Australia. The book was an effort both to disarm growing opposition in the A.W.U. to his presidency and to defend the union from the Industrial Workers of the World, who were organizing the 'One Big Union'. In 1911 in Sydney he published the History of the A.W.U.; he wrote several pamphlets; he also contributed to and helped to edit the Australian Worker. In the 1900s he worked hard for a Labor daily under the control of the A.W.U.

In 1914-15 Spence was Commonwealth postmaster-general and in 1916-17 vice-president of the Executive Council; as a minister he was 'largely the voice of the permanent heads'. In the Labor Party crisis in 1916-17 he was ill and, according to A.W.U. officials, was tricked by Hughes and Lamond into voting for conscription. He was the one member of the union allowed to resign instead of being expelled for his action. Rejected by the Labor Party he lost his seat in 1917, but at a by-election the same year he won Darwin (Tasmania) as a Nationalist candidate. He ran for Batman (Victoria) in 1919 but lost. He died of pulmonary oedema in his son's home at Terang on 13 December 1926, survived by his wife, four daughters and three of his five sons; buried in Coburg cemetery, he left an estate valued for probate at £1200.

Select Bibliography
J. A. Graham, Early Creswick (Melb, 1942)
G. Serle, The Rush to be Rich (Melb, 1971)
B. Nairn, Civilizing Capitalism (Canb, 1973)
N. B. Nairn, ‘The 1890 maritime strike in New South Wales’, Historical Studies, no 37, Nov 1961
C. Lansbury, ‘The miners' right to mateship’, Meanjin, 25 (1966)
Worker (Brisbane), May 1890, special ed
Punch (Melbourne), 24 Aug 1904.

306. =Brother Friedrich Wilhelm SPIESEKE, Lake Boga VIC

Friedrich SPIESEKE - from ADB ONline "...On 27 November 1856 he (Rev F. A. Hagenauer) was instructed to go to Victoria with F. W. Spieseke who had returned to Europe after the Lake Boga Mission, established with Charles La Trobe's help in 1851, was abandoned.

Hagenauer and Spieseke arrived at Melbourne in May 1858. By December, following Governor (Sir) Henry Barkly's suggestion, they had selected a Wimmera River site on Antwerp station, where the squatter, Horatio Spencer Ellerman, gave material assistance and the Ebenezer mission school was opened next January. In 1858 several missionaries including Spieseke and Hagenauer had given evidence to a select committee on the alleviation of Aborigines' 'absolute wants'. The Central Board appointed to watch over the interests of the Aborigines, which first met on 7 June 1860, set up two stations and planned more government depots and missions financed by various churches. In February 1862 after negotiations between the Moravians and the Presbyterian Church of Victoria Hagenauer and his wife arrived in Gippsland where the Presbyterians hoped to secure two large reserves on Green Hills station with support from the central board. Objections by squatters led the board of land and works to change the site and in August 1863 some 2356 acres (953 ha) were secured at Lake Wellington on the River Avon. .."

Friedrich Wilhelm SPIESEKE was married in Victoria in 1861 to Johanne Christiane FRICKE.

307. 'MR ETERNITY' Arthur STACE, Sydney, NSW

308. Graham STAINES & his two sons, Timothy and Phillip,

Doctor Graham Staines & Family

' Graham Stuart Staines (1941-January 1999) was an Australian missionary who was burnt to death while he was sleeping with his two sons Timothy Staines (aged 9) and Philip Staines (aged 7) in his station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district in Orissa, India in January 1999. In 2003, the Hindu activist Dara Singh was convicted of leading the gang.' [ per A tribute to Influential Australian Christians] - Dr. Graham Stuart Staines was born in 1941 at Palmwoods, Queensland, Australia. He visited India in 1965 for the first time and joined Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj (EMSM), working in this remote tribal area, with a long history of missionary activity.
Staines took over the management of the Mission at Baripada in 1983. He also played a role in the establishment of the Mayurbhanj Leprosy Home as a registered society in 1982.[5] He met Gladys June in 1981 while working for leprosy patients, and they married in 1983, and had worked together since then. They had three children, a daughter (Esther) and two sons (Philip and Timothy). Staines assisted in translating a part of the Bible into the Ho language of India, including proofreading the entire New Testament manuscript, though his focus was on a ministry to lepers.
He spoke fluent Oriya and was very popular among the patients whom he used to help after they were cured. He used to teach how to make mats out of rope and basket from Saboigrass and hand weaving.[per Wikipedia]
Graham Staines had been working in Orissa among the tribal poor and especially with leprosy patients since 1965.

390. Brother John STAMP S.J. , Kew, VIC

310. Karl Rawdon von STIEGLITZ (1893–1967) Tasmanian Churchman, Church Historian

"Portrait of Karl von Stieglitz, Medical Orderly A.I.F. in the 1914-1918 war"

Karl Rawdon von STEIGLITZ

from ADB Online -
von Stieglitz, Karl Rawdon (1893–1967)

by Tim Jetson

Karl Rawdon von Stieglitz (1893-1967), pastoralist and antiquarian, was born on 19 August 1893 at Andora, a holding near Evandale, Tasmania, second son of four children of John Charles von Stieglitz, pastoralist and politician, and his second wife Lilian Brooke Vere, née Stead. The family was originally from Pomerania, Saxony, but had moved to County Armagh in Ireland, then to Van Diemen's Land in 1829. F. L. von Stieglitz was John's uncle. Karl was educated at home by tutors, because bouts of rheumatic fever prevented regular school attendance, and later in England.

In March 1917 he reputedly enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and was allotted to the Australian Medical Corps but was discharged in November on health grounds. Remaining in New South Wales, von Stieglitz studied for two years at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, Richmond, and married Eileen Bessie Helsham at St Peter's Church of England, Richmond, on 19 June 1920. Returning to Andora, he top-dressed the soil, sowed subterranean clover pasture, developed a Corriedale stud flock and planted more trees than he felled. His innovations did not extend to mechanization, however, as he retained draught horses until after World War II. Karl became active in the local community. In 1952 he was appointed O.B.E. in recognition of his involvement in local government, the Church of England, the Boy Scouts' Association, Freemasonry, Evandale Agricultural Show and the Royal Society of Tasmania.

Von Stieglitz was best known for his contributions to local history, inspired by an enthusiasm for his pioneer pastoral ancestors, a visit to Britain in 1906-07 and his belief in the primacy of the landowning class. His thirty-eight works, which covered pastoral history, bushrangers and churches, could best be described as a pageant of pioneer families. The books lacked a chronological or thematic framework, included unverified stories and had a concept of pastoralists as the motive force for change. He had a roseate view of convict assignees as old lags, and regarded Aborigines as simple and inoffensive until roused to revenge. His charm and pastoral background, however, gave him access to oral reminiscences and previously unused family material such as letters, manuscripts and photographs. In epilogues and interludes he showed a poetic streak and an Arcadian appreciation of the environment. According to the Launceston Examiner, his books, radio broadcasts, lectures and excursions, brought history 'alive'. He donated the proceeds from his writings to charity.

His works coincided with a burgeoning interest in the State's heritage, previous Tasmanian history having been concerned mainly with celebratory accounts of major institutions such as independent schools and churches. He exemplified the antiquarian imagination, based on intimate knowledge of local sites and sources.

Von Stieglitz died on 26 March 1967 during a service in St Andrew's Church of England, Evandale, and was buried in that churchyard. His wife and their son and daughter survived him. The Launceston branch of the National Trust of Australia established a memorial lecture in honour of him and his fellow stalwarts Isabella Mead and Roy Smith.

Select Bibliography
The Tasmanian Cyclopedia (Hob, 1931)
T. Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors (Melb, 1996)
Australian Women’s Weekly, 22 Oct 1975, p 30
Examiner (Launceston), 27 Mar 1967, p 3, 29 Mar 1967, p 7, 10 July 1973, p 9
Mercury (Hobart), 1 Jan 1952, p 3, 27 Mar 1967, p 6
private information.

311. Dr. Emma Constance STONE & Dr. Grace Clara STONE Founders of the Queen Victoria Hospital, Christian Doctors, members of Congregational Church

Emma Constance STONE & Grace Clara STONE
from ADB Online -

Stone, Emma Constance (1856–1902)

by Penny Russell

This is a shared entry with Grace Clara Stone

Emma Constance Stone (1856-1902) and Grace Clara Stone (1860-1957), medical practitioners, were born on 4 December 1856 and on 12 January 1860 in Hobart Town, daughters of William Stone, builder, and his wife Betsy, née Haydon. William Stone was their brother. The family moved to Melbourne in 1872. Both girls were educated chiefly at home by their mother, a former governess.

Constance early developed an interest in anatomy, but it was not until 1884 that she went overseas to study medicine, since the University of Melbourne did not then admit women to its medical course. She completed a three-year degree at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, United States of America, and in 1888 graduated M.D., Ch.M. with first-class honours from the University of Trinity College, Toronto, Canada. She then proceeded to London where she worked with Mary Scharlieb at the New Hospital for Women and qualified as licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. Her experience at the New Hospital was to inspire her ambition to found a hospital 'by women, for women' in Melbourne. This wish was reinforced by her early experience in Melbourne where she returned in 1890 to become the first woman to register with the Medical Board of Victoria. Photographs of the time portray her as a fine-featured woman with a high forehead and a strong, regular profile. She practised one day a week at the free dispensary attached to Dr Singleton's mission in Collingwood and was quickly convinced that work 'as great as their strength could compass' awaited female doctors who ministered to needy women.

By this time her sister Clara was almost ready to join her. In 1887 the university allowed women to enter its medical school and Clara was one of seven whose requests for admission had led to this change. She started her degree that year and in 1891 became one of the first two women to graduate in medicine from the university. She then went into private practice with Constance and joined her at the free dispensary.

Emily Mary Page Stone (1865-1910), cousin of Constance and Clara, was born on 31 May 1865 at Mornington, Victoria, daughter of John Stone, storekeeper, and his wife Laura Matilda, née Reed, both English born. When she was 10 she went to England and stayed for six years with an aunt who kept a ladies' boarding school at Kew where Mary was educated. She trained as a teacher, returned to Melbourne and taught at various private schools. After attending classes at the Athenaeum to prepare herself to matriculate at the University of Melbourne, she commenced her medical studies there in 1889. In 1893 she graduated, having gained honours in each year of her course, and was placed sixth in the final examination. This result should have entitled her to a residency at the Melbourne Hospital, but her application was refused on the pretext that she had carried out her clinical studies entirely at the Alfred Hospital. The Melbourne Hospital did not admit any women to its residencies until 1896. Mary began private practice at Windsor but, after a few months, moved to Hawthorn.

Constance, Clara and Mary were all involved in the early activities and networks of Melbourne's female doctors. Constance's home was the venue for the first meeting in March 1895 of the Victorian Medical Women's Society, formed with the chief object of 'effecting a closer relationship between medical women graduates and undergraduates and to advance the knowledge to further their interests generally'. Clara was the first president and all three women supported the society throughout their lives. At a meeting held on 5 September 1896 eleven women doctors decided to set up a hospital of their own: their vision, and its subsequent achievement, was attributed by the others to Constance's inspired leadership. From its beginnings as an out-patients' dispensary in La Trobe Street (where the three Drs Stone worked on Monday mornings), the Queen Victoria Hospital, funded by a jubilee shilling fund appeal, evolved and was officially opened in July 1899.

By this time Constance Stone was ill; she died of tuberculosis on 29 December 1902. She had married Dr David Egryn Jones in the Congregational Church, St Kilda, on 4 July 1893; he survived her, as did their young daughter who was later also to become a doctor. Clara remained on the honorary staff of the Queen Victoria Hospital until 1919 and, after retiring from this position, continued in private practice in Alma Road, St Kilda. She died, unmarried, at her St Kilda home, on 10 May 1957 and was cremated.

In addition to her work at the hospital, Mary Page Stone maintained a close involvement with the National Council of Women, being honorary secretary of the Victorian branch in 1904-10. At the first congress of the N.C.W. in October 1903 she presented a paper on epileptic colonies, thereby inspiring the Talbot Colony for Epileptics which opened at Clayton in 1907 and with which she was deeply involved. Killed on 19 December 1910, when her bicycle collided with a wagon, she was buried in St Kilda cemetery. The N.C.W. initiated a movement to have an operating theatre for out-patients at the Queen Victoria Hospital (opened 1912) as her memorial.

The contribution of the three Drs Stone to the initial group of medical women and to the health of Melbourne's poor was inestimable. Constance was described by one of her medical colleagues, Janet Lindsay Greig, as 'the real pioneer' who alone deserved the honour of having started the Queen Victoria Hospital; Clara was said to be 'the hard worker', a tiny, bird-like woman of indomitable character who was a loyal friend to the younger generation in the V.M.W.S.; Mary was 'always ready to help in any cause furthering the welfare of women and the community at large, and was much beloved by her private patients'. All three embodied a spirit of service and sacrifice characteristic of the early professional women in this country.

Select Bibliography
M. H. Neve, This Mad Folly (Syd, 1980)
Southern Sphere, 1 Jan 1911
Queen Victoria Hospital (Melbourne), Annual Report, 1920
Town and Country Journal, 7 Jan 1903
Herald (Melbourne), 13 May 1957
P. A. Russell, Mothers of the Race (B.A. Hons thesis, Monash University, 1982)
M. Wells, ‘Gentlemen, the Ladies Have Come to Stay’ (M.A. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1988)
Stone papers (State Library of Victoria).

311+. Fr Brian Anthony STONEY, s.j. Leader of the 'Corpus Christi Community' for Homeless Alcoholic Men, Melbourne & Greenvale, VIC., & Cana Community, Sydney, NSW.
Born: 1939
Confirmed: 1945
Ministry: Society of Jesus, Corpus Christi community,
Cana Community
Died: 12 November 2008 Sacred Heart Hospice, Darlinghurst, Sydney, NSW @ age 69

Brian Anthony STONEY - ex-Jesuit

From: CATHOLIC WEEKLY - 30 November 2008
Fr Brian’s love of the underdog - ALICE RAMSAY

- "Hundreds of people from all walks of life crowded into St Canice’s Church, Elizabeth Bay, on November 18 to bid farewell Fr Brian Stoney who died on November 12 at the age of 69.

A Jesuit priest for more than 40 years, Fr Brian was committed to serving the poor and underprivileged in the community.

His funeral attracted people from every group in which he was known, from members of the Aboriginal community, to past and present students from St Ignatius’ College, Riverview, various religious and representatives from Cana Communities.

Fr Brian’s brother, David, shared with the congregation stories of their childhood.

“Brian used to say that the war started when he was born in 1939 and finished with his communion in 1945,” he said.

“He thought the fireworks were for him.”

David recounted Fr Brian’s love of obscure sports and sporting teams, and his preference for the underdog.

His favourite rugby league team, the Melbourne Storm, was recognised with a team jacket placed on his casket, along with family photos, his Bible, a crucifix, an AFL cap, a candle, a card of thanks, a Christmas gift and a packet of his favourite cigarettes.

Described as a “point of comfort, connection and controversy”, Fr Brian was known for his unconventional ways which helped him relate to the society he served.

He was often heard reciting his favourite quote: ‘Do you want to be good or do you want to follow Jesus?’

“Brian Stoney was a great man; he wasn’t a great man because he did great things but because he took part in the little things,” said Paul Stoney, his eldest nephew.

“His message was a gift, to see the greatness in each other and ourselves.”

Fr Brian was committed to social justice and played a key role in the foundation of Cana Communities, a volunteer-based organisation supporting people struggling with loneliness, mental illness, addiction and homelessness.

As the microphone was passed around and memories of Fr Brian were shared, one story summed up his life.

“He treated me like I was an equal and just like everybody else.”

By ALICE RAMSAY"



from EUREKA STREET; " The father of my soul: by JOANNA THYER
- On 12 November this year, Brian Stoney, a former Jesuit priest, died in the Sacred Heart Hospice, Darlinghurst. One of the most influential people in my life, Brian was both spiritual guide and close friend. It was a privilege knowing him and being involved in Cana Communities, an inner Sydney non-government organisation that works with street people, the homeless and mentally ill.
A packed house at his funeral service at the famous St Canice's Church in Kings Cross on the Tuesday after his death was testimony to the love inspired by this man among all facets of the community. Brian had an enormous influence on the lives of an extraordinary cross-section of people. It was no coincidence that the large screen image of Brian was draped over the crucifix in the base of the church. His spiritual presence was larger than life.
I first met Brian about 12 or 13 years ago when I was working as a pastoral carer at St Vincent's Hospital. I approached a colleague about a suitable person to have as spiritual director and she recommended Brian. I first went to meet him in Redfern, in what was then De Porres House, a rambling terrace full of odds and sodds of human beings, a colourful assortment of Sydney's characters. At that time Brian was not in the greatest of health but I spotted him straight away as a kindred spirit: a deep thinker and a complex, eccentric human being in possession of an enormous spiritual presence.
Always on for a challenge, one of the first things Brian said to me that day was 'Who's your favourite character in the Bible?' and then 'We need women priests.'
It is no surprise to me that if you do an anagram of Brian's name you get the words 'saint' and 'sinner'. Brian was a complex mix of spirituality, ideas, and held a passion for being present in the full raw spectrum of life, especially where sport and interesting people were concerned.
A good looking man and a charmer with both men and women, to me he always seemed wounded but real, and with an extraordinary capacity to see the truth of who a person really was, in an unconditionally loving and reassuring way. I cannot tell you how many times I went to see him and started making small talk, yet he would always guess what it really was I had come to talk to him about. He understood me better than anyone and always had the right spiritual message for me.

I cannot remember exactly why he chose to become a Jesuit but I know he received 'the call' as a young student. He had taught Latin at St Ignatius Review and was loved by his students. They often speak of his kindness. After he left the Jesuits in the early 90s and lived with street people, he became what I would call the epitome of the 'free range' priest — not really here, not really there, but everywhere.
For many so called saints, maintaining faith can be a struggle. Brian was no different from anyone else in that regard, he struggled; he was a depressive. A number 'four' on the Enneagram like me, he could wallow in self pity, but could come alive when interesting people crossed his path or made him laugh. He was a die hard sports fanatic, and like a true former Melburnian, took his sport very seriously. Following the Melbourne Storm, and the Demons were amongst his passions.
As a younger priest, Brian had briefly worked with Mother Teresa in India. He once told me that she had called out to him one day: 'Pray for me Father, because I'm the worst sinner in the world!' He understood her experience of the silence of God, something that is only just now being spoken about with the publication of her diaries. He espoused the silent promise of being understood, the famous Jesuit Karl Rahner's prayer 'into a silent darkness' where one 'knows that one is heard, although no answer seems to come back'.
He lived with street people in Sydney, not just worked with them, a tall order in anyone's book. He lacked boundaries needless to say. I remember one house colleague, Michael, now deceased, a volatile handful, and like many street or marginalised people and indeed some of the general population, beset with the usual cocktail of alcohol and mental health problems, on the odd occasion used to wander into Brian's bedroom in the early hours of the morning, bludging yet another cigarette.
Brian of course, would sleepily oblige, and sometimes chat to him. Many years previously Brian had worked at Greenvale, a hostel for homeless men in Melbourne. He was definite in his belief in the mysticism of the broken and always said to me: 'The more violent the alcoholic, the greater the hunger for spirituality.'
Of the things I learnt from Brian one of the most important was to embrace the wounded messiness of life, to embrace who I am, and to take all my concerns to the foot of the Cross, not try and fix them. This philosophy of Brian's was borne out in many of his eccentric, challenging and provocative ideas — including classics to the effect of: 'We should scrap all royal commissions and let police take bribes so they can stay in the pubs with ordinary people and be in touch with the realities of life!'
Indeed Brian loathed perfectionism, obsessive political correctness and society's attempts to 'fix' many human problems, or to deny what he always termed the 'primal' essence of human existence. A fan of the lessons of Greek mythology he believed we needed to be reminded of our own human frailty on a regular basis. Human nature may like to pretend it can 'clean itself up', but in fact it never really changes. We are who we are.
Brian was however in denial about some things including self care and I will never forget when I was working at St Vincent's Hospital in Pastoral Care and had to ring and remind him he was on the operation list for a heart bypass the next day. Lying in bed nonchalantly with the eternal cigarette in hand, he casually remarked, 'Oh am I?'
Brian had an enormous effect on anyone I introduced him to. My boyfriend who died recently was tremendously struck by his spiritual presence and gentleness, yet his profound ability to be a bloke, unphased by anything one might tell him. I expect they are both up in heaven exchanging jokes and talking about sport this very minute.
There are many other spiritual gifts I received from Brian, such as becoming enlightened by the spirituality of Karl Rahner, another devotee of the 'mysticism of everyday life.' Indeed Brian saw this mysticism often, especially the wandering mystic in many a disturbed human being — the inner cry to be at one with God; the immense hunger and longing for the God who longs for us too. Like Rahner, he always emphasized the importance of a direct, personal relationship with God, and the incomprehensibility of God, despite what Church or society might say.
For me a great gift from Brian's spiritual guidance was the bearing out of the prophesy of Hosea in the Bible: where the Lord says "But look, I am going to seduce her and lead her into the desert and speak to her heart." Many times Brian helped me see where God was speaking to my heart and how sometimes I needed to go into the desert to hear that message.
Why does anyone need a spiritual director? The value of love is emotional presence, because there Christ is present no matter how messy the situations and relationships we get ourselves into. Brian understood that about me; he understood that about everybody.
Brian was an odd mixture of love and passion, cynicism about the world, yet finding the sense of wonder of God in it still.
Was he the atypical spiritual director — full of calm words of wisdom when my world appeared under threat? Yes but his unconditional love always came from an unexpected place - the broken Christ, not the clean, calm measured icon, but a bloodied broken human being.
I cannot fully describe what Brian has meant to me, but perhaps the description by Teresa of Avila of her spiritual director, St John of the Cross says it all:
'You are the Father of My Soul.'
Thank you Brian for being a part of my life."

RESPONSES:
I loved this article by Joanna Thyer and related to what she so lovingly and articulately expressed about Brian. I was lucky enough to know Brian from the age of 15/16 in 1974, at Vaucluse College in Richmond. I loved what he saw in people and in particular what he sensed was in their hearts. Though not officially, he was, for me, along with a couple of other Jesuits, also a spiritual leader and we kept contact over the years. We would visit him at Greenvale and interact with the men who lived there. He performed my marriage service in 1981 and we would try to catch up when he visited Melbourne, once he'd moved to Sydney. The last time I saw him was when he was here recuperating,at The Way, in Fitzroy. His death was a great shock and although I attended a memorial sevice in Melbourne, I regret not flying to Sydney for his funeral. Denis Quinn, a former Jesuit friend of Brian, described it as incredibly beautiful and moving, and a deserving tribute.

I'd like to thank you Joanna, for such an insight to a truly wonderful human being. I feel somehow that it has helped me in my grief.

Sincere regards and love

Brenda Kovacevic
xxxxxx



From : PROVINCE EXPRESS - by Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ

Living with the poor

26-NOV-2008

On 18 November former Jesuit Brian Stoney was buried from St Canice's Church. The enduring significance of the event was evident in its trappings of transience. The transactions and shouting matches of the Kings Cross streets drifted into the church while a crowded church of people, homeless in many ways, spoke of how for over 40 years in Richmond, Salisbury, Fitzroy, Greenvale and Redfern, Brian had been for them a companion and homemaker.

For Jesuits and for Catholics more generally, Brian Stoney's life was significant also in another way. The 1960s saw a change in culture from Classical to Romantic. In this new climate, Brian Stoney embodied and advocated the priority that the Vatican Council had given to the poor.

By the 1960s, in a Catholic community that had become more affluent, Jesuit engagement with the poor was less direct than it had once been. It was easy for the poor to become the object of analysis, of assistance, of pastoral strategies, of theological reflection. This was consistent with a use of mind that privileged analysis over intuition, detachment over involvement, reflection over experience, the lasting over the transient, and general principles over the demands of particular situations.

The second Vatican Council provided a more concrete image of human needs. It coincided with the Romanticism of the 1960s, which emphasised the claims of experience, of the immediate, of the affective, and of experiment. Together these movements in church and society shaped a powerful spiritual rhetoric whose stories were dramatic, claims unbounded, and promises high. It also provoked a sceptical and often anxious response.

The Council invited Catholic religious congregations to re-examine their way of living and their pastoral priorities. Often their deliberations focused on poverty and on how they should address the poor in their works.

Brian Stoney was naturally at home in the rhetoric of the 1960s. Among his heroes were Robert Kennedy and Sally Trench. In his conversion to the poor through his contact with Matthew Talbot Hostel he recognised that reflection on the plight of the poor must begin in accompaniment, and that the poor were teachers, not topics. He also discovered that accompanying the poor could reveal, and perhaps heal, personal anguish.

As he explored ways of engaging personally with the poor he attracted many young people who instinctively resonated with his vision. They found him a compelling spiritual teacher. But when he represented his vision among Jesuits, he often felt marginalised. He relied on experience and intuition and was constrained by the disciplines of discursive argument. He was passionate but not articulate. He resorted to the rhetoric of gesture and of silence. This often shut down conversation and limited the communication that would have been helpful to both sides. But his presence and the attractiveness of his life ensured that other Jesuits could not evade the claim that the poor made on them.

Both the strength and the dangers of Brian's vision lay in the blurring of boundaries. He challenged and crossed boundaries between subjective and objective, between the reputable and disreputable, between the religious and the secular, between sinfulness and goodness, between the self and the other. If you want to share the lives of people who are marginalised in society, as Brian did, you have no choice but to test these boundaries. It also placed Brian in a position from which he could invite people to go beyond the boundaries that protected their comfort but threatened their happiness.

But people need boundaries if they are to nurture the springs of the self and to protect the health and balance necessary for living. Brian had discovered that if we enter the lives of the poor and marginalised on their own terms we shall discover our own weakness and come to accept it. That demands a strong sense of self. If however we collapse the boundaries between the self and the other, we cease to engage with others as persons. We project our own weaknesses on to them. We find, not healing but enervation and depression, and we neglect the ordinary disciplines that protect others from the consequences of our weakness.

These were the mines in the no man's land where Brian necessarily lived. It is understandable that he showed little care for his health, and felt estranged from many people who cared for him. His leaving the Jesuits was one part of this story. But even in his leaving the boundaries remained blurred, so that strong bonds remained on both sides.

His funeral revealed the depth of connection he had enabled deeply vulnerable and isolated people to make. It spoke of his affectionate and quirky personality. As another age and its spiritual rhetoric again invite us to cross boundaries and live at frontiers, his steadfast life displays the need and the costs of such an enterprise.

312. Arthur Ernest STREETON (1867-1943), artist

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (1867-1943), artist
Parents: Charles Henry Streeton, schoolteacher, and his wife Mary, née JOHNSON
Born: 8 April 1867 at Mount Duneed, near Geelong, Victoria,
Education: 1. his father's State schools: Duneed & Queenscliff; 2. night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Design; 3. self-taught as an artist
Occupation: clerk, lithographic apprentice, sketcher, illustrator, Medical Soldier, War artist, Artist, Landscape painter
Christianity: received the Catholic faith in a late illness
Achievement: Sense of the Sacred in Australian Landscape; The 'romantic blue and gold vision of a pastoral Australia.' A Messager of the light as in the 'delicate portrayal of light.
Works: see Streeton Catalogue
Cross: facile repetition,
Marriage: 11 January 1908 Marylebone register office, London, England.
Wife: Esther Leonora Clench, a Canadian violinist
Military service: 1. 24 April 1915 Australian Army Medical Corps 2. Official War Artist from 1918
Death: 1 September 1943 Olinda, Mt Dandenong, Victoria
Burial: Ferntree Gully cemetery

from Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB Online

Streeton, Sir Arthur Ernest (1867–1943)

by Ann E. Galbally

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (1867-1943), artist, was born on 8 April 1867 at Duneed, Victoria, fourth of five children of Charles Henry Streeton, schoolteacher, and his wife Mary, née Johnson, whom Charles had met on his voyage from England in 1854 and married in 1857 on his appointment to Queenscliff. The family moved to Melbourne in 1874 when Charles joined the administrative staff of the Education Department. They settled at Richmond and Arthur attended the Punt Road State School until 1880 when he became a junior clerk in the office of Rolfe & Co., importers, of Bourke Street.

As a child Arthur liked to draw and sketch in water-colour. He enrolled in night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Design in 1882-87 and in 1886 his skill at sketching led to his being apprenticed as a lithographer to Charles Troedel & Co., of Collins Street. Streeton's first independently published black-and-white work, 'His First Snake', appeared in the Australasian Sketcher of 24 January 1889. He had no formal instruction in painting; his earliest extant oils date from 1884 and at this stage he was largely self-taught; he used such manuals as William Morris Hunt's Talks About Art (1877) which urged the emulation of plein air French painters Jean Millet and Camille Corot. Inspired by his reading, Streeton wrote to the compiler of Hunt's book for photographs of Corot's work.

In the summer of 1886 Streeton met Tom Roberts at Mentone. Seeing his work 'full of light and air', Roberts asked him to join a painting group which included Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams. In their company Streeton continued to work on the problems of light and heat and space and distance which had already absorbed him. With the sale of 'Settler's Camp' and 'Pastoral', both exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society in 1888, he was able to paint full time: for the next two years he worked at Box Hill and Heidelberg with his artist friends who now included Charles Conder, and also in the city where he did portraits and studies of the Yarra River and its bridges. A camp established at an old house at Eaglemont, overlooking the Yarra valley near Heidelberg, became the focus of their artistic fellowship. Streeton and Conder supplemented their income by giving painting lessons to young women; at weekends artists and students visited to paint and picnic beneath the pines.

On 17 August 1889 the Heidelberg painters opened their 9 x 5 (inches) Exhibition of Impressions at Buxton's Art Gallery, Melbourne. The exhibition was a statement of rebellion by young artists, influenced by international trends, against the prevailing academic tradition of Victorian painting. The 182 exhibits included forty by Streeton. Mostly painted on cedar cigar-box lids and hung among silks, they were Impressionist in the direct manner of painting and the study of momentary effects, while retaining the plein-airist tonal use of colour. The catalogue stated: 'An effect is only momentary: so an impressionist tries to find his place … So in these works, it has been the object of the artists to render faithfully, and thus obtain first records of effects widely differing, and often of very fleeting character'. The exhibition won popular success, but provoked critical scorn, expressed most virulently by the influential Argus critic James Smith. Streeton, Roberts and Conder responded in a letter to the Argus, asserting: 'Any form of nature which moves us strongly by its beauty, whether strong or vague in its drawing, defined or undefinite in its light, rare or ordinary in its colour, is worthy of our best efforts'.

The camp broke up in January 1890; three months later Conder left Australia for Paris, taking with him Streeton's 'Golden Summer' (1889) which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1891, and hung on the line and awarded an honorable mention at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, Paris, in 1892. Streeton, whose 'Still Glides the Stream and Shall for Ever Glide' (1890) had been acquired by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, moved to Sydney. Julian Ashton saw him then as 'a slim, debonair young man … with a little gold pointed beard and fair complexion', who, when he was not painting, 'was quoting Keats and Shelley'. Streeton lived at 'Curlew Camp', Little Sirius Cove, Mosman, with Roberts and other impecunious artists, and painted a variety of harbour views, Coogee beach scenes, art-nouveau-inspired nudes and in 1893 two urban masterpieces, 'Circular Quay' and 'The Railway Station'. With Roberts he opened a teaching studio in Pitt Street.

In 1891 Streeton wrote to Roberts of his yearning to 'try something entirely new': 'to translate some of the great hidden poetry' of the immense, elemental outback. He travelled inland in New South Wales and painted directly in front of his subject, striving to capture—as he told Roberts—the 'great, gold plains', the 'hot, trying winds' and the 'slow, immense summer'. The paintings of this period, including 'Fire's On' (1891), are heroic landscapes which successfully balance bravura technique with real inspiration and feeling. His Hawkesbury River series (1896) is remarkable for the rendering of light, heat and distance. On the recommendation of John Mather the National Gallery of Victoria bought one, 'The Purple Noon's Transparent Might', shown at Streeton's first one-man Melbourne exhibition in December 1896.

After this success Streeton sailed for England, spending five months painting in Cairo en route. The early years in London were hard; he had few friends and felt none of the intuitive affinity with the English landscape that had inspired his Australian paintings. Homesick and nostalgic for his youth, he seems also to have suffered a time of artistic confusion. There was little interest in his work and little success at the major exhibiting venues, the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club. In 1906-07 he spent a year in Australia and had considerable acclaim with sales of his English and recent Australian work. G. W. Marshall-Hall and (Sir) Walter Baldwin Spencer were early patrons who became friends.

Returning to London, Streeton married Esther Leonora Clench, a Canadian violinist, on 11 January 1908 in the Marylebone register office. Apart from a visit home in 1913-14, he spent the years before World War I based in London whence he sent works for exhibition in Australia. During this period Streeton's art began to win recognition in England, France and at the international exhibitions held in the United States of America. His wife's extensive social contacts helped with commissions and Streeton's formerly rather reclusive personality had to respond to de rigueur 'country-house' weekends.

On 24 April 1915 Streeton enlisted as a private in the Australian Army Medical Corps and was posted to Wandsworth where he worked as an orderly for the next two years. Commissioned honorary lieutenant and appointed official war artist in 1918, he spent two periods in France documenting the Western Front for the Commonwealth government. In contrast to the Middle East paintings of George Lambert, Streeton concentrated on the landscape of war; his paintings show the desolation of the terrain, but none of the tragedy or drama of human suffering. As throughout his career, landscape views rather than figure-painting remained the core of his art. In July 1919 at the Alpine Club, London, he showed a series of war paintings entitled 'With Australians on the Somme'. His best water-colours recall his early work in their immediacy and delicate portrayal of light.

After the war Streeton and his family visited Australia. In 1922 they returned to London, via St Mary's, Ontario, Canada, where Nora Streeton's mother lived. Streeton's paintings of Canada were exhibited at the Montross Gallery, New York, in January 1923, but they aroused little interest in spite of a warm press reception. That year he returned to Victoria where he bought a home at Toorak and built a cottage at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges. He made painting trips to many Australian sites and in 1928 was awarded the Wynne prize for landscape for 'Afternoon Light: the Goulburn Valley'.

In his later years Streeton became a national institution. He continued to paint sunny, pastoral landscapes, but many were mannered, fluent and facile, and devoid of the inspiration of his radical early work. Leading critics, particularly J. S. MacDonald and Lionel Lindsay, extolled his art which—with that of Roberts and McCubbin—was to some extent appropriated by the art establishment in the cause of a conservative, isolationist nationalism. Most responded to the optimism of Streeton's romantic blue and gold vision of a pastoral Australia. William Blamire Young was one of the few to contrast unfavourably Streeton's later canvases with the small 'gem-like' pictures of his early years. Reviewing a retrospective exhibition in 1933, he wrote that 'in many cases the poet has been over-powered by the technician'. As art critic for the Argus from 1929, Streeton himself became a tastemaker; although an early supporter of Hans Heysen and Norman Lindsay, he was not receptive to modern art. He frequently wrote in the press on art, the environment and public affairs. At the same time he embellished and consolidated the Streeton legend, writing his interpretation of the history of Australian painting, organizing his own numerous exhibitions and producing the Arthur Streeton Catalogue (1935). In 1937 he was knighted.

After his wife's death in 1938, Streeton retired to Olinda and devoted much of his time to his garden. He died there on 1 September 1943, having been received into the Catholic faith during his last long illness, and was buried in Ferntree Gully cemetery. His son survived him.

Widely read in English literature and poetry, Streeton was a Romantic. His love of music formed a great bond with his wife. Artistically he always preferred the tonal landscapes of the French plein air movement of the 1870s and late-Victorian Romantic landscapists like Alfred East. In the twentieth century he showed little interest in avant-garde art, believing to the end in the values of sound drawing and tonally orchestrated colour. He was of medium height and slightly built. Roberts's portrait, 'Smike Streeton, age 24' (1891), shows a fine-featured profile, wide, expressive, dark eyes, brown hair, a gold-tinged moustache and beard, and an eager, boyish expression. It is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as is a self-portrait, presented in 1924.

Select Bibliography
Smike to Bulldog—Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, R. H. Croll ed (Syd, 1946)
B. Smith, Australian Painting 1788-1960 (Melb, 1962)
A. Galbally, Arthur Streeton (Melb, 1979)
G. Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come (Melb, 1973)
Art in Australia, no 2, 1915, no 16, 1926
Meanjin Quarterly, 10, no 2, 1951
Streeton papers (Australian War Memorial)
Roberts papers (State Library of New South Wales).

312+. = Carl STREHLOW NT & Mrs Frieda STREHLOW NT = & T. G. H. ‘Ted’ STREHLOW NT


313. Reverend Father Anton 'Anthony' STRELE - born Austria. Rector, Jesuit Missionary, Roman Catholic Priest. Sevenhill & St Aloysius, Clare valley, South Australia & Daly River, Northern Territory

=Very Rev, Anton STRELE SJ. NT

Father Anton 'Anthony' STRELE was born in about 1825 at Nassereit, in the Tyrol District of the Östereich, (Austrian Empire). At age 57 after 15 years in Australia, Father Strele swore the Oath of his Aliens Memorial for Naturalisation when he was Rector at St Aloysius College, Seven Hill, Clare, South Australia on the 28th April 1882. Later he was the Jesuit Roman Catholic Missionary and Priest, at Rapid Creek, Northern Territory.

From Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB Online : -

Strele, Anton (1825–1897)

by G. J. O'Kelly

Anton Strele (1825-1897), Jesuit priest, was born on 23 August 1825 at Nassereith, Austria. Educated at the Jesuit Gymnasium, Innsbruck, he entered the Society of Jesus at Gratz on 14 August 1845 and took his first vows in 1849. He completed his studies in France and was ordained priest at Laval on 23 September 1854. He was then appointed to the Jesuit colleges at Mariastein, Linz, and in 1859 to the College of Nobles at Kalksburg. He volunteered for the Austrian Jesuit mission in South Australia and sailed from London in April 1867. He reached Sevenhill on 22 December.

In March 1868 Strele was appointed the first Jesuit master of novices in Australia, an office he held intermittently until 1882. As superior of the mission in 1870-73 he supervised the expansion of Jesuit work in Adelaide and Sevenhill, the building of a separate residence at Georgetown and the establishment of a Polish settlement at Hill River. In 1873-80 he was rector of St Aloysius College, Sevenhill, lectured in philosophy and also undertook pastoral work around Clare, Farrell Flat and Manoora, where he built the church and presbytery. As superior again in 1880-82 he negotiated the transfer of some Jesuit parishes to local diocesan control and made arrangements to found the Northern Territory mission. To launch the mission he toured South Australia and Victoria seeking funds. With rare foresight he began to study Aboriginal lore.

On 2 October 1882 Strele and three confrères opened the first station at Rapid Creek near Palmerston (Darwin). He founded a second on the Daly River in 1886, and a third at Serpentine Lagoon in 1889. The mission was always short of money and in 1887-89 he toured the United States of America and Europe to raise funds. When Salvado resigned his nominal office of bishop of Port Victoria and Palmerston, Strele was appointed administrator apostolic of the diocese on 1 August 1888. He resisted the promotion in vain and moved to Palmerston where he tended the white Catholic population; he secured sites for churches and schools there as well as in Pine Creek, Burrundie and the new settlement. He remained superior to the three mission stations until 6 February 1891. The rigours of the life and his responsibilities told on Strele and he was forced to return south in October 1892, broken in health. He died at St Aloysius College on 15 December 1897, and was buried in the crypt of the church. His estate was sworn for probate at £90.

The breadth of vision of the Jesuit Aboriginal mission was due to Strele's painstaking efforts to accommodate as much of the findings of the early writers on Aboriginal anthropology as he could. Needing finance and deeply committed to the success of the mission, he often refused to admit failures that were obvious and maintained agricultural ventures that were patently not viable.

Select Bibliography
P. F. Moran, History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (Syd, 1895)
Our Australian Missions (Melb, 1899)
E. Bülow, Hundert Lebensbilder aus der Osterreichisch-Ungarischen Provinz der Gesellschaft Jesu (Vienna, 1902)
Society of Jesus, Centenary in Australia (Norwood, 1948)
G. J. O'Kelly, The Jesuit Mission Stations in the Northern Territory, 1882-1899 (B.A. Hons thesis, Monash University, 1967)
Austro-Hungarian Mission in NT, records (Jesuit Provincial Archives, Hawthorn, Melbourne).

314. Sir Alexander STUART, Anglican Premier of NSW 1885

315. =John McDouall STUART, SA , NT

316. Charles STURT


316.Alt. John Christian SYMONS (1820-1894),

Birth: 1820 Cornwall, England
Death: 14 February 1894 Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Cultural Heritage: Cornish, English
Religious Influence: Wesleyan, Methodist
Occupation: Methodist minister, biographer, contemporary-affairs commentator, magazine/journal editor

Symons, John Christian (1820–1894)

by Renate Howe

This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, (MUP), 1976

John Christian Symons (1820-1894), clergyman, was born in Cornwall, England, son of Mark Symons, farmer, and his wife Ann, née Christian. He was a Wesleyan local preacher and an apprentice at the drapery firm of G. Hitchcock & Co. in London in 1844 when fourteen employees formed the first Young Men's Christian Association; he was elected secretary. In 1846 he was religious instructor aboard the convict ship Maitland travelling to Port Phillip. In port Symons attended the Wesleyan chapel, Collins Street; he was nominated for the ministry at a Melbourne Circuit Quarterly Meeting in July 1847, and was later approved by the British Conference.

Symons began his ministry at Kapunda, South Australia, and was assistant minister in Adelaide when Rev. J. Draper authorized him in February 1852 to visit the Victorian goldfields to raise money for chapel debts. One of the first resident clergymen on the goldfields, he arrived at Forest Creek in March; next year he went to the Melbourne East circuit.

In 1856 he moved to Beechworth and while there a chapel was built and a Young Men's Association formed; his presidential lecture that year was published in Melbourne as The History and Advantages of Young Men's Associations. He was later a vice-president of the Melbourne Young Men's Christian Association. After a year at Geelong he was circuit superintendent at Carisbrook and encouraged the building of two local chapels. In 1863-77 he was editor of the Wesleyan Chronicle and manager of the Wesleyan Book Depot.

Symons had been a prominent member of the Victorian District Education Committee which until 1855 fostered Wesleyan schools; when they were impeded by a new method of allocating government funds, he responded with the pamphlet What is the Best System of Education for Victoria? (Melbourne, 1857).

In 1865 he was secretary of Wesleyan Grammar School (Wesley College) which opened next year. He criticized the Education Act of 1872 which made no provision for religious teaching in state schools. Constantly opposed to spiritualism, he also publicly debated Sabbath observance and defended the literal interpretation of Scripture.

The Victorian and Tasmanian Conference of 1876 elected Symons president. After a visit to England in 1881, he was appointed by the General Wesleyan Conference of Australasia as treasurer of the Supernumerary Ministers' and Ministers' Widows' Fund. With Rev. W. P. Wells he codified the laws of the Australasian Wesleyan Church and perfected a model deed for Church ownership of property. He was elected president of the General Conference in 1888.

Although he lacked formal education, Symons read widely and in 1891 was appointed a part-time lecturer in Church history at Queen's College, University of Melbourne. He was the author of many pamphlets and also published a Life of the Rev. Daniel James Draper … (London, 1870). Dogmatic and outspoken, conservative in theology, in later life he proved a sound administrator of affairs which did not require a larger vision. He died on 14 February 1894 at Hawthorn survived by his wife Matilda, née Hodgson, whom he had married at the age of 27 at Truro, Cornwall, and one of their three sons. His estate was sworn for probate at £1834.

Select Bibliography

* M. Dyson (ed), Australasian Methodist Ministerial General Index, 2nd ed (Melb, 1896)

* Spectator and Methodist Chronicle, 23 Feb 1894

* R. Howe, The Wesleyan Church in Victoria, 1855-1901: Its Ministry and Membership (M.A. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1965).

317. = Alphonse TACHON, Beagle Bay, WA

318. =George TAPLIN, missionary & anthropologist NSW & . =Martha TAPLIN NSW

319. =Christian G TEICHELMANN, Torrens River SA

319+. Soo Hoo 'George' TEN

Soo Hoo 'George' TEN

Birth: 1848 Hoiping, Kwangtung (Guangdong), China
Cultural Influence: Chinese
Occupation: Anglican deacon, Anglican lay leader, Anglican minister, tea merchant
Religious Influence: Anglican, Baptist
Death: 24 September 1934 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

From: Australian Dictionary of Biography ADB Online -

Ten, George Soo Hoo (1848–1934)

by Ruth Teale

George Soo Hoo Ten (1848-1934), Anglican missionary to the Chinese, left his birthplace Hoiping, Kwangtung, China, aged about 17, for San Francisco where he learned English and was converted to Christianity by a Baptist minister. In 1876 he was a tea merchant in Sydney, and in July 1879 first went among the market gardeners of Botany and Waterloo as a catechist sponsored by the Sydney Diocesan Corresponding Committee of the Australasian Board of Missions.

Despite ridicule and open opposition from many Chinese, especially gamblers and opium dealers, and bitter anti-Chinese feeling among some Europeans, Ten began Sunday afternoon services at Botany and the St Andrew's Cathedral schoolroom, as well as week-night classes in English. His first six converts were baptized in June 1882. In February 1884 he preached to the Chinese at Bathurst, and later in Sydney formed 'a Chinese YMCA' which met monthly 'for fellowship and special instruction'. In January 1885 his annual stipend was increased from £75 to £125 with house rent. On 20 December he was made deacon and licensed as 'missionary to the Chinese and to officiate at Christ Church, Botany', whose foundation stone had been laid in June.

Ten conducted missions in Brisbane in October 1887, in Melbourne in July 1888 and in Parramatta in May 1891. In February 1889 his stipend was doubled and by 1890 he was conducting 38 services a week at Botany, Waterloo, Cook's River, Canterbury, North Willoughby and at St Andrew's and St Philip's schoolrooms in the city, as well as training Chinese catechists. After 1894 he helped raise funds for land, a church and mission hall in Wexford Street, an area that was a centre of prostitution and gambling in Sydney; and in March 1898 St Luke's Church was opened there. On 24 June he was priested, his annual salary rose to £300 and he confined his ministry to the inner city; at the same time control of the mission passed to the New South Wales Church Missionary Association. By 1912 he appears to have retired to Homebush. On 24 September 1934, aged 86, he died of cancer in the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, survived by a daughter and predeceased by his wife Elizabeth, née Lett, a dressmaker, whom he had married in Sydney on 25 April 1889. His estate was valued for probate at £4882.

Select Bibliography
* Australasian Missionary News, Jan 1889
* Church Missionary Assn of New South Wales, Annual Report, 1903-04, 1912, and Diocese of Sydney, Official register, and Diocesan Corresponding Committee, * Australasian Board of Missions, Votes and Proceedings, Synod (Sydney Diocesan Registry).

320. =Watkin TENCH NSW


321. =Fr John Joseph THERRY, convict catholic priest NSW




322.1. Colin THIELE (1920-2006) -Teacher, Educator & Pedagog, Poet, Novelist, Children's Writer. Thiele's particular grace was his capture of a sense of the sacred in the Australian peopel, its landscapes and encounters.

Colin Milton Thiele, AC- Born 16 November 1920 Eudunda, South Australia
Died - 4 September 2006 (aged 85) Brisbane, Queensland
Occupation Novelist, poet, educational writer
Nationality: Australian; Christianity: Lutheran
Period 20th century ; Language: Barossa Deutsch & English;
Genre: Children's, Australian Subject Australian history, Australian biographies, Poetry

Notable works: Storm Boy, Blue Fin, Sun on the Stubble, February Dragon, Jodie's Journey; The Fire In The Stone, many books of Poems + 50 more

Overt Faith Works: The Sun on the Stubble (1961); Labourers in the Vineyard (1970); Gemma’s Christmas Eve (1994); With Dew on My Boots: A Childhood Revisited (1997) -an Autobiography; The Benedictions of Benjamin Gates (1977) by Arthur Burfield and Colin Thiele; Heysen of Hahndorf (1968)(Biography); Heysen’s Early Hahndorf (1976) The Early Works of Sir Hans Heysen; The Golden Lightning: Poems (1950); Progress to Denial: A Poem (1945); Splinters and Shards: Poems (1945);

-

THANKSGIVING FOR WATER

~ by Colin Thiele

And we give thanks exceedingly for water!
For its joy over stones in the creek up at Bennett's place,
And for the salt lash of the windy spray
Over the cutter's bow, like a slap across the face.

For the jug in the kitchen, the slim curving stem
On the green cloth - the glass so fragile there -
That the water stands up on its own
With an arching back braced firm against the air.

For the teeming pool inarmed in the rich red mud,
For puddles making maps across the street
Of seas where Atlas wades, and boys like Hercules
Find Hesperides itself, with muddy feet.

For a creek with gum trees, sky-entangled branches
Hanging downwards to our feet;
For morning dew-boots in wet flags of grass
September the miracle we go to meet.

For a sweet gulp of cold on a red red day,
For hands plunged deep to the wrists, for frost,
For snow and old tired rivers
Muttering a million years of memories lost.

For shock of fall, for foam
Roar-tumbled and the white spray;
For winter sleet in drops on cheeks and faces,
For tears deep hidden in the clay...

Yes, for Earth our gratitude as we have wrought her
But most exceedingly our thanks for water.

322. Mesac THOMAS (1816~1892) , 1st Anglican Bishop of Goulburn and Vicar to the Goldfields & Bishop Pilgrim through outback New South Wales

Bishop Mesac Thomas
Born 1816 Typorth near Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales -
died 1892 Goulburn near where he is
Buried in the St Saviour's cathedral grounds, Goulburn, NSW)

From: Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB Obline -

Thomas, Mesac (1816–1892)

by Barbara Thorn

Mesac Thomas (1816-1892), Anglican bishop, was born on 10 May 1816 at Typorth near Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales, son of John Thomas and his wife Elizabeth, née Williams. Educated at Oswestry Grammar School and Shrewsbury School, in 1836 he matriculated at St John's College and next year moved to Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1840; M.A., 1843; D.D., 1863). In 1839 he became founding secretary of the Cambridge Camden Society (Ecclesiological Society, 1841) and retained a lifelong interest in church buildings. Made deacon in 1840 he was ordained priest on 25 July 1841 by the bishop of Worcester; in 1840-43 he served as curate at Birmingham and was incumbent at Tuddenham St Martin, Suffolk, in 1843-46. He married Mary Campbell Hasluck at Aston near Birmingham on 7 November 1843. He was vicar of Attleborough, Warwickshire, until 1851 when he became clerical organizing secretary of the Colonial Church and School Society; he extended and consolidated the work of the society as he gained insight into missionary life. Living at Islington, London, he inaugurated weekly services for cab drivers at their local depot.

On 14 March 1863 Thomas was appointed first bishop of Goulburn, New South Wales. His nomination had been opposed by Charles Campbell and Rev. Ernest Hawkins, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, because of his Evangelical churchmanship, but Bishop Barker recognized that he had qualities of leadership and supported him; he was consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral on 25 March. Neither Thomas nor Campbell allowed this clash to colour their future relations and Campbell became his trusted chancellor and friend.

Thomas and his wife arrived in Sydney in the Bombay on 13 March 1864 and at Goulburn on 8 April. With an energy that concealed his despondency, he set about the task of building up an insufficiently endowed diocese in a sparsely populated district. As he increased the number of his clergy he provided spiritual comfort for isolated settlers and many diggers on the Araluen and Lambing Flat goldfields; finding this a missionary task beyond the resources of his diocese, he turned to the S.P.G., the Colonial and Continental Church Society and the Colonial Bishoprics' Fund, stressing that the needs of their own countrymen were greater than those of the heathen. In 1874-75 he visited England seeking further financial support.

With the formation of the Goulburn Church Society in 1864, Thomas introduced the principle of the interdependence of parish and diocese; thus he ensured that all his clergy received adequate stipends and that local building efforts were assisted from diocesan funds. By far-flung visitations and through his extensive correspondence, he made personal contact with his clergy and laity and guided his vast diocese. In some ways Thomas was aloof, the 'Lord Bishop', conscious of his position and dignity; he was authoritarian, setting high standards for his clergy, but he was also humane and tender, though these qualities were often concealed under his brusque manner. He developed a passionate loyalty to his diocese and learnt to love his strange adopted land.

The establishment of the diocesan synod in February 1867 extended the co-operation of the clergy and laity in Church management. Thomas insisted that legislation was necessary to validate synods and that they were the effective organs of Church government; his stance led to clashes with more liberal churchmen, particularly in the discussions about the formation of the Provincial Synod of New South Wales and the General Synod. In later years he questioned the usefulness of synods which he then saw as an interruption rather than a contribution to Church administration.

Thomas's responsibility increased with the growth of population and closer settlement in the western part of his see. The strain was eased by the formation of the diocese of the Riverina in 1884. In 1880 he supported John Gribble in establishing an Aboriginal mission at Warangesda on the Murrumbidgee River. For ten years he had spent much time and energy on raising funds to build the new St Saviour's Cathedral at Goulburn; designed by Edmund Blacket it was dedicated on 29 April 1884. His later years were saddened by disputes between himself, F. R. L. Rossi and Archdeacon A. T. Puddicombe about the trusteeship of the cathedral and its place as a parish church. The clash of personalities divided the Church of England in Goulburn, with the authority of the bishop questioned and the influence of the Church lessened. For Thomas there could be no compromise and the dispute dragged on with court cases.

Wracked by bouts of serious illness, Thomas lost control and the diocese foundered. He died of heart disease on 15 March 1892 and was buried in the cathedral grounds, survived by his wife to whom he left an estate valued for probate at £8226.

Select Bibliography
* B. Thorn (ed), Letters from Goulburn (Canb, 1964)
* Henry Parkes letters (State Library of New South Wales)
* M. Thomas letter-book, 1865-90 (St Mark's Library, Canberra)
* Diocese of Goulburn, Church Society reports, 1864-92, and
* Synod reports, 1866-92 (St Mark's Library, Canberra).

323. = "MARMINATA" William THOMAS, (1793-1867) Assistant Protector of Aborigines, Westernport, Narre Narre Warren, Upper Goulburn, Gipplsand & Melbourne.


"MARMINATA" William THOMAS

Death: 1 December 1867 at his home, Merri Ville Lodge, Brunswick.

"MARMINATA" William THOMAS

FROM : Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB ONLINE

Thomas, William (1793–1867)

by D. J. Mulvaney

William Thomas (1793-1867), assistant protector and guardian of Aboriginals, was born in Westminster, England, of Welsh parents. His father and brother were army officers. His education was rounded off by a year on the Continent, mainly in Spain, but details of his upbringing are obscure. He opened a school in the Old Kent Road, London, for teaching potential civil servants. In this capacity, and possibly also because of his Wesleyan beliefs, he met members of the post-Reform Act government.

The humanitarian recommendations of the 1837 select committee on Aboriginals resulted in Glenelg's decision to appoint a chief protector and four assistants for the Aboriginals of the Port Phillip District. He offered an assistantship to Thomas at a salary of £250, with a free passage for his wife Susannah, née Jackson, and family. His acceptance of this task at the age of 44 reflects his dedication and zeal. However, he stipulated that his appointment should rank him as a permanent servant of the British and not of a colonial government.

The family reached Sydney on 3 August 1838 and arrived in Melbourne later that year. The chief protector, George Augustus Robinson, allocated the Port Phillip, Westernport and Gippsland districts to Thomas, who entered the field during April 1839 and soon established his base at Narre Warren. Years of privation followed during which Thomas moved with Aboriginal groups, rarely seeing his family, whose own housing was also primitive.

His early expectations of a rapid enlightenment of the natives were soon dispelled but, unlike most other protectors, he persisted. When hopes of civilizing the Aboriginals faded, he concentrated on the practical tasks of keeping them alive, shepherding them away from the temptations of city life and maintaining harmony between black and white. His task was hindered by Robinson who failed to support him in many disputes with settlers, bombarded him with excessive paper work, and was dilatory in getting him a field allowance. As he was housed in a tent and moved around with the Aboriginals, it is little wonder that some of his replies to Robinson were terse. Despite difficulties Thomas kept a detailed diary and made various notes for a projected book which never eventuated partly because he lost many of his notes around 1844. He wrote long memoranda on Aboriginal society for Robinson, Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe and Judge (Sir) Redmond Barry; his data and ethnographic collections were basic sources for Robert Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria, 1-2 (London, 1878).

The protectorate was terminated in 1849, but La Trobe retained Thomas as guardian in the Counties of Bourke, Mornington and Evelyn from January 1850. His presence ensured some protection during the next decade, although expenditure was minimal. Until his death he was chief government adviser on Aboriginal affairs and was the most influential witness at the 1858-59 select committee of the Legislative Council on Aborigines. His recommendation to establish reserves and supply depots throughout Victoria was accepted in a modified form and in 1860 became the policy implemented by the new Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines. Thomas was designated the official visitor to supervise the work of all stations and depots but after a tour of Gippsland in 1860 his health failed. Later he acted as adviser and as a justice of the peace on suburban benches. Failing eyesight caused his retirement from active duties two months before his death on 1 December 1867 at his home, Merri Ville Lodge, Brunswick. He was survived by three of his nine children.

With no gifts of leadership or strong personality, Thomas was overshadowed by Robinson in the 1840s. His anthropological knowledge was gained through experience, and his understanding of tribal complexity and spiritual bonds was thereby limited. However, he was more successful than any other first generation settler in attempting to comprehend and sustain Aboriginal society. His charges knew him as Marminata (Good Father), and he always administered indirectly through influence on their leaders. He had striking success in settling intertribal disputes and preventing racial strife. His bravery and moral conviction were undoubted, but his advocacy of Aboriginal causes made him unpopular in colonial society. Richard Howitt, who befriended him in 1842, commented upon the 'almost childlike simplicity of manners and … his goodness of heart'.

Select Bibliography
* T. F. Bride (ed), Letters from Victorian Pioneers (Melb, 1898)
* E. J. B. Foxcroft, Australian Native Policy: Its History, Especially in Victoria (Melb, 1941)
* William Thomas papers (State Library of New South Wales and State Library of Victoria).

323. = Dr. Alexander THOMSON - Aberdeen to Van Diemen's Lands, Melbourne, Geelong VIC VIC

Born: 1800 Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Died: 1 January 1866 Geelong, Victoria
Occupation: Cathechist for The Dutigalla Asscoiation;
Organised the first Christian Worship Service in Port Phillip District
Presbyterian Pioneer;
Mayor of Geelong.

Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB Online

THOMSON, ALEXANDER (1800-1866),

a pioneer of Melbourne and Geelong,

by Geoffrey SERLE

...son of Alexander Thomson, a shipowner of Aberdeen, Scotland, was born in 1800. He was educated at Dr Todd's school at Tichfield, Aberdeen university, and at London, where he studied under Sir Everard Home and qualified for the medical profession. In March 1824 he married Barbara Dalrymple, and in 1825 sailed to Tasmania as a surgeon on a convict ship, the first of several voyages made by him. He was then in comfortable circumstances having been left a sum of £9500 by his mother. In 1831 he decided to settle in Tasmania, and bringing with him his wife and daughter, obtained a grant of 4000 acres of land. In 1832 he bought two small steamers and established a service between Hobart and Kangaroo Point. He, however, sold both vessels during the next two years. He became interested in the colonization of Port Phillip, but did not join the Port Phillip Association, though invited to do so, and in November 1835 he sent across the first cattle to arrive in the new settlement, a draft of 50 Hereford cows. In March 1836 Thomson arrived with his wife and daughter. He came over as medical officer and catechist for the Port Phillip Association, and built a house near the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth-streets, Melbourne. In May he acted as one of three arbitrators in connexion with disputes between Henry Batman and Fawkner (q.v.), and before his house was completed he was in the habit of holding a service on Sunday in his tent. He was secretary to the first public meeting held in Melbourne, on 1 June, and in October Lonsdale (q.v.) appointed him medical officer at a salary of £200 a year. He resigned this position in January 1837, and having selected land on the present site of Geelong, settled there. He did some exploring, acquired more land in several localities, and in 1846 held about 150,000 acres. He was a director of the Port Phillip bank, which was a failure, and the Port Phillip Steam Navigation Company, and he was the first to make cash advances on wool. He was foremost in every movement connected with Geelong from the removal of the bar at the mouth of the harbour to the founding of a mechanics' institute. He also took much interest in church affairs and in the well-being of the aborigines. In these matters he gave not only time, he also spent considerable sums of money. The town was incorporated in 1849, then having 8000 inhabitants, and, as was fitting, Thomson was elected its first mayor. He field this position again in 1851, 1855, 1856 and 1857. He had been elected a member of the New South Wales legislative council as one of the representatives of the Port Phillip district in 1843, but as it was impossible to attend the meetings at Sydney, soon resigned. He was active in the anti-transportation movement, in 1852 was elected a member of the Victorian legislative council, and brought in and passed a bill incorporating the "Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company". Thomson presided at the first meeting of shareholders and was one of the directors. The line was completed in 1857. In the meanwhile Thomson had resigned his seat in the council and visited England where he found he could get no information about the Australian colonies bills. There had been a change of ministers and Lord John Russell, now in charge of the colonial office, had gone to Vienna. Thomson followed him there, obtained an interview, and got a promise that there would be a separate constitution bill for the colony of Victoria. In May 1855 Lord John Russell sent him a copy of the bill which soon afterwards became law. In 1857 Thomson was elected member for Geelong in the Victorian legislative assembly but retired in April 1859. His many activities had led to the neglect of his own financial affairs, and towards the end of his life he accepted the position of medical officer to the Sunbury boys' home. He died at Geelong on 1 January 1866. His wife survived him with a daughter.

R. H. Croll and R. R. Wettenhall, Dr Alexander Thomson; The Argus, Melbourne, 3 January 1866; R. D. Boys, First Years at Port Phillip; H. G. Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria.


From WIKIPEDIA:

Dr. Alexander Thomson (c. 1800 - 1 January 1866) was elected as the first mayor of Geelong and held the position on five occasions from 1850 - 1858. Thomson was the first settler in the area known as Belmont, a suburb of Geelong and called his homestead Kardinia, a property now listed on the Register of the National Estate.

Early life

Thomson was the son of Alexander Thomson, a shipowner of Aberdeen, Scotland. He was educated at Dr Todd's school at Tichfield, Aberdeen University, and at London, where he studied under Sir Everard Home and qualified for the medical profession. In March 1824 he married Barbara Dalrymple.

Emigration to Colonial Australia

In 1825 Thomson sailed to Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land) as a surgeon on a convict ship, the first of several voyages made by him. He was then in comfortable circumstances having been left a sum of £9500 by his mother. In 1831 he decided to settle in Tasmania, and bringing with him his wife and daughter, obtained a grant of 4000 acres (16 km²) of land.
In 1832 he bought two small steamers and established a service between Hobart and Kangaroo Point. He, however, sold both vessels during the next two years. He became interested in the colonization of Port Phillip, but did not join the Port Phillip Association, though invited to do so, and in November 1835 he sent across the first cattle to arrive in the new settlement, a draft of 50 Hereford cows. In March 1836 Thomson arrived with his wife and daughter. He came over as medical officer and catechist for the Port Phillip Association, and built a house near the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets, Melbourne. In May he acted as one of three arbitrators in connexion with disputes between Henry Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, and before his house was completed he was in the habit of holding a service on Sunday in his tent. He was secretary to the first public meeting held in Melbourne, on 1 June, and in October William Lonsdale appointed him medical officer at a salary of £200 a year. He resigned this position in January 1837.

Geelong

Having selected land on the present site of Geelong, Thomson settled there. He did some exploring, acquired more land in several localities, and in 1846 held about 150,000 acres (600 km²). He was a director of the Port Phillip bank, which was a failure, and the Port Phillip Steam Navigation Company, and he was the first to make cash advances on wool. He was foremost in every movement connected with Geelong from the removal of the bar at the mouth of the harbour to the founding of a mechanics' institute. He also took much interest in church affairs and in the well-being of the aborigines. In these matters he gave not only time, he also spent considerable sums of money.
The town was incorporated in 1849, then having 8000 inhabitants, and, as was fitting, Thomson was elected its first mayor. He field this position again in 1851, 1855, 1856 and 1857. He had been elected a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council as one of the representatives of the Port Phillip district in 1843, but as it was impossible to attend the meetings at Sydney, soon resigned. He was active in the anti-transportation movement, in 1852 was elected a member of the Victorian Legislative Council, and brought in and passed a bill incorporating the "Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company". Thomson presided at the first meeting of shareholders and was one of the directors. The line was completed in 1857. In the meanwhile Thomson had resigned his seat in the council and visited England where he found he could get no information about the Australian colonies bills. There had been a change of ministers and Lord John Russell, now in charge of the colonial office, had gone to Vienna. Thomson followed him there, obtained an interview, and got a promise that there would be a separate constitution bill for the colony of Victoria. In May 1855 Lord John Russell sent him a copy of the bill which soon afterwards became law.
In 1857 Thomson was elected member for Geelong in the Victorian legislative assembly but retired in April 1859. His many activities had led to the neglect of his own financial affairs, and towards the end of his life he accepted the position of medical officer to the Sunbury boys' home. He died at Geelong on 1 January 1866 and was buried in the old Geelong cemetery. His wife and a daughter survived him.
The suburb of Thomson was named after Dr. Thomson. A parish of the Uniting Church of Australia and the Alexander Thomson Cricket Club, competing in the Geelong Cricket Association, was also named after him.

REFERENCES: -
Serle, Percival (1949). "Thomson, Alexander". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Lyndsay Gardiner, 'Thomson, Alexander (1800 - 1866)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, MUP, 1967, pp 522-523.
Additional resources listed by the Australian Dictionary of Biography:
Garryowen (E. Finn), The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, vols 1-2 (Melb, 1888)
T. F. Bride (ed), Letters from Victorian Pioneers (Melb, 1898)
H. G. Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, vols 1-2 (Lond, 1904)
R. H. Croll and R. R. Wettenhall, Dr. Alexander Thomson: A Pioneer of Melbourne and Founder of Geelong (Melb, 1937)
A. D. Gilchrist (ed), John Dunmore Lang, vols 1-2 (Melb, 1951)
P. L. Brown (ed), Clyde Company Papers, vols 2-5 (Lond, 1952-63)

323+. Donald Finlay Fergusson THOMSON (1901-1970)

Donald Finlay Fergusson THOMSON (1901-1970) Presbyterian Christian, Cross-Cultural Professional, Field Anthropologist, Master Ethnographer, Champion of the Dignity of Aboriginal People of Arnhem Land. Explorer of the Tanami Desert & Great Sandy Desert. First European to contact the Bindubi People. Journalist, Writer. Medical Scientist. Academic at Melbourne University. Prophet of justice for the Aborigines.
Born: 26 June 1901 Brighton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Cultural Heritage: English & Scottish
Religious Influence: Presbyterian Christian
Occupation: academic, air force officer, anthropologist, Indigenous rights activist /supporter, zoologist
Died: 12 May 1970 Eltham, Victoria, Australia

Professor Donald Thomson c.1946

From ADB Online- Australian Dictionary of Biography

Thomson, Donald Finlay Fergusson (1901–1970)

by Howard Morphy

Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson (1901-1970), anthropologist and zoologist, was born on 26 June 1901 at Brighton, Melbourne, second child of Harry Alexander Fergusson Thomson, a Scottish-born musician, and his wife Isabelle Alice, née Davies, who came from England. Donald had a childhood passion for natural history and went on forays to collect birds' eggs. Inspired by Sir Robert Scott, he dreamed of joining polar expeditions. The 'born adventurer' initially proceeded from Scotch College to the University of Melbourne (B.Sc., 1925; D.Sc., 1934). While there, he asked Sir Baldwin Spencer to obtain him a place on (Sir) Hubert Wilkins's expedition to northern Australia. Persuaded to complete his degree first, he prepared himself for future field-work by learning photography. After graduating he was employed as a journalist on the Herald.

On 30 December 1925, in the memorial hall of his old school, Thomson married with Presbyterian forms Gladys Winifred Coleman; they were to have two sons. In 1927 he studied at the University of Sydney for a diploma in anthropology (1928). His teacher, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, supported his application to the Australian National Research Council for funds to conduct anthropological and zoological field-work on Cape York Peninsula, Queensland.

Granted £600 by the A.N.R.C., Thomson set out in April 1928. He covered thousands of miles on horseback, took many glass-plate negatives and collected zoological specimens and ethnographic objects. In January 1929 he returned to Melbourne. The A.N.R.C. awarded him a grant for a second expedition, but he became involved in a dispute with its treasurer Henry Chapman who refused to provide the funds until he handed over material he had previously gathered. Thomson surrendered his grant. Accompanied by his wife, he left for Queensland, determined to support himself by journalism. Chapman, who falsely insinuated dishonesty on Thomson's part, was later found to have embezzled council money. The episode made Thomson deeply suspicious of the A.N.R.C. and may have turned Sydney's academic establishment against him.

By the end of his first period of field-work he had lost the support of Radcliffe-Brown who felt that Thomson, despite his scientific background, was 'not whole-heartedly a scientist'. The judgement reflected Radcliffe-Brown's narrow, structural-functionalist conception of anthropology. Thomson had a broader view of the discipline, an interest in art and material culture, and scant concern for new developments in social theory.

Back in Melbourne in late 1929, Thomson joined the staff of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine and worked on antivenenes. In 1932 he became a research fellow in the department of anatomy, University of Melbourne, which financed his last expedition (1932-33) to Cape York Peninsula. The publications resulting from his field-work included Birds of Cape York Peninsula (1935). He was to be attached to the university for most of the remainder of his career, as a research fellow (1932-37 and 1945-53), senior research fellow (1953-64) and professor of anthropology (1964-68).

Thomson supported Aboriginal rights. Appalled by conditions on William MacKenzie's Presbyterian mission at Aurukun, Queensland, he offered to address Church leaders behind closed doors, but they refused him a hearing. This experience may have coloured his attitude to missionaries in general. In 1932-33 Aborigines killed five Japanese and three Europeans near Caledon Bay and Blue Mud Bay, Northern Territory. The news led to talk of a punitive expedition. Thomson volunteered to investigate the conditions and concerns of the Aboriginal people, and to make policy recommendations. He received considerable support in Melbourne from academics and the press, particularly the Herald. His proposal was eventually accepted. In March 1935 he left for eastern Arnhem Land as a representative of the Commonwealth government.

Apart from a break in January-June 1936, Thomson remained in Arnhem Land until September 1937, acting as an investigator, an advocate and a mediator. He facilitated the establishment of peaceful relations between the Yolngu people and the Commonwealth government, and befriended Wonggu, leader of the Djapu clan from the Caledon Bay region. Thomson organized the release of Mau, Natjelma and Narkaya, three of Wonggu's sons who had been imprisoned in Darwin for the killing of the Japanese, and personally returned them to their homeland in 1936. He sought to protect the integrity and inviolability of the Arnhem Land reserve by excluding non-Aboriginal people, and he recommended that European administrators should have a detailed understanding of the laws and practices of Aboriginal society.

In early 1938 Thomson sailed for England to take up a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge (Ph.D., 1950). His research was supervised by A. C. Haddon, one of the founders of evolutionary anthropology. Although there was never a trace of evolutionism in Thomson's writings, his association with Haddon may have further distanced him from the Radcliffe-Brown school. The Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland awarded him the Wellcome medal (1939) for his pioneering work in applied anthropology.

Thomson returned to Australia when World War II began. On 8 January 1940 he was commissioned flying officer, Royal Australian Air Force. Attached to No.11 Squadron, Port Moresby, as an intelligence officer, he helped to establish the coastwatching system in the Solomon Islands. By April 1941 he was serving at Air Force Headquarters, Melbourne. Seconded to the Australian Military Forces in June, he was sent to the Northern Territory to raise and command the 7th Military District's Special Reconnaissance Unit. In 1942-43 Squadron Leader Thomson and his men, most of them Aborigines, patrolled the coast of Arnhem Land and trained to fight as guerrillas in the event of a Japanese invasion. He left the unit in mid-1943. As a temporary wing commander, he had charge of two expeditions which explored the south-eastern part of Japanese-occupied Netherlands New Guinea. Natives attacked his party during the second journey and he was severely wounded. For his leadership of these operations he was appointed O.B.E. (1945). His R.A.A.F. appointment was terminated on medical grounds on 13 October 1944.

After the war Thomson was offered a lectureship at Cambridge, but he remained in Melbourne where he published his major work, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land (1949). He won the patron's medal of the Royal Geographical Society, London, in 1951 and the Rivers memorial medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1952. It was, however, a difficult time for him. In 1944 he had been diagnosed as suffering from diabetes, and his health never fully recovered from the hardships of his field-work and war service. His long absences from home strained his marriage; he and Gladys were to be divorced in 1954. A fire in 1946 at premises controlled by the Department of Information destroyed the 20,000 ft (6096 m) of film he had shot in Arnhem Land. He regarded those films as perhaps the best record he had made of Aboriginal life.

In 1946-47 Thomson published a series of articles in the Herald on justice for the Aborigines. The articles brought into the open his underlying disagreement with Professor Adolphus Elkin, who had greater sympathy with the policy of assimilation. Thomson campaigned vigorously in 1947 against the establishment of a rocket range at Woomera, South Australia, because of the threat it posed to desert-dwelling Aborigines. Again, he was opposed by Elkin. Serving on the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board from 1957, Thomson found that little notice was taken of his advice. He resigned in frustration in 1967.

At the Presbyterian Church, Warragul, on 7 May 1955 Thomson had married Dorita Maria McColl, a 25-year-old technical assistant. Between 1957 and 1965 he mounted three expeditions to study the Pintupi people of the Gibson and Great Sandy deserts. In this research he concentrated on the Aborigines' hunting and gathering practices; the results were less significant than his earlier work on Cape York Peninsula and in Arnhem Land. Bindibu Country (1975) provided an account of two of his trips. Thomson became increasingly removed from academic life and from mainstream developments in anthropology. A number of circumstances contributed to his isolation: the fact that he was the only anthropologist at the University of Melbourne, Elkin's constant and tiring opposition to his work and to the policies he advocated, and his tendency to work best alone.

On Thomson's retirement from the university in 1968, members of the professorial board praised him as 'a man of action and a distinguished scholar'. They thought that his work for Aborigines and his controversial personality merited his being described as 'Australia's Lawrence of Arabia'. Yet in many respects his life was tragic. He failed to gain the recognition as a scientist that he felt he deserved, and he failed to alter government policy towards Aboriginal people. Ironically, near the end of his life, events seemed to be catching up with him. Anthropologists were shifting towards the kinds of research that he had carried out and the movement to grant land rights to Aborigines was strengthening. But, by that time, Thomson had long been disillusioned with politicians and become alienated from most of his anthropological colleagues. He died of coronary artery sclerosis on 12 May 1970 at his Eltham farm and was cremated; his wife and their son and three daughters survived him, as did the sons of his first marriage.

The destruction of Thomson's films had made him determined to keep personal control of the other material he had acquired through his field-work. It was only after his death that the full richness of his achievement became apparent. The collection of more than 7000 artefacts, comprehensive in its scope and scrupulously described, together with 11,000 photographs documenting every aspect of Aboriginal daily and ritual life, enables the viewer to recapture the Aboriginal world of Cape York and Arnhem Land in the 1930s and 1940s. Thomson also left about 7500 pages of field-notes, 25,000 ft (7620 m) of film from later expeditions, and 2500 natural science specimens.

He had recorded in immense detail the cultural dimensions of Aboriginal society—its material culture, art, ceremonial performances, burial practices, and hunting-and-gathering economy. Moreover, Thomson wrote powerful evocations of the aesthetics of Arnhem Land life, and was sensitive to the poetics of Yolngu art and language. A meticulous ethnographer, he used his command of the language to identify central concepts that revealed the workings of Yolngu society from within, concepts such as 'marr' or ancestral power.

Donald Thomson - Select Bibliography
N. Peterson, 'Donald Thomson: A Biographical Sketch', in N. Peterson (compiler), Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (Melb, 1983)
D. Carment (et al), Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography, vol 1 (Darwin, 1990)
'The Big Picture: Thomson of Arnhem Land', ABC TV, 29 June 2000 (ABC Archives, Sydney)
Donald Thomson collection (Museum Victoria)
private information.

324. =Lancelot Edward THRELKELD, missionary & anthropologist,NSW (1788-

325. 'Blind Moses' Uraiakuraia TJALKABOTA "BLIND MOSES" (born c.1869 Laprapuntja, Ntaria, NT - died 6 July 1954 Hermannsburg, NT) Traditional hunter, Arrente tribesman, Evangelist & Preacher

'Son of Tjeta of the 'Tnurangatja' (witchetty grub) totem, and Araniljilka, of the Western Aranda tribe, Moses was about eight years old when Lutheran missionaries founded Hermannsburg in 1877. One of the first school pupils, Moses enjoyed singing hymns and hearing Bible stories which led into learning the rudiments of reading and writing. Impressed by this new teaching, he passed on his knowledge to others until forbidden to do so because of conflict with traditional beliefs. He was withdrawn from school, but was later allowed to return to his lessons. With four others, he was baptised on 26 Dec 1890. Shortly afterwards, Moses was taken away by tribal elders for circumcision and initiation into Aranda ritual and the meaning of the sacred 'tjurunga'. This experience only confirmed his Christian belief and faith in God, to which he held firmly to the end of his life.

After leaving school, Moses helped to tend the mission flock of sheep for several years until eye disease left him totally blind. Forced confinement brought new direction to his life. He had people read the Bible to him so that he could learn passages by heart, especially St Paul's Epistles. He became an assistant teacher at the school, helping to prepare adult classes for baptism. He was an excellent linguist, and helped with interpreting and translating. He was one of Carl Strehlow's (q.v.) chief assistants in the missionary's study of Aranda and Loritja language and customs, and in his preparation of the Aranda New Testament.

Moses was a gifted story-teller and a compelling preacher. Pastor Friedrich Albrecht (q.v.) (1950) 'often listened with rapt attention to some of his addresses. To him the New Testament just lives, and he knows how to make it live again before his hearers. To his natural gift he has added a lot of hard work'. - Robin Radford'

Moses worked as a catechist and lay preacher at Hermannsburg until, on a visit to Horseshoe Bend, he arrived at Henbury station, where he was persuaded to stay and teach the word of God. So began his immensely influential Gospel ministry, in the course of which he visited Aborigines living at Deep Well, Alice Well, Horseshoe Bend, Idracowra, Jay Creek, Alice Springs, Undoolya, Arltunga and other places. He travelled by donkey, camel, buggy, on foot and occasionally on the back of a truck.
Mostly, Moses was welcomed. In a few places, however, his message that the men should put their trust in Jesus and give up their tjurunga (sacred objects) met with polite rejection... Moses used the methodology by which novices were instructed about their tjurunga, telling the story with Bible pictures, and teaching hymns and the Commandments, and prayers by rote. He had a prodigious memory and could recite whole chapters of the Bible."

326. Alfred Hermann TRAEGER

327. =William TREACY WA

328. =Margaret TUCKER NSW

329. =Francis TUCKFIELD , Birregurra, VIC

329+

330. Sr. M. BERENICE TWOHILL

Sr. M. BERENICE TWOHILL - b. abt 1919 Murwillumbah, New South Wales, Australia - most of her early life was spent on a farm at Tumbulgum on the Tweed River. She was the eighth of 11 children with eight brothers and two sisters. And daughter of Macleay River, NSW-born Tumblegum farmer, Alexander Edward TWOHILL (1876-1966) & Maclean, NSW-born Eliza KENNY (1883-1944).- Sister Berenice joined the missionary order of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in 1934.

- FROM : - Prisoner missionaries of Vunapope

Sr. M. BERENICE TWOHILL

From an interview by Barb Angell on Friday October 13th, 2000 at the Convent of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Sydney

- Sister Berenice was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Rabaul, New Britain, and interned for three and a half years along with a large group of missionaries from various islands and stations. They were detained first at Vunapope mission, then in native huts in a compound surrounded by barbed wire, then finally at the bottom of a ravine in the jungle at Ramale.

Sister M. Berenice of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Convent was the eighth of 11 children. She had eight brothers and two sisters and was born at Tumbulgum, just out of Murwillimbah. She attended boarding school at Uki on the Tweed River, under Mount Warning. She was posted to New Britain as a teacher and was one of the group of about 350 missionary Fathers, Brothers and Sisters who were interned there by the Japanese for the duration of the war. This is a short summary of their experiences, told from her point of view in an interview with Barb Angell dated Friday October 13th, 2000.

HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN:

The first battle fought in Rabaul was in 1914 when Australia took over the island of New Britain from the Germans. "It's not written in history and it should be there," Sr Berenice told me, "Because that's where we lost our first Australian soldiers, and on Australian soil. It became Australian territory when taken over from the Germans. So that's why there were so many German missionaries and so many German people there. We had an old Australian Sister who was there when that happened in the First World War and she was there for the Second World War too. And she lived through it all."


Capture:
Sr M. Berenice of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Mission was teaching in Rabaul when the war broke out. "The only condition that we Australians were allowed to stay in New Britain was that we would do Red Cross work. That was the Australian government's condition and we agreed to do that and promptly sewed Red Crosses onto our habits. Before the Japanese landed, I said I wanted to out to the (mission) station to learn a little bit of nursing. There were two Dutch sisters and myself there. One Dutch sister was a nurse, the other was a teacher."

The sister was out at this remote station of Tapo when the invasion of Rabaul took place. The first she knew about it was when she was told to go over to a plantation house to make a phone call to the people at Vunapope, the main mission centre. Before he left to hide in the jungle, the plantation owner had sent a message to the station to let them know that the phone still worked. When the Sr Berenice telephoned Vunapope she was told that the Japanese invasion was about to take place. They were instructed to remain at the station overnight and that she and one of the other Sisters should hurry to Vunapope on foot next day and report that a shell shocked Australian soldier was in their dug-out and would not move - the third Sister was to remain at her station.

The two Sisters set out to walk alone through the jungle and got lost. They wandered all day, finally locating the track, and found themselves to be almost at Vunapope. When they came to a fork in the road, a truckload of armed Japanese suddenly appeared. "We didn't even know they had landed. They stood up and they yelled and screamed and waved their bayonets about. And we thought, This is it. And then just as suddenly the truck turned around and went off. We ran for our lives up to the convent. And when we got there the Bishop was there with his council, with our Mother Martha (the Mother Superior). He said, Where have you come from? We're prisoners. We said we were from Tapo and he told us: You can't go back, we're prisoners. So that other poor sister was stuck out there for three months not knowing what happened to us or anything else."




From the CATHOLIC WEEKLY


Ex-POW Sister: call on Diggers’ deaths
By Brian Davies
19/07/2009


- THE sole survivor of the missionary Sisters who were captives of the Japanese in New Britain during World War II has called on the Australian Government to settle questions about the fate of more than 1000 Australian POWs who were believed to have died on a Japanese cargo ship in 1942. On July 1, 1942, the Montevideo Maru, en route to Japan, was sunk off the northern coast of Luzon by an American submarine. A handful of Japanese crewmen were the only survivors. It was the greatest single maritime tragedy in Australia's history. The anniversary this month sharpens anew the memories for Sr Berenice Twohill OLSH (Our Lady of the Sacred Heart missionary congregation) who, with the other Christian missionaries, predominantly Catholics, had already been a captive of the Japanese in Rabaul for six months before the Montevideo Maru steamed out of the harbour to its fateful encounter. A small group of Australians – the families of soldiers who died as a result of the World War II Japanese occupation of Rabaul – unveiled a plaque to honour them in Luzon in the Philippines this month, near where they may have lost their lives. It is the sadder for the families and friends because this tragic episode is still shrouded in uncertainties and painful doubts. Sr Berenice, a child of Murwillumbah and the Tweed River and now an active 92-year old, is the sole survivor of the Australian OLSH Sisters then on Rabaul, and probably that of the mixed congregation of Sisters of other nationalities who together spent three terrible years behind barbed wire and were later dumped into an inaccessible valley in the jungle to survive as best they could. Like many Australian families directly connected with the fall of Rabaul and the loss of loved ones and the mystery of who of them were on the Montevideo Maru, Sr Berenice believes the Australian government should do more to settle questions still unanswered after nearly 70 years. “Perhaps they never will be,” she says. “But it would be fitting for the Montevideo Maru to be found, as HMAS Sydney was, and the site could then be declared a war grave.” Sister Berenice does not believe all the prisoners, as Japan claims, were on board the Montevideo Maru and says that, like the massacre at Tol Tol when 160 Australian soldiers were executed, other killings took place “For instance the civilians taken to Rabaul from Kavieng on the neighbouring island of New Ireland were told they would be interned, but the next day another Japanese officer had them killed. In all the time we were in captivity, we could never work out the Japanese mind,” Sr Berenice said. “There needs to be closure for surviving families and relatives, for people like Cynthia Schmidt, a nine- month-old baby evacuated with her mother from Rabaul in 1941; but Cynthia’s father re-mained. His fate and whereabouts are unknown and Cynthia, who runs the Montevideo Maru Association, has spent her life trying to find out what happened and where he lies.” The association has been petitioning the Government for years to fund a search for the ship and to “arrive at the truth of the events … for all relatives no matter how distant who believe their family members were on the Montevideo Maru or who may have died on New Britain, New Ireland and the islands surrounding them” and what is today PNG. Sr Berenice also wants a fitting memorial erected “not only the men who died on Rabaul but for all the young men who lost their lives in the Pacific some of whose graves are unknown or are deep at sea. They should be fittingly remembered”. (There is an impressive catafalque with unit names engraved on it overlooking Rabaul harbour and a memorial walk of stone pylons engraved with individual names in Bita Paka cemetery leading from the entrance to a Cross of Sacrifice, and a memorial in Ballarat erected by the family of one of the men whose fate, like so many in Rabaul, is uncertain.) Sr Berenice asks: “Why isn’t there a special, noble memorial in Canberra for them? It’s also why it’s important for the Australian Government to try to settle all the mysteries that surround the events relating to Rabaul, why Australian governments have always been so quiet about it all.” Before the war, as a teacher in Rabaul and living on its outskirts in the convent at Vunapope, Sr Berenice saw soldiers of the 2/22 Battalion in the township, as drivers travelling between depots or those who went to Mass on Sundays at Vunapope Melanesian for “the Pope’s place”). Fewer than 1400 soldiers – designated as Lark Force – tried to resist an invasion force of 17,000 Japanese soldiers until the Australian commander, conceding the hopelessness of the situation, gave his famous order: “Every man for himself.” There was no question of surrender. In the brief action that took place, the Japanese casualties were about 3000 dead or wounded. The retreating Australian soldiers split into groups, going into the wild jungle behind Rabaul and striking for the coast in a bid to escape to mainland New Guinea. Lark Force was actually 950 men supported by the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles unit, an anti-tank battery and an anti-aircraft battery. Its equipment was antiquated: no Bren guns, only Lewis guns and three-inch anti-aircraft guns from World War I. Sr Berenice says: “The Australian force was short of guns, no spare ammunition, no air force. It was very small and and had very little of anything. They fought, but the Japanese swarmed out of the bays, the harbour, and overcame our small army.” The war began for Sr Berenice, in Rabaul, on December 8, 1941, the day (New Britain time) of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour. “I was teaching in a mixed-race primary school in Rabaul,” she recalls. “I’d been there about two years from when the schooI was opened; there were just two of us in the school although the congregation was about 45, mostly Dutch sisters, but some Australians like me, also Irish and French ... anyway, things were going nicely at our little school until that day in December 1941 when two police called in and said: ‘We are at war with Japan’.” Sr Berenice asked to go out to a mission station so Bishop Leo Sharmach sent her to Tapo, about half a day’s walk from Vunapope. After reports from locals, the Tapo priest directed St Berenice and another nun to take a stretcher and fetch a wounded Australian soldier from the beach, which they did. The priest said he would look after him and that they should return to Vunapope to report his presence at Tapo. The trip was like a bad dream. It was late afternoon. Japanese planes were bombing, and the way back was just a track in the jungle. Twice they became lost. Several times they dived to the ground to lie flat because of the bombing. They stumbled into Vunapope in the dark. From that time on Sr Berenice remained in the company of the congregation, as did all the other members, until the last day of the war. They became prisoners, enclosed – except for the last 18 months, when they were ‘tossed’ into the jungle – by barbed wire and engaged in a war of cunning with their captors over hidden supplies and anti-malaria quinine. First they were imprisoned in the convent, then in grass huts flanked by ‘hospitals’ for Japanese wounded, particularly after the Coral Sea Battle. Next, the sisters retreated into tunnels in the mountainside because of renewed bombing – by the US and Australian air forces. But then the tunnels were claimed by the Japanese; and the whole missionary company – 360 priests, brothers and nuns – was dumped into a gorge in the Ramale Valley and told to do the best they could. They did. As the war drew to a close, the senior Japanese officers conferred with Bishop Sharmach. Confused and somewhat mystified by the Christians and their behaviour, they said to him: "Well, this crowd beats us all …” And that was the title Bishop Sharmach chose to give the book he wrote about his missions’ experiences as prisoners of the Japanese, in Rabaul, during World War II: This crowd beats us all … Copyright © 2008. Catholic Weekly - Sydney

331. Daniel TYERMAN, LMS (London Missionary Society), NSW 1824

- Daniel Tyerman

TYERMAN, DANIEL (1773–1828), missionary, was born on 19 Nov. 1773 at Clack farm, near Osmotherly in Yorkshire, where his parents had resided for some time. In 1790 he obtained employment in London. Coming under strong religious convictions, he entered Hoxton Academy in 1795 to prepare himself for the congregational ministry. In 1798 he became minister at Cawsand in Cornwall, and thence removed to Wellington in Somerset. About 1804 he officiated for a short time at Southampton, and afterwards settled at Newport in the Isle of Wight. There he was one of the first projectors of the town reading-rooms, and filled the office of secretary of the Isle of Wight Bible Society.

In 1821 Tyerman and George Bennet of Sheffield were appointed by the London Missionary Society to visit their southern stations. They sailed from London on 2 May in the whaler Tuscan, and, proceeding round Cape Horn, visited Tahiti, the Leeward and Sandwich Islands, and other mission stations in the South Seas.

In 1824 they visited New South Wales, and on the way narrowly escaped from the Maoris of New Zealand. From Sydney, in September 1824, they sailed through the Torres Straits to Java, and thence to Singapore, Canton, and Calcutta. At Serampore, on 3 May 1826, they met the venerable William Carey (1761–1834) [q. v.], who received them with much kindness. After visiting Benares, they sailed to Madras, and thence to Goa. From India they voyaged in 1827 to Mauritius and Madagascar, where the missions were firmly established under King Radama. On 30 July 1828 Tyerman, whose health had given way under the climate of southern India, died at Antananarivo. He was twice married: first, in 1798, to Miss Rich, by whom he had a son and daughter; and, secondly, in 1810, to Miss Fletcher of Abingdon, by whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Tyerman was the author of: 1. ‘An Essay on Baptism,’ Newport, 1806, 12mo; 2nd edit. London, 1814, 12mo. 2. ‘Evangelical Hope: an Essay,’ London, 1815, 12mo. 3. ‘The Dairyman: the Life of Joseph Wallbridge,’ Newport, 1816, 12mo. 4. ‘Essay on the Wisdom of God,’ London, 1818, 8vo.

The journal of his missionary tour was published by James Montgomery, the poet, in 1831, London, 8vo (2nd edit. 1841). The first part was written in conjunction with George Bennet, but the latter part was entirely his own. It affords a graphic picture of the state of the London society's missions at the period.

[Journal of Voyages and Travels by Tyerman and Bennet (with portrait), 1841; Congregational Mag. 1833, pp. 468, 513.]



ALSO

George BENNET (missionary)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

- George Bennet

George Bennet (born April 16, 1774) was a missionary originally from Sheffield, Yorkshire. In 1821 George Bennett set out on his travels with Rev Daniel Tyerman. The population of the world at this time was roughly 740 million, and of that only 174 million were Christians. George Bennett and Rev Daniel Tyerman with the financial backing of the London Missionary Society set out to try and spread the word of Christianity to the outskirts of the known world. He traveled to China, Southeast Asia, and India for the London Missionary Society, along with Reverend Daniel Tyerman.[1][2]

Bennet stopped in Macau during his Pacific voyage and was so impressed by the garden and aviary of opium trader Thomas Beale that he devoted forty-five pages of his travelogue to describing their contents.[3]

George Bennett was the only one of the two to arrive home after the remarkable journey; Daniel Tyerman lost his life in South Africa. After his voyage Bennett gave certain historical artifacts that he had collected to the Natural History Museum. He is buried with a monument in his memory in Sheffield General Cemetery. with a monument engraving of his testimony and life. The monument is at the bottom of the steps, in the cemetery, which lead to the Nonconformist chapel, which is built in classical style with Egyptian features. His monument however slightly overgrown reads: "george bennet. In early manhood having first given himself unto the lord, he thenceforward consecrated his time, his talents, and his substance to the service of the gospel. As the friend promotes and benefactor of the sabbath and scripture day-schools, bible missionary, religious tract and other christian societies at home. Abroad from 1821 to 1829, he accompanied the late rev Daniel Tyerman on a voyage around the world as a deputation from the london missionary society, to visit their settlements in the pacific islands Australia India and South Africa the result of his experience and observations during eight years, in which by sea and land he traversed about 90,000 miles deserves to be engraven on this monument as on his tomb from which being dead he yet speaketh"

References

^ Montgomery, James; Daniel Tyerman, George Bennet (1832). Journal of voyages and travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, esq: deputed from the London missionary society, to visit their various stations in the South Sea Islands, China, India, etc. between the years 1821 and 1829, Volume 3. London Missionary Society.

^ Porter, Andrew N. (2004). Religion versus empire?: British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914. Manchester University Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-7190-2823-6.

^ Fan, Fa-ti (2004). British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. pp. 44-45

332. The Redoubtable Jimmy TYSON - Pastoralist, Champion of the Dignity of Aborigines, Field Moralist, Philanthropist, Campaigner for Integrity, Australian Patriot, Benefactor

James TYSON (1819-1898),

Parents: William TYSON, farmer, and his wife Isabella, née COULSON, an Emancipist ex-convict
Birth: 8 April 1819 Narellan, New South Wales, Australia
Cultural Influences: Emancipist convict Australian, Yorkshire English Australian, Irish Australian, Aboriginal Australian
Christianity: Maverick Anglican, demanding, prophetic & moral Good Samaritanism
Qualities: Moral Courage, Christian Justice, Dignity, Reticence, Fair Treatment, Charity, Redoubtability, Astuteness, Liberty from any awe for Mammon, Liberty from mere beknighted or petty or popular Public Opinion, Magnanimous benevolence
Occupation: grazier (sheep); grazier (cattle & horses); Politician - Member of Queensland Upper House, Magistrate
Landscape:: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland
Cross: Public Opprobrium, Popular Disapproval, Loneliness, Varied Traducements
Death: 4 December 1898, Felton, nr Cambooya, Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia
Burial: 1. at Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia;
2. Tyson Family Vault at St Peter's Church of England, Campbelltown, New South Wales.
Legacy: Roads, Watering Places & Civilisation in the Outback, Funded the whole Church of England building at Leyburn, NSW; Women's College, University of Sydney;

Writing about Jack Bates in her biography of Daisy Bates, Elizabeth Salter writes of Bates' first employer: 'the redoubtable Jimmy Tyson' as "an eccentric and compassionate man who effected the ragged clothes and unkempt beard of a swagman...

A generous man, capable of financing a church when asked for a donation, he was renowned amongst his fellow pastoralists for his protective attitude towards his Aboriginal employees...

Those rare men, like Durack and Tyson, who made an effort to understand the black mentality, found that a working arrangement could be arrived at. They discovered that, treated well, the native Australians were an endearing people, capable of sustained friendship and even devotion to the "white man boss".

But to young and unimaginative Jack Bates (by then Overseer of Tyson's Tinnenburra Station) the Aborigines working for him seem little better than animals. Of such was Combo, come to Tinnenburra with a reputation for killing two whites in the Gulf country farther north and spirited enough to answer back when given an order. The sun was high and Combo was lethagic. Jack, who was branding cattle, told him to "get a move one." - "Get a move on your plurry self," Combo retorted. This was to dare the white authority with a vengeance. Jack's iron was sizzling the hide of a calf. he lifted and swung it in one movement and Combo dropped where he stood. He did not recover consciousness till sundown.
Jack had no further trouble with his black employees but his action was reported to Tyson and judged as a betrayal of trust... Tyson dismissed him out of hand. He had been accused of ill-treatment of and Aboriginal, and Tyson, protector of Aborigines, gave him his pay and told him to go... Tyson's attitude was the exception rather than the rule, and Jack's dismissal enlisted considerable sympathy for him."

From Queensland Government, Business Leaders: HALL OF FAME: -

The Hon James Tyson MLC (1819-1898)

Although little known today, James Tyson was truly a legend in his own life time. He was Australia's first great cattle king and our first millionaire. When he died in 1898, not only were there obituaries in Australian newspapers, but also in The London Times and New York Times. Banjo Paterson wrote a poem about him entitled simply T.Y.S.O.N.

Yet James Tyson started with nothing. Born in 1819 near Narellan, he became a squatter on the Lachlan River with his brothers. He boosted his fortune by droving cattle to the Bendigo goldfields and butchering the meat for the miners. Leaving the goldfields with a personal wealth of £20,000, James Tyson acquired further property in New South Wales and Gippsland before moving to the Darling Downs. From there, he made huge Queensland acquisitions, including his flagship 2.1 million acre Tinnenburra, near Cunnamulla.

He was a loner who avoided people and was said never to have entered a church, a pub or a theatre. He never married and died intestate: his vast wealth was divided among his extended family.

James Tyson used his wealth to support his adopted state during tough economic times and to develop infrastructure and in 1893 he became The Hon James Tyson MLC, a member of the Queensland Upper House.

By 1898, James Tyson's properties covered 5.3 million acres. His success came from a strong innate business sense. He practiced 'management by walking around', literally, dropping in unannounced on his far flung properties. In today's terms, he ran a vertically integrated business. His biographer Zita Denholm wrote that there were "Tyson cattle shifted by Tyson drovers riding Tyson horses from Tyson breeding property to Tyson fattening country".

For James Tyson, "Money was nothing. It was the 'little game' that was fun. The little game was 'fighting the desert.' That has been my work. I have been fighting the desert all my life and I have won. I have put water where there was no water and beef where there was no beef. I have put fences and roads where there were no roads. Nothing can undo what I have done and millions will be happier for it after I am long dead and forgotten".

In 1898 James Tyson's wealth was estimated at £2.36 million (the equivalent of $13 billion today), which was 1.3% of Australia's GDP. This had been reduced from £5 million by the severe drought of the 1890s.


From Australian Dictionary of Biography - ADB Online -

Tyson, James (1819–1898)

by Zita Denholm

James Tyson (1819-1898), pastoralist, was born on 8 April 1819 near Narellan, New South Wales, third son of William Tyson and his wife Isabella, née Coulson, who had arrived in the colony on 19 August 1809 in the Indispensable with a seven-year sentence for theft in Yorkshire. Her husband and son William came free in the same transport; by 1819 William senior had a 40-acre (16 ha) grant at Narellan. James started work about 1833 as a farm-hand for the Vine brothers near Appin and spent a short time in Sydney in 1837 apprenticed to a bootmaker; he then worked as a pastoral labourer for Henry O'Brien at Douro near Yass. Later he took up Barwigery (Barwidgee) on the Ovens River for John Buckland.

James was unsuccessful with his brother William on Bundoolah (Goonambil) in 1845, and next year with his brothers William and John he moved to Tyson's run (Toorong) on the west bank of the Lachlan near its junction with the Murrumbidgee: this holding became the nucleus of his Tupra-Juanbung complex. Early in 1852 James and William arrived at the Bendigo goldfield with a small mob of cattle, set up a slaughter-yard and butcher's shop and in three years established a business which was sold late in 1855 for an estimated £80,000. James and John bought three sheep stations South Deniliquin, Conargo and Deniliquin, which they improved with fencing and earth tanks. James made important experiments in digging channels for water, and was interested in the Deniliquin-Moama rail link, the Deniliquin and Echuca Electric Telegraph Co. and the Riverina separatist movement as well as local matters. John died at Deniliquin on 3 June 1860 leaving his estate to James who, in 1862, sold most of his Deniliquin holdings and moved back to the Lachlan and began the aggregation of leasehold pastoral land. In 1864 when James McEvoy refused to pay his share of costs of arbitration in their dispute over a boundary, Tyson successfully sued him in the Supreme Court but McEvoy appealed to the Privy Council.

By 1898 Tyson held 5,329,214 acres (2,156,680 ha) including 352,332 acres (142,585 ha) freehold. His stations included Tupra, Juanbung, Bangate, Goondublui and Mooroonowa in New South Wales; Heyfield in Victoria; and Glenormiston, Swanvale, Meteor Downs and Albinia Downs, Babbiloora, Carnarvon, Tully, Wyobie, Felton, Mount Russell and Tinnenburra in Queensland. He held other runs as mortgagee. Uninterested in stud-breeding he bred and fattened stock for the metropolitan markets. At Tully his nephews tried to grow sugar on his behalf as well as run cattle. Tyson also owned some land in Toowoomba, Hay and Brisbane and made two abortive visits to New Zealand to investigate the possibility of land investment.

Tyson was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council in 1893-98 but made only one short speech. He was a magistrate on the Maude, New South Wales, and Jondaryan, Queensland, benches, and a prominent lobbyist against the building of the Queensland transcontinental railway line by overseas capitalists on the land grant system; he opposed the Victorian border stock tax and campaigned actively for the land tenure reforms embodied in the Crown Lands Acts of 1884 in New South Wales and 1885 in Queensland. Generous to a wide range of charities, he contributed £2000 for two years to the New South Wales Sudan Contingent and variously to the building funds of the Women's College, University of Sydney, and the Church of England at Leyburn.

Unmarried and intestate, Tyson died 'apparently [of] inflammation of the lungs' at Felton near Cambooya, on 4 December 1898. He was buried in the Toowoomba cemetery, but his remains were moved to the family vault at St Peter's Church of England, Campbelltown, New South Wales. His estate, realizing £2 million, was divided among his next of kin after an extended series of court cases involving the question of his domicile. A byword for wealth and a legend in his own lifetime, Tyson was usually called 'Hungry' by the Bulletin and was commemorated by Banjo Paterson in 'T.Y.S.O.N.'. Frugal, he was never known to drink, smoke or swear.



* * *

T.Y.S.O.N.

~ by Banjo Paterson

Across the Queensland border line
The mobs of cattle go;
They travel down in sun and shine
On dusty stage, and slow.

The drovers, riding slowly on
To let the cattle spread,
Will say: "Here's one old landmark gone,
For old man Tyson's dead."

What tales there'll be in every camp
By men that Tyson knew!
The swagmen, meeting on the tramp,
Will yarn the long day through,

And tell of how he passed as "Brown",
And fooled the local men:
"But not for me -- I struck the town,
And passed the message further down;

That's T.Y.S.O.N.!"

*
There stands a little country town
Beyond the border line,
Where dusty roads go up and down,
And banks with pubs combine.

A stranger came to cash a cheque --
Few were the words he said --
A handkerchief about his neck,
An old hat on his head.

A long grey stranger, eagle-eyed --
"Know me? Of course you do?"
"It's not my work," the boss replied,
"To know such tramps as you."

"Well, look here, Mister, don't be flash,"
Replied the stranger then,
"I never care to make a splash,
I'm simple, but I've got the cash;

I'm T.Y.S.O.N."

*
But in that last great drafting-yard,
Where Peter keeps the gate,
And souls of sinners find it barred,
And go to meet their fate,

There's one who ought to enter in
For good deeds done on earth,
One who from Peter's self must win
That meed of sterling worth.

Not to the strait and narrow gate
Reserved for wealthy men,
But to the big gate, opened wide,
The grizzled figure, eagle-eyed,

Will saunter up -- and then
Old Peter'll say: "Let's pass him through;
There's many a thing he used to do,
Good-hearted things that no one knew;

That's T.Y.S.O.N."

- -Banjo Paterson


Select Bibliography
Z. Denholm, ‘James Tyson, employer’, Wealth & Progress, A. Birch and D. S. Macmillan eds (Syd, 1967)
T. M. Z. Denholm, James Tyson 1819-1898: A Man in His Environment (M.A. thesis, University of Queensland, 1969)
Tyson papers (National Library of Australia and State Library of Queensland)
Regina v. Queensland Trustees, CRS/85-98, SCT/514A, 218/1898 (Queensland State Archives).

C. From - WIKIPEDIA

James Tyson

James Tyson (8 April 1819 - 4 December 1898) was an Australian pastoralist. He is regarded as Australia's first self-made millionaire. His name became a byword for reticence, wealth and astute dealing.
His mother, Isabella, was a convict, sentenced to transportation for theft. His father, William, and his eldest brother, also William, came with her. Receiving a grant from Governor Lachlan Macquarie in the Narellan area, the Tysons set themselves up as small farmers, later moving with their growing family to East Bargo. As a youth James commenced work for neighbours such as Major Thomas Mitchell, and John Buckland who contracted him to take cattle to the north-eastern border area of the colony of Victoria (Australia). Then, with his brothers, he took up squatting licences in western New South Wales. Eventually they settled on land at the junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee Rivers, in the reed-beds which had defeated John Oxley's exploration in 1837. He travelled much about Australia, but eventually made his principal home at Felton station on the Darling Downs.
In 1893 he became a member of the Queensland Legislative Council but did not take a prominent part in its proceedings.
The legendary Tyson fortune was founded on success in butchering on the Bendigo goldfields. It was extended by canny buying, knowledge of cattle and of stockroutes, pastoral lending and the judicious selection of enormous leaseholds to provide a chain of supply which stretched from North Queensland to Gippsland and which fed beef to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It is on record that on one occasion he offered the Queensland government a loan of £500,000 towards the cost of constructing a proposed transcontinental railway, and in 1892 at a time of economic depression he took up £250,000 in treasury bills to assist the government.
At the time of his death his estate was the largest in Australia to that time. However he died unmarried, childless and intestate. His estate was sold off, realising about £2.36 million, which was divided among his closest relatives.
Legacy

Banjo Paterson (in T.Y.S.O.N.), Breaker Morant and Will Ogilvie all wrote about him.
References

Serle, Percival (1949). "Tyson, james". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Denholm, Z. Tyson, James (1819 - 1898), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, Melbourne University Press, 1976, pp 319–320.

333. W.B ULLATHORNE, Benedictine, Vicar Apostolic for Australia 1833

334. + David UNAIPON South Australia *