We drove out with sadness anyway. And under the gaze of not a single pair of Aboriginal eyes. All those who were not away on the soft-ball excursion were up in the orange hills, scrambling after something – maybe a wild horse – that one of them had found. We could hear shouts of excitement coming from high up on either side of the road, and we could see the Cuban heels of the stragglers’ boots, but they didn’t see or hear us. They let us go without so much as a wave.

17 The Townsville Hoist

Seventeen
 
The Townsville Hoist

We called in at Hermannsburg on the way back. Although it no longer functioned as a mission, being now under the administration of the Ntaria Council – Chairperson, Mr Gus Williams – the township was still dominated by a tin cross on a little hill. I walked up and read the inscription.

This memorial to the sacrifice of the first

missionaries and the first Aboriginal Christians

marks the 90th anniversary of the mission’s

founding on June 8, 1877.

Your sins are forgiven.   Matthew 9:2

The founding missionaries – Schwarz and Kempe (Schwarz being the Jewish-looking one, Kempe more Max von Sydow anguished) – started out from Bethany in fact, in 1876. The village schoolchildren turned out to see them off, singing ‘Jesus Lead Thou On’ under the direction of their teacher, Herr Topp. That was on Friday the 22nd of October. They had a tough journey ahead of them. On Thursday the 11th of November Kempe froze solid in his bed. A week later Schwarz fell off his horse; or rather was thrown from his horse which had been horned by a cow which Schwarz had for some reason whipped. And a week after that Kempe lost his trousers in a waterhole, 600 head of cattle suddenly appearing out of nowhere and trampling them to nothing where they’d been left to soak. Two days later Kempe wrote in his journal, ‘Often I have been almost tempted to exclaim in the words of the prophet: “It is enough; now O Lord, take away my life” for I am sick at heart.’ But missions are not made by men who lose their faith as easily as their breeches, and he was soon back on a heavenly course. ‘But then again I tell myself that we are in the Lord’s service, that he has sent us and will always be with us. He will also know why he deals with us in such a way . . .’ God works, as we used to say in Salford, in Strangeways.