Let us pray. You are here, Lord Jesus, in your word spoken in Pitj and English. You are here in our prayers and songs. And I pray you will be here in these words I speak this morning.
On top of everything else that has happened this week, it is Reconcilaition week. For some that feels hollow, ironis even, for others fortitutous. Also on Friday this church hosted an event for the NTWF in I which I spoke about some maps that have been recently installed in Adelaide House.
These maps have been in the hall for the last year or so and have come up a couple of times at AGM’s, in announcements, in sermons over the years but a couple of people commented to me last week that they did not know much about the maps or AH.
I realised that that there are lots of new people and that not everyone attends all the AGM’s and reads all the newsletters (shock horror) so I thought it would be good to reflect on this, this week. Some of you will be across all of this, particularly if you came on Friday, and so I thank you for listening to it again so that the whole congregation can have a deeper understanding of our church’s history in this place.
I also want to thank Sylvia, Elaine, Brenda and Mali for being here today. Welcome. They have been integral to these maps and I want to acknowledge their courage and generosity in sharing their stories with us so that we can have these maps in AH. After I am inviting you to go and see them in AH with these women here.
So let start with this building. This building that we worship in is called the John Flynn Memorial Uniting Church. It was built in 1956 as a memorial to the Rev John Flynn.
Flynn was a Presbyterian minister. The Presbyterians were one of the three churches that came together in 1977 to form the Uniting Church and so that is why this is now a Uniting Church.
Flynn is most beloved for his pivotal role in the founding of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but he also founded the Australian Inland Mission now Frontier Services, and was its superintendent for an impressive 39 years, from its founding in 1912 until his death in 1951. During this time, the A.I.M established 15 hospitals, including Adelaide house which was built in 1926. It was the town’s first hospital. It operated as a hospital until 1939. After that it was used as a hospice for women and their babies. It has also been used by the church for housing and offices. When Rev Jim Downing and Shirley Downing lived there in the 1970’s they were known to offer shelter and protection to Aboriginal women who came to town for health care at the main hospital. At that time, they worked with Yami Lester and others to establish IAD and serving on the hospital board, pushed for an interpreter service and desegregation of the wards.
Since 1980 it has been a museum dedicated to sharing the history of Flynn and the building. And Flynn certainly has an impressive legacy. The RFDS now provides 24/7 medical care across 80% of Australia, which includes many Aboriginal communities. Frontier Services’ bush chaplains, like Benj and Jill continue to provide pastoral and practical support to people doing it tough across rural and remote Australia. The extensive network of radios for the RFDS also became the platform on which the School of the Air was initially built.
Flynn believed in opening up Central Australia and his hospitals helped do that. If it were not for people like him, we might not live here today. But how to hold this alongside what it meant and continues mean for First Nations people?
When Adelaide House was built in 1926, very little thought was given to the Arrernte people on whose land it was built. While Aboriginal people were at time treated by the Adelaide House nurses (the first operation was actually the removal of a cyst from an Aboriginal man), the A.I.M. and its hospitals were built for and dedicated to the needs of white settlers.
In this period no Aboriginal person was allowed within the town limits unless for employment so this was in line with the times. However, even then A.I.M’s indifference to Aboriginal people was strenuously contested by others in the church particularly Dr Charles Duguid, who was pivotal in the beginnings of the Ernabella mission.
In 1972 Duguid published a book in which he accused Flynn of telling him not to not waste his time with damned, dirty niggers. This has been vehemently refuted by many who knew Flynn but his own writing is mostly silent on the Aboriginal people of the Outback. When he does mention them, he is ambivalent. At times he is very sympathetic but at other times his words are paternalistic or belittling.
The University of Newcastle’s colonial massacres map shows 21 massacres occurred across Northern Australia during Flynn’s time.[1]
1910 also marked the beginning of the stolen generations. From this time to the 1970s anywhere between one in three and one in ten Aboriginal children were removed from their families.
Flynn was not involved in this but his quarterly magazine the Inlander whose stated aim was, “to help Australians see oft forgotten portions of our heritage” did not mention these massacres or this exploitation of Aboriginal women and the forced removal of their children.
This isn’t a simple story. None of our stories are. Given that our moral evaluation of it all is often strangely thin.
Often referred to as Flynn of the Inland, most Australians remember him as an outback saint, who embodies the innovative pioneer spirit. It is believed that there are more monuments to Flynn across Australia than any other Australian. However, others remember Duguid’s comments about him. They remember him as someone who was deeply involved and invested in the colonisation of this land that often forced Aboriginal people off their country because of the desecration of waterholes, food sources and sacred sites needed for survival but also then banned them from the towns.
While, we do need to be wary of the pitfalls in judging people of the past with present knowledge and values, we also need to be aware of the pitfalls of just letting go of present knowledge and values when it comes to history.
In 2021, I entered into this contested history by writing a master’s thesis titled John Flynn and Charles Duguid: Contested Narratives of the Inland. I wanted to understand more about Flynn. Was he a saint? Or a racist? Or was he just a so called “man of his time?” What emerged for me was a rather more complex and nuanced picture.
Also, I was (and still am) inspired by the Uluru Statement of the Heart generous invitation to walk together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future. And so in response I decided to find out about the history of this church so I could speak honestly about it.
I am still figuring out how to do this. Time does not permit me to go into the whole story but there truly is much in it that is good and inspiring. At the same there is much in it that is really, really not. How do we talk about both honestly? We tend to want to define people and institutions as either good or bad but I think we are all more complicated than that.
The Christian faith on the other hand proclaims we are all sinners and saints.
And the biblical narrative is filled with flawed characters —Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, David, Peter, Martha and Paul — who despite their failings, play significant roles in the story of God amongst us. The characters of the Bible do not always behave better than anyone else did in their time. However, what the redactors of the book enabled the people to do was look honestly and unflinchingly at their history and repent. There are calls for celebration and praise but also lament. We now dare to call this sacred, the Word of God.
Flynn wanted to help Australians hear the forgotten portions of our heritage. Now in 2025 the stories of Flynn and the pioneers are well known and told in various museums across town, but I wanted to see if the building he built be used to hear the less well-known stories of Arrernte people growing up in this town? And could the stories be told together? And could recognising a shared history be healing and help us walk together into the future? God knows this week we need it.
I began speaking to people across the community and it turned out there were others asking similar questions. From those conversations a group formed and to cut a three-year story very short what has emerged is the two maps that are now in Adelaide House. Along the way we also held two movie nights and hosted a conversation with Kim Mahood and Rachel Perkins at the last NTWF here.
What was made clear was that, first and foremost it was important to acknowledge the land on which Adelaide House stands. And to acknowledge the Arrernte people whose ancestors have lived on, cared for and understood this country for 60 000 years.
Our first map seeks to do this. This map simply but powerfully names the ranges, hills, river systems and more. Unlike the English names that come from elsewhere the Arrernte names ascended from the earth given through Altyerre (the Creation). These all have stories that are not for everyone to know but everyone can learn the names. Yes they are hard for us to say but in learning them I am recognising how the 150 year old English names have stifled the original names. Learning them also shows respect for this beautiful land and its people and their stories.
Our second map zooms in on the town. This map depicts the places that have been significant to Arrernte people. Some of these places are no longer there and so the map reflects on both the past and the present. Around this map are stories about these places and what it was like to grow up in this town. Again, there are stories that are good and inspiring, stories of resilience and fun and of tender connections between different races. At the same there are stories of grief, loss, displacement and separation. Stories of a people’s survival despite intentional and unintentional efforts to crush and silence them.
Adelaide House will be open after the service and if you have not been in and seen the museum or the maps and read the stories, I invite you to take a moment to do so. They are not finished. We hope they never will be. We are inviting more people to come and tell their stories and we will keep adding them. Two weeks ago our AH volunteers also showed a group of CMS students around the museum and they saw the maps as well as hopefully they will be creating some dioramas to go with the maps. Mali has been the driver of that and it really is wonderful that the YP of our town are engaging with this.
In our reading today Jesus says that well known and well loved line ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’
His Jewish hearers respond, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?’
This of course is not true and Jesus audience would have known that. The Jewish people’s slavery in Egypt and their liberation by God is central to the Hebrew Scriptures. But it seems the instinct to deny the parts of our history that are unsavoury to us is not new.
But this is not what the Jewish faith, nor I think the Christian faith, asks of us. Throughout the Scriptures God’s people are called to remember their slavery. The yearly Passover recalls it but also the weekly Sabbath, When God gives the Sabbath commandment it says,
15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”
And we are called to remember, not as a way of condemning our ancestors or ourselves for their actions. I hope the result of this is not that we all decide we should “cancel” Flynn. Rather, I believe, the only way to move on and improve from the past is to learn from it – to look it squarely in the face and see the mistakes and learn.
The theme of this week’s reconciliation week is “Bridging now to next.” This theme urges people allow the lessons of the past to guide the way forward. One of the Arrernte women who has been integral to the maps put it like this, ‘By sharing our memories and speaking our truths we want to heal ourselves and others.’
Over the past two weeks we have been reflecting on the meaning of the cross of Christ. I said that the hideousness and horror of the cross acknowledges what Anslem called the gravity of sin, that forgiveness and reconciliation are costly and that those who have suffered great wrong demand justice.
I ended last week’s sermon saying that the cross is God’s emphatic no to all that would hurt and destroy his good creation and his passionate yes to life. As his followers in this time and place it is our calling to do this here and now. For me this is what these maps in Adelaide House are about. And I hope you will go and see them after the service.
[1] The University of Newcastle, “Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930, 2022”, Centre for 21st Century Humanities, Centre For 21st Century Humanities (newcastle.edu.au)
