4 Minnipa – Beyond Outback: 1940–45
Minnipa – Beyond Outback: 1940–45
Later in Leon’s life, numerous stories circulated in Melbourne about his early life in outback Australia. How could this fine-boned, almost fragile, educated man have driven along bumpy, outback dirt-tracks for hours and hours, year after year, visiting two or three people before returning home on the same arduous tracks?1
Leon was given charge of the mission area – that is, the Parish of Minnipa – in South Australia from 1940 to 1945. The state of South Australia was very distant in the minds of people in the populated, eastern-seaboard states. The town of Minnipa was even more remote, located on the Eyre Peninsula hundreds of kilometres north-west of Adelaide.
It was quite an adventure for Leon just getting to Minnipa. Catching a train from Sydney, he travelled south through New South Wales for the better part of a day. At the Murray River at Albury, he changed trains for the next stage of the trip through Victoria. Most of the journey passed through hundreds of miles of Australian countryside, sparsely populated with large properties. He then travelled south to Melbourne, the capital of Victoria. Leon spent a day meandering around Melbourne, waiting for the connecting train to Adelaide. On reaching Adelaide, he continued his journey to Port Lincoln, took a boat across Port Lincoln Harbour and a train to Minnipa, not far from the Nullabor Desert.
The mission area covered approximately 25 kilometres either side of the railway running north-west and an area extending 200 kilometres north and south. North of this parish lay another area some ten times larger where no Anglican was in charge, and it was officially allocated to Leon during the latter portion of his time there. The total area of some 60,000 square kilometres, or 6 per cent of South Australia, would keep a diligent worker busy.
Initially some in Minnipa saw Leon as a city slicker from the dangerous and imposing Sydney. At least, that was the view of a 10-year-old boy from a family who was hosting Leon. He told Leon that if you went out in Sydney you were likely to get a ‘bottle on the block’. Leon assured him that he had never been assaulted on the head or elsewhere. The boy was not convinced.
There are few things more powerful in life than knowing where God wants you to be. Nothing beats the satisfaction of finding that God got it right because you fit the context you are in. Leon’s story and that of countless Christians has to be set against a modern tendency to say that God doesn’t guide specifically. Leon knew the call of God and he knew he was shaped by his background. Although Lithgow’s heart lay in mining, you could walk a short distance and find yourself among the gum trees, dry heat and rolling hills of Australia. Leon wanted to go to a remote area to serve God. He had the characteristic inner drive of a true Christian that the good news was for all people and that they should hear that news wherever they lived. He enjoyed being among the ordinary people of Australia.
Here he was, as a fine young preacher with a developing incisive intellect, headed for a very different world yet completely prepared to embrace a new people and task. Leon had great compassion for people who lived on the edge economically and socially. He reflected years later that he believed the Minnipa Mission was important because of the people: ‘It was a shining example of what ordinary humble men and women can do in difficult and trying times.’2 He shared the hard-working, down-to-earth ethic of country folk. Life was tough in any BCA parish. By definition, it was partly supported from outside funds, as the congregations were not sufficiently large to pay all their expenses. Furthermore, any spare money was allocated to the war effort. In South Australia, the fickle rains meant that quite a few farmers were walking away from their farms as they were unable to generate enough income.
Parish Life
Leon was now in charge of his first parish. On his first Sunday, he took three services in three locations. At his first service, two people attended. He kept a photo of the two plus himself at his first service in charge of a parish, arguing that ‘where two or three are met together’3 it’s a valid gathering. Twelve attended the second service and thirty-three attended the third.
This was the pattern – visiting small centres with a few people and travelling hundreds of kilometres. On one occasion Leon calculated that he travelled 400 kilometres over a Good Friday–Easter period, taking services in eight centres. Roads were sometimes non-existent and mostly unpaved. Driving meant following other car tracks through the bush or making your own tracks. When Leon arrived at Minnipa, he knew nothing about car repairs. From the previous missioner he ‘inherited’ an old sedan that had to be nursed along for several years, frequently breaking down. It gave him a genuine laugh when a visiting lady missionary, faced with the stalled car on a journey, prayed to the ‘Lord of all carburettors’ to fix it. Even more amusing to Leon was that by tinkering with something in the engine and not having much idea of what he was doing, the thing started again. He believed that in some strange way God had intervened. He was amused that such an unusual prayer had overcome his large ignorance about car mechanics.
The area of the mission consisted of farms around 5,000 hectares in size, producing wheat, wool, cows, pigs and eggs. There were many share farmers, and frequently Leon found himself hearing complaints from the farmer and the owner about each other. Leon learned as much as he could from listening to the farmers and reading about farming. He even attended a lecture on pig-raising from an agricultural department expert at the invitation of a farmer he knew, and took a correspondence course in pig-farming to help another farmer.4
There were some twenty centres scattered around the district, of varying sizes, but not one Anglican building in the entire area.5 Conditions varied, and more than once people squeezed into children’s desks in a school building for services. Kneeling was impossible. The Australian outback heat sometimes forced services into the open air if the heat in the buildings grew too oppressive. Leon also conducted services for baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals. Because of the war, he sometimes had the unpleasant task of visiting a family to tell them a family member had been killed in battle. ‘The community stood by its own’, he would say.6
Services were often chaotic, with toddlers crawling over him and sitting on him. At one baptism, he did not understand why a young farm boy was so apprehensive until he discovered that the boy’s older brothers had told him he would be ‘branded’. One wedding started so late that most of the men had already drunk too much, and Leon had to threaten to leave before enough order was restored to complete the ceremony. Then there were special moments such as the harvest festival services. Leon was so moved by one that he commented, ‘I have never been to one more impressive than this little outback expression of heartfelt thanksgiving with its simple dignity as men and women who live by the land returned their thanks to the Giver of all for his mercies in the harvest He has given them.’7
During this time, Leon became friends with Revd David Livingstone, a BCA missioner at Streaky Bay, further west on the south coast of Australia. They devised a game of telephone chess, which they kept going for over three years by occasional telephone calls. Sixty years ago, telephone calls were expensive. No one knows if the game ever finished and, if so, who won. Livingstone and Leon also wrote to each other weekly, one on a Sunday and the other on a Tuesday.8
Marriage
After a year in Minnipa, while on leave in Sydney, Leon married Mildred Dann at St John’s Campsie. In Leon’s words, ‘Mildred was kind enough to take pity on me after that first year.’9 The ceremony was taken by his former boss, Revd C.C. Short. Mildred looked stunning in a magnolia satin dress cut in the Victorian style. As a lover of numbers, he once told a friend that the date in Australian numbering – ‘4.1.41’ – was easy to remember.
Mildred had lived in Lithgow from the age of six. She and her sister, Wilma, were friends with Leon’s sister, Jean. Occasionally Mildred would visit the Morris household, and they made the most of her considerable music skills on the keyboard during their musical evenings. In Sydney, Mildred’s friendship with Leon deepened, and she visited All Souls from time to time. One Sunday, after visiting the Leichhardt church, she went home and made a personal commitment to follow Christ. While Leon was teaching and then curate at Campsie, their relationship blossomed and they became engaged. They shared a common background and simple interests in walking, talking, music, literature, gardens and their personal Christian faith.
Mildred had a number of striking qualities. She met situations head on, to find the best practical solution. She was also very gifted as a pianist and organist and saw the funny side of things, putting a positive slant on events in life. Her family had experienced tragedy when her 22-year-old brother, whom she adored, died at Easter. She was nineteen at the time.
Mildred wanted to train as a nurse and eventually, after some perseverance on her part, she was accepted by Lithgow Hospital and moved into the nursing quarters. Later, she transferred to Sydney to work at Crown Street Women’s Hospital. She qualified as a triple-certificate nurse.
At one stage Mildred and Leon’s relationship broke up, the split lasting for six long months. Years later Mildred told her sister, Wilma, ‘It was of the Lord, because I was becoming too dependent on Leon during our engagement.’10 They got back together when Mildred visited the Morris family at Marrickville and Leon was the only one at home. Wilma recalled that shortly after, while ‘washing up at the Morrises … Leon asked me would I do the dishes and he’d wipe them and I said, “Yes.” He said, “You are the second person who has said yes to me this week.” I said, “We’re an easy-going mob.” Leon just laughed and laughed.’11
Leon and Mildred continued their courtship by correspondence through 1940. Mildred’s mother was terribly upset when Mildred announced she was moving to South Australia. She explained to her mother, ‘It’s the Lord’s will that we are going over’, and her mum said ‘It’s not – it’s Leon’s.’12 During the war, interstate travel was not possible unless by special permission, so the families knew a long absence was certain.
After their marriage in Sydney, Leon and Mildred returned to South Australia, driving a new van donated to BCA. It was an interesting ecumenical venture: some Irish connections of Tom Jones had promised to donate a van for outback work so long as the van (a General Motors Company panel van) was painted green and called ‘St Patrick’s Van’. The van was air-conditioned with lift-up sides and carried a thick Dunlopillo rubber mattress for overnight trips. Leon and Mildred used the van to visit farms, and Mildred frequently drove it so that Leon could use the time to study for his London Bachelor of Divinity degree, which he completed in 1943 with first-class honours.13 Again, Leon had very few study aids except a limited number of books he was able to get shipped to him. His style of learning was already recognizable. He would carefully make notes, summarizing contentions in the material into point form, before making an assessment of the overall work. His method was logical and succinct.14
Mildred’s presence shaped Leon’s time in Minnipa and helped him develop his view of a wide ministry for God’s people. In laconic understatement, Leon recalled, ‘Just to have Mildred with me was an advantage.’15 He observed that women on farms had a difficult time and recalled one saying, ‘We get tired of seeing nothing but men’.16 It was refreshing for these women when the car pulled up to see ‘a charming young lady in a dress’.17 Mildred provided the presence of a mature and experienced young woman.
She also brought expert recent medical knowledge and became the de facto general practitioner when the doctor in the area was unavailable or too far away to offer immediate advice. Her sister recalled, ‘When out with BCA there was a doctor there who had missionary parents in China but he was the biggest alcoholic out. However he’d trust Mildred with anything. He had great faith in Mildred.’18 She found herself treating infected fingers, appendicitis and cranky infants, as well as delivering babies. On one occasion, Mildred and Leon attended a farmer who had been run over by his own harvesting machine. Mildred stabilized the man so that they could drive him to a hospital in their van. The man suffered three broken ribs, two breaks in his collarbones, a dislocated hip and severe shock, but he lived. During a gastroenteritis epidemic, it was reported that ‘Mrs. Morris does not seem to mind the calls made on her, and is ever ready to assist anyone who needs her, be it at any hour of the day or night’.19
A Ministry to Children
In Leon’s second year at Minnipa, the South Australian Government gave ordained ministers permission to teach religious instruction in schools. Leon was solely responsible for nineteen schools and shared responsibility for another five.
With the help of the BCA Mail Bag Sunday School and financial reimbursement from friends, Leon bought enough lessons for 190 students. He would visit the twenty-four schools and teach the first lesson, leaving the rest to be done before he returned a month or so later. These lessons went so well that even the non-church kids liked them, and Leon’s promise of a prize for good work meant that he had to come up with fifty prizes at the year’s end.
The students Leon taught recognized his gentle and humble nature and obvious love for children. They warmed to his teaching, as well as the caring manner in which he responded to their work. Years later he would explain that the basic category of Christian life is a servant, and he certainly lived out this belief in the way he taught the children under his care.
In 1944, a significant event took place that had a big effect on Leon and Mildred’s home life. Marguerite Bockelberg, a church member living on one of the district’s farms, took ill with a serious abdominal condition requiring surgery at a hospital nearly 50 kilometres away. The operation was performed, yet tragically she died the same night on 5 February 1944. Her husband worked for the army and could not be contacted. There were three children: 14-year-old Brian at high school in Adelaide, and his sisters, Brenda (also fourteen) and Betty (nearly sixteen). An aunt looked after the girls for a time, but Betty recalled, ‘Then there was this big question about what to do with these two girls.’20
Leon and Mildred had been married for three years at that time but had no children of their own. Mildred offered to look after the girls – ‘Oh, they can come and live with us’ – and when she arrived home she informed Leon of her offer. This caught Leon’s immediate attention. While Leon responded by commenting that ‘You don’t make decisions like that on your own’, Mildred had already made the decision in her typical and resourceful ‘can do’ response to life. She told Betty much later, ‘I’d worked in emergency in hospitals – I made those decisions all the time.’
The girls lived with Leon and Mildred for two years.21 Betty recalled:
we found ourselves with a young clergyman and his wife who didn’t dance and didn’t drink (not that we drank) and when Leon went away we were by ourselves with Mildred. The house was very austere and they had few things in it. I don’t remember a lounge suite. There were two bedrooms and a kitchen and Leon’s study which was also an office or an operating theatre!22
Betty stayed on for longer than her sister and formed a great affection for Mildred, even though ‘Mildred was not a cuddly person’.23 Having lived with Mildred, she reflected, ‘She was a very balanced person, had a sense of humour, and she offered great skills to the people with her nursing. She also knew how to spend time alone. She became like a mother to me. In fact it was watching her that influenced me to become a nurse. I would later visit her at Ridley and always could talk to her.’24
In their early days at the rectory, the girls had nothing much to do. As a solution, Leon suggested they attend some of the other church services – Minnipa services were followed by services at other centres like Poochera and Emerald Rise, where the girls had cousins. Betty replied: ‘Well … how would you like listening to the same sermon three times on a Sunday?’ Leon’s response: ‘I promise you if you come, I’ll preach three different sermons.’ Few clergymen would promise this on a Saturday night. He kept his word.
Other things impressed the girls, who came from a different Anglican church tradition:
One Good Friday we also went with them and they’d taken sausages to grill. Well, we were good Anglicans who in those days didn’t eat meat on Good Friday! He gave us a long theological lecture on why it didn’t matter if you grilled sausages on Good Friday.25 We had morning devotions with Leon and Mildred – this was new to us and in fact I asked Mildred why they did it.
Many years later, in the 1990s, Leon spoke at a BCA weekend where Betty was present. At this weekend, ‘Leon told me that he had prayed for me and Brenda every day since we’d lived with them. I said – “but you didn’t always know what was happening to us?” He said “Yes but I still knew you and God knew where you were.”’ Betty wrote: ‘I was blown away! That was fifty two years!’26 She remained a close friend and confidante of Leon and Mildred to the end. On the occasion of their sixtieth wedding anniversary, Betty rang Mildred: ‘I felt I wanted to be transported right into their kitchen. Leon told us we were the closest thing he and Mildred had to children.’27
Five Years in the Bush
This productive period in the Australian bush lasted five plus years. Leon poured his energy, expertise and spiritual resources into Minnipa, and he and Mildred worked well together as a team. It was physically costly, however, and Mildred was a bag of bones from having worked so hard.28 The strain of this work was more than physical. On one occasion, Mildred was looking forward to a visit from a clergyman who was bringing his wife. Female company was always welcome. But when he turned up, his wife was not with him. Mildred confided to her sister, ‘I just sat down and cried.’
Was the five years worth it? Leon highlighted the importance of his time in Minnipa some fifty years later in his brief memoir, Bush Parson,29 his only autobiographical work. While at Minnipa, Leon deepened his understanding of God through self-motivated study while working alongside ordinary people in a remote area. He held these people in the same high regard as the academic giants he was reading. For Leon, plumbing the depths of God involved more than plumbing the depths of the Bible. It involved witnessing God’s truth transmitted into the lives of ordinary people so they might live strengthened and purposeful lives for God. It meant serving alongside them as a fellow Christian traveller.
By the end of this period, Leon had formed his theology with broad brush strokes and largely by himself. It is striking how few books or heroes he quoted as influencing him from when he became a follower of Christ in 1931 to completing a master’s degree in theology in 1945. He was like a pianist playing by ear who looked around to see if he had got it right. The feedback he did receive affirmed his theological growth, and God matured him into an even more effective minister. Like many, his experience of the depression and the war years gave him plenty to think about in terms of God and humanity. He held a Bible in one hand and a varied world in the other.
In 1945, when Leon was in his early thirties, he received a surprise letter from Ridley College in Parkville, a suburb just north of Melbourne’s central business district. Leon knew very little about Ridley College, nor its principal, Bishop Donald Baker. The letter offered Leon the position of vice-principal. In response to this letter, Leon visited Melbourne for only the second time in his life for further discussions.30