Shop

• Shop

Stories Of Australia's Christian Heritage

From the proclamation of Australia as the Southland of the Holy Spirit in 1606 to Alfred Deakin, the co-author of Australia’s Constitution, God’s hand has decisively shaped the destiny of our country. These short, easy-to-read stories introduce our well-known pioneers, explorers and statesmen who have been God’s instruments for establishing a nation based on Christian principles. Suitable for school text.

$14.95

Endorsements

From the proclamation of Australia as the ‘Southland of the Holy Spirit’ in 1606 to Alfred Deakin, the co-author of Australia’s Constitution, God’s hand has decisively shaped the destiny of our country. Among them were:

Many people think that Australia has always been a secular, godless place. But at every turn in our history men and women of faith have laid a godly foundation and built a rich Christian heritage. Among them were:

Richard Johnson, chaplain to the First Fleet, building a church with his own hands  . . .

Explorer Charles Sturt, nearly dead in the heat of Central Australia, praying to the ‘fountain of All Mercy’ . . .

Caroline Chisholm fighting off rats in 1840s Sydney, promising God she would ‘surrender all comfort’ to serve impoverished immigrant girls . . .

John Flynn, sitting with outback families and dreaming of bringing ‘flying doctors’ to the vast Inland . . .

This collection of short, easy-to-read stories reveals our well-known pioneers, explorers and statement who have been God’s instruments for establishing a nation based on Christian principles.

Excerpts

Sturt was a man of courage, faith and prayer. He kept a journal in which he wrote about his faith and how he took all his plans, difficulties and sorrows to the Lord in prayer. “Sturt, like most Australian explorers faced with a hostile environment, leaned hourly on God’s mercy.” At night he slept with a Bible that had belonged to his father-in-law under his pillow. When he had to throw away most of his possessions in the desert, he kept his Bible in preference to an oil lamp. Through his devout practices Sturt found wisdom and strength to endure, and peace in times of danger.
On 10 November 1829 Sturt set out on a second expedition to find the mouths of the Darling and Murrumbidgee Rivers. Humbly committing the safety of his party to the protection of Almighty God, Sturt noted in his journal:
Something more powerful than human foresight or human prudence, appeared to avert the calamities and dangers with which I and my companions were so frequently threatened; and had it not been for the guidance and protection we received from the Providence of that good and all-wise Being to whose care we committed ourselves, we should, ere this, have ceased to rank among the number of His earthly creatures (page 71).
And

Although the Governor discouraged her plans, Caroline persevered: after several interviews he agreed to let her use an old government building. The Immigration Barracks could become her proposed home on the condition she did not put the government to any expense in its management. It was a ramshackle old wooden building.

To protect her girls, Caroline decided to sleep there herself, so she cleared an old storeroom seven foot square and bedded down with them. An account of how she spent her first night is an illustration of her courage and resourcefulness. Tired after a busy day, she had no sooner lain down than a rumpus started up, like the sound of a pack of dogs running loose in the room. Jumping up in terror, she lit a candle. Rats were scurrying frantically all over the room, all but covering the floor as they tumbled noisily over one another. Caroline’s initial impulse was to run, but that would defeat her plan. When three rats landed on her shoulders, she felt she might be ill by the morning and again thought of quitting.
Then she hit on an idea. Taking two loaves of bread, she sliced them and, with some butter and a dish of water, she placed them in the centre of the room. She sat on her bed, reading Abercrombie and watching the rats enjoy their midnight feast without bothering her until four the next morning. The following night she prepared for them a similar treat—with the addition of arsenic.

The need for Caroline’s Female Immigrants’ Home soon became apparent. It was not long before she had filled up the four rooms in the barracks with ninety-four women. But how was she to care for her three little boys as well? She had already sent the two oldest back to Windsor, where they were well looked after by Miss M. Galvin, and hoped to keep the youngest with her. Then a flu epidemic broke out among the immigrants. toriCaroline saw that if she were to continue to care for the girls, she had to be willing to part with her son.
One night, still indecisive as she did her normal rounds of the girls, she asked them if they had any place to go if she turned them out. Not one had another shelter. When she returned to her room, she found a poor woman waiting for a white gown “to make her dead bairn [baby] decent” for burial. Fullness of the realization that the plague could strike her own little boy struck Caroline, so the next day she packed up her son’s clothes and sent him to Windsor. It “was the last sacrifice it was God’s will to demand”.

That was the only mention she made of her great personal sacrifice. God had asked that her children take second place so that others might know domestic happiness, so she obediently complied. But, as the mother she was to her own children, she set “inviolably set apart” one day each week for her family. Apparently her children were well cared for, and in later years all expressed a great love for their mother.
Every night Caroline ventured alone into the streets, down to the notorious ‘Rocks’ and into gloomy Hyde Park, to gather up homeless women. She was also a familiar figure down at the docks, where she met every immigrant ship. Boldly believing the Lord would provide, she opened a free job registry office at her barracks home (pages 128-30).