From the Archives
Ceduna Hospital 1927
The Real Australian of July 1943 tells the tale of BCA’s Organising Missioner meeting up with a much travelled Road Inspector in the Outback.
They talked of many people and places they had come across in their respective travels and the O.M. asked the Roads Inspector “Know anything about Ceduna Hospital?”, “Cripes I was a patient there not long ago”, said the R.I. “I’d been in bed a fortnight and was about fed up lying there doing nothing. The Doctor said I would have to put up with it for a month. Me on the back for a month! I argued with the Sisters to let me up, but cripes they had me trousers!” He grinned delightedly as he went on – “Those women, I dips me lid to them! They’re great women making the Outback worthwhile.”
Another day the O.M. attended a gathering of people in the West Coast Mission in South Australia. Their first BCA Missioner came to them two years ago – long enough for them to have learned his faults and failings as well as his good points. A gentleman, standing alongside the O.M. said, “You sent us the best parson we ever had.” That’s the judgement of the bush about BCA Missioners, “They’re doing a fine job”.
All these BCA men and women of sixty-five years ago went Outback with the mission of taking the Gospel to those who didn’t have opportunity to hear it.
Today, BCA still sends out fine missionaryminded men and women with the Gospel message to those in both remote and regional areas of Australia and is always seeking more fine missionary-minded men and women to take up present and future opportunities.
Clem Kirkby
Archivist
Copyright © 2008 Bush Church Aid Society of Australia