AUSTRALIA’S FIRST SAINT

I ARRIVED IN ADELAIDE in time to witness the celebration around the canonization of Australia’s first saint. By the time I write this, she will have become St. Mary of the Cross. This is a great day for local Christians of the Roman persuasion, ever a minority in a state that was founded by religious dissenters, mainly Baptists and Lutherans. Born in 1842, Mary MacKillop began founding schools and working amongst the poor during very hard times, she has become more familiar to the world and Australians than the bishop who famously excommunicated her for her independence from the clergy of the day and her uppity attitude to authority. I can claim a tenuous connection to her since the first school I attended was a convent school run by the Order of St. Joseph, founded by Mary MacKillop, in the town of my birth (Clare, South Australia).

It appears we Australians have a second saint in the pipeline, perhaps remarkable for a country so irreligious. I doubt I will harangue you anymore of Aussie hagiographies, since I know nothing about this second in line, other than she was shot in the course of her missionary endeavours. It is hard getting to be a saint, it being essentially a post-humus award. Apart from splendid achievements that any reasonable human would admire, one must live a holy life, be credited with at least two miracles, and have one’s life well attested long after death. Of course, if you have not truck with the notion of an afterlife, it is hard to make sense of the veneration accorded saints after death. Notwithstanding, it would be churlish in the extreme not to acknowledge a life well-lived. Good on you, Mary MacKillop.

So here I am in Adelaide, made all the more congenial by the very good recent rains. Mark my journey: by car from Painted Post (NY) to Basalt (CO) and then by air from Aspen to San Francisco. United Airlines took me from there to Sydney where I regained the skills of driving on the left hand side of the road and of driving in the mad traffic through Sydney’s narrow, winding streets. Having acquired my car, I have driven to Canberra, then Wodonga, and then Melbourne. After a week I set out for Warracknabeal, abut half way to Adelaide, in the grain growing district called the Wimmera. After two days, I was once more on the way to Adelaide. Somehow, I have arranged for it to be raining when I travel and fine when visiting, The rains have been glorious, coming just when the farmers wanted, filling the reservoirs, and greening the entire country after almost five years of drought (and longer in some areas).

I introduced you to the Dog on the Tucker Box. In Warracknabeal I discovered a Dog on the Wheat Bags but could find no one to tell me if there was a story to explain this memorial at one of the three roundabouts in the main street. I stayed with a old friend who is the Baptist minister to three congregations in the Wimmera. He had undertaken to organize to smarten up the front of the local church building, so I fell to wielding a paint brush, so making my mark on the place as one might say. I hope you like the scenes I photographed (Tom, my pastor friend, is the one on the ladder).

I have so enjoyed this long journey, meeting old friends, seeing my family, and being alone as I drove through the rural country side, often the only car along the road for an hour or so. To the visitor travelling my course, the Australian rural landscape would impress as empty and very flat, contrasting with the bustling, crowded cities with their car packed streets…streets that seem to change their names every mile or so. I know which I prefer; I seem to be a country man at heart.

Despite this being my home land, I confess that it seems far from the rest of the world, truly a place ‘down under’, and the cities seem very far apart. No wonder Aussies travel so much!