PHIL SMITH speaks with Queensland’s ‘flying padre’ Garry Hardingham…
Garry Hardingham loves a sunburnt country. And he knows it with the depth of one who’s seen crows flying backwards.
Rev Hardingham, you see, is the latest in a long line of outback padres established in Cloncurry by the Reverend John Flynn.
THE ‘FLYING PADRE’ AT WORK: Rev Garry Hardingham conducting a baptism at Nardoo Station.
“For almost a century the ‘padre’ has been a part of this amazing community. It was John Flynn’s vision for a ‘mantle of safety’ that gave birth to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. While Flying Doctor could see to the medical needs, the work of the padres was to support, encourage and advocate on behalf of the people who had little or no voice in the wider community.”
– Reverend Garry Hardingham
Flynn of the Inland rode camels so he could not have imagined the scene by the road near Boulia last month where Rev Hardingham boiled the billy for a couple of elderly tourists from Melbourne.
They had seen his land and parked their new four-wheel drive and caravan for a natter. What did these good folk want to talk about in the midst of that dusty plain – a place that hasn’t been soaked in about eight years?
The drought, of course.
“Now I would have thought they’d noticed the complete absence of grass, the eye-blinding sand and the almost molten rock and conclude that there’d been little rain in these parts lately,” says Rev Hardingham.
“Instead, our conversation centred on how they can’t water their lawns in Footscray whenever they like and (how) the hydrangeas are looking particularly poor this year!”
It’s been 80 years since the Inland Mission sent Reverend Fred McKay to Cloncurry, in northwest Queensland, and four years since Rev Hardingham arrived. At the controls of VH-MJZ (the latter, he says, stands for ‘Much Joy & Zeal’) he has come to know just how sunburnt and how wide the brown plains really are. He’s also seen how red the gibber plains are south of Birdsville and how blue the Torres Strait is.
“For almost a century the ‘padre’ has been a part of this amazing community,” says Rev Hardingham. “It was John Flynn’s vision for a ‘mantle of safety’ that gave birth to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. While Flying Doctor could see to the medical needs, the work of the padres was to support, encourage and advocate on behalf of the people who had little or no voice in the wider community.”
That’s a big call.
Imagine, for example, an isolated resident feeling the effects of depression. Perhaps she can find her way to Mount Isa, but even there resources are minimal. She doesn’t qualify for an ambulance flight but needs the medical expertise available a thousand kilometres away in Townsville. The flying padre gives her a lift and a listening ear all the way to the coast.
Advocacy work can be vital for individuals not accustomed to dealing with government bureaucracies or the machinations of big mining companies. Small Aboriginal communities and struggling family cattle properties often feel cut off from the “comfortable mainstream of Australian society”.
OUTBACK LIFE: TOP – Rev Hardingham with his wife Teresa and three children Tamara, Mark and Victoria; BOTTOM – “If only a swag could fit in the plane…or we can make the seats into a bed.”
All the bush yarns about “hatches, matches and despatches” find their way into Rev Hardingham’s ministry. He does all the baptisms, marriages and funerals one could imagine, in tiny timber churches and beside brown billabongs. Rev Hardingham speaks passionately about a move of God’s spirit reviving one of his congregations – a congregation of four.
For him, what matters most is the opportunity that often comes from sacred moments. Connections are established. When the flooding rain associated with Cyclone Larry turned parts of Queensland’s Gulf Country into a quagmire, it was the Uniting Church’s little red and white aeroplane that brought in pharmaceutical supplies, pump engine parts and took out people who needed to get to town.
“I was amazed at how quickly my family has become part of this far flung community. That’s part of the heritage of 80 years service begun all those years ago by the Presbyterian Inland Mission, and built on over the decades.”
The flying padres of the McKay Patrol area have established strong links with other key organisations. School of the air teachers hitch a ride with Garry to meet the students they rarely see face to face on properties many hundreds of kilometres away. For students going to boarding schools, there’s often a lift in the Cessna to catch the train or bus to the coast.
Keeping the Cessna 182 in the air is another example of a unique Australian community. Missionary Aviation Fellowship maintains Mike Juliette Zulu at their workshops on the Atherton Tableland but hundreds of generous donors around the country have provided for nuts and bolts, seat covers, a paint job and even a new engine and propeller.
There’s a 21st century similarity between the early disciples going out into Palestine to encounter people down the track, and Garry Hardingham dropping in to yarn with travellers by the road out near the Territory border.
Some things never change
Oh. Why would crows fly backwards? It keeps the dust out of their eyes.
~ www.mckaypatrol.ucaqld.com.au
