Mark Dixon, Aboriginal, 26 yo and considering becoming a pastor

Solomon and I were walking through the Wycliff Well petrol station forecourt and there were a group of Aborigines sitting on the step. I smiled, said 'G'day' to one of them, who's name turned out to be Mark.

Mark said Hi and then straight out asked 'Are you a Christian?'

I said yes and sat down for a conversation. One of the frustrations so far in the center of Australia is that I haven't really understood what the state of gospel ministry is so I was keen to listen to him.

He told me that he had come to Christ though the ministry of some Lutheran missionaries, his parents and experience that convinced him of the reality of God - when he saw the stars at night form a cross in the sky.

I asked him about the death of Christ and he had a clear understanding. He told me that he understood that Jesus had died for his sins and was now his risen Lord. He told me about the struggle for him and the other Christians in his community to avoid sin and temptation: Grog, Drugs, Sex.

I told him that they were the same temptations that people in the city faced.

He spoke of wanting to become a pastor.

We ended up swapping addresses and phone numbers.

Please pray for him and the Christian ministry on the settlement he lives in - 30 kilometers south of Wycliff Well. 300 kilometers north of Alice Springs.

The devil's marbles

Now that we are into the Northern Territory we want to slow down and introduce a new pattern of life. A new sleeping spot every day and a short trip in between (with the obvious exceptions of Alice Springs, Uluru and Darwin). So we set ourselves a goal of 130 kilometers to Wycliff Well (a roadhouse/caravan not on many of the maps or the NAVMAN).

On the left hand side about 90kms south of Tennant Creek on the side of the road we saw enormous boulders of granite. Many of them spheres. The white explorers who installed the telegraph line that opened up this section of Australia dubbed these rocks 'the devils marbles.' Big Marble shaped rocks in a devilishly hot place. We stopped and all climbed to the top of one out crop and the boys ran up to the top of another.

There was a school bus of year 10 kids from Melbourne who exploded out of a bus just as we arrived - played AFL at the foot of the devil's marbles and then just as quickly vanished.

We stopped for lunch.

Breaker Morant

Then we settled in our caravan and watched the first half of Breaker Morant which I had somehow missed out on seeing when younger. (I think on reflection it is a brilliant but potentially unsuitable movie for kids).

Abraham wasn't paying any attention. He was at the other end of the caravan reading comics. But Hannah, Solomon, Cathie and I watched the first half of the movie in the air conditioned camper van - as the temperature sored outside.

(Did I mention there is nothing much else to Wycliff Well other than a petrol station and alien themed campground).

My view about watching movies with your kids is that it's good introduce them to the challenges that they will face later in the context of conversation with me.

So I thought I would try out Breaker Morant with them. Then we could learn a little bit of Australian war history together. And talk about whatever was offending.

Anyway we are enjoying it. Have stopped several times to explain things. And so far we haven't got up to anything too horrific.

I confess not having watched the movie before I didn't realise that it ended (as Cathie has now told me) with the firing squad execution of the heros (that's a little bit of Australian history that I needed to learn as well). So later in the evening after the kids had gone to bed I watched the rest of the movie. I will now need to decide whether to show them the rest. I suspect we will watch it. And maybe stop it just before the end or talk it trough in detail.

Aliens at Wycliff Well

It was only another 40 kilometers to Wycliff Well. We had a talk in the car on the way about UFO's and Aliens.

Personally I am skeptical but agnostic about intelligent life on other planets. But if there does turn out to be intelligent life then that will open up another huge mission feel of opportunity to tell other sentinal beings how their sins were forgiven by the actions of the creator of the universe coming as human flesh to redeem the creation 2000 years ago.

Anyway the caravan park owner at Wycliff Wells is clearly a signficant entrepreneur. He has a place at the end of the earth that he has created a grand narrative for. The narrative is. Australia's top place for UFO sightings and the Northern Territory's top place for exhotic beer. Even the tourist brochures suggeset that the two things are linked. People come here. By beers they have never tasted before and when drunk see amazing things.

All the walls of the caravan park have been painted with alien life forms and images form other planets. The toilets are dubbed 'Femaliens', 'Maliens' and bizzarely 'Unisex.'

While checking in the lady told us to come to the back entrance of the office/shopping/resteraunt area at night to buy a meal because the would be serving locals out the front and that way they could serve us priority. (I didn't realise at the time that what she meant was there would be a group of aboriginies hanging around the front later at night potentially/probably drunk and buying beer and it would be better to be round the back).

It was quite strange for us to be arriving so early in the day but we all felt tired so had a swim - in a freezing pool. The pool was under a cover and icy. (I don't really get this why when the climate is so hot the water is so cold, but it's been a repeated pattern at a number of caravan parks).

High school kids at Wycliff Well

We stopped the movie because two bus loads of year eleven kids from Melbourne pulled up in our caravan park to camp for the night. They are on an eleven day excursion from Darwin to Alice Springs.

Solomon and Abraham immediately made friends with some of the year eleven girls - carrying their bags for them and helping them pitch their tents.

They then showed them the various aliens that they had found earlier. Abraham reckons he managed to get in every single one of their photos.

With the prospect of having fun (perhaps even playing AFL) with older kids the movie was forgotten.

Tennant Creek & the Telegraph Station

Now this was an adventure. We slept in this morning and then went to check in at the caravan park. The woman behind the desk was from Melbourne and had been here for three months. We talked to her about what to do in Tennant Creek:
* Walk down the main street and have a look.
* Go the pub for the cultural experience
* Visit the aboriginal cultural center and art gallery
* Visit the old telegraph station
* Check out an old mine.
* Go to Jimmy Hooker's Bush Tucker man show in the caravan park at 7:30pm.

Heading down the main street we were struck by the number of aborigines hanging around with nothing much to do (more on this in a subsequent post). There are two churches in town - the Uniting Church and the Aboriginal Indigenous Mission. From the signs outside the Aboriginal Indigenous Mission looks like a much more active Christian community.

The caravan park lady had issued us with a key to the old telegraph station in exchange for a deposit. Attached to a key was a couple of laminated sheets of paper with the history of the telegraph station.

What we discovered. And it was more fund discovering it ourselves with the key than if their had been a tour guide was that:

In 1894 with the laying of a cable under the Indian Ocean telegraph wires had made it all the way from London to Darwin. If a telegraph could be strung from Darwin down to Adelaide then contact would be able to be made from London to the southern cities of Australia.

What needed to happen was a overland wire needed to be constructed from Adelaide to Darwin and repeater stations set up along the way to strengthen the signal. The repeater stations initially needed to be manned so that the morse code signals could be received and then manually repeated. When this process was automated the lines along the track still needed to be serviced.

Tennant Creek was set up as a Telegraph Station. THey had batteries to maintain, each supplying 1v of electricity. With 120v required to operate the station it was a constant job maintaining, replacing and recharging the batteries (I still haven't worked out how this recharging happened).

The Stuart Highway was established as a track to service the telegraph lines. The highway runs right beside the telegraph line.

Supplies were delivered to the Telegraph office every six months. In the meantime they kept a garden and some cattle to provide some necessities. Over time some aboriginies came to assist the white settlers in exchange for food and medicines. A culture of dependance grew.

Inside the Telegraph Station there was a marvelous photo album of large black and white prints of the stations history. (It looked like the master copy). There was also a photocopy of a book released in 1980 of the history of telegraph station and the inital forays of the white settlers into central Australia.

I think there's clearly a project for someone to catalogue this slice of Australian history so that it's record is more permanent. It looks like it's only the honesty of tourists that is preserving it at the moment. And pessimistically I believe in the doctrine of sin.