![]() ![]() ![]() It was certainly Christian stories that had driven out the Aboriginal stories from the places I had lived, and one could look across the Promised Land and know that, two hundred years before, it had been filled with Aboriginal stories. However, if I had a culture at all then it seemed to be a Christian one. So: was the church still offering me some childhood comforts? I thought, maybe. I once kept score of God's responses to my prayers. ![]() ![]() I had been transported to a school for "Christian Gentlemen". I had squirmed while I endured my mother's very loud Holy Holy Holys. Had I been, perhaps secretly, comforted by the church? Was I, in some way I could not admit, still vitally connected to the Christian stories of my youth? I had certainly grown up asking God to bless mummy and daddy. Insufficient money in the plate.įor someone whose most religious observance was getting stoned and watching the lightning storms, it was peculiar that this news should so upset me. Then the Bishop of Grafton revealed he had plans to remove the church. But it was satisfying to see how the church sat in its place. Driving from the town of Bellingen you took the road to "the Promised Land" where you found the whole valley spread before you: the line of casuarinas tracing the course of the Never Never, the high back wall of the escarpment looming two thousand feet above, and a perfectly placed small, white clapboard church, sited a little above the river, beyond the reach of flood. ![]()
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