Spring Fair President
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
In the early days of accepting the job of being Superintendent of Wesley Central Mission in the late 1970’s, the debt that the Mission had and the lack of significant income was a major concern. Of all the many ways we sought to raise money, the most enjoyable was the volunteer effort in the raising of funds through the annual Spring Fair.
The Spring Fair had been established by the Central Methodist Mission in 1914 to raise money to provide comforts for the Australian troops who were going out to defend King and Empire in the battle against Turkey at Gallipoli.
Every year thereafter the Mission had raised funds through the hard work of a band of energetic women to aid the families, the homeless and the poor in Sydney. In the inner City of Sydney there were thousands of desperately poor people in areas of the Rocks and Wolloomooloo. During the 1930’s the depression hit hard and the Mission was flat out providing food, clothing and accommodation for those who had nothing.
During World War II the Mission again raised funds to provide comfort for those who are serving on the front lines of battle and also for those who return home wounded and injured.
Over the years the work of Spring Fair had raised much needed money for various parts of the Mission especially its child care work in the Dalmar Children’s Homes. By the late 1970’s the growth of the Mission to 26 centres and services required funds raised from any source and the Spring Fair was an important area of fundraising.
During 1979 my wife Beverley was appalled by the plight of the homeless men of inner Sydney, especially more than a hundred derelict men who slept in deplorable conditions in squalid long dormitories in a place known only as ‘Francis Street’. We were working to build a new high rise center with individual rooms in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst, but the men in 1979 were living in cockroach infested, smelly dormitories in Francis Street. Second hand clothes, food and companionship were not enough for these homeless men. Large sums of money were required to provide decent accommodation and basic care.
Nothing had equipped Beverley for her work as wife of the Superintendent when she began our work with me.
Most of our previous ministries had been occupied with having our four children and seeing them grow up to teenage years. They demanded all of her attention. It would have been very easy to forget the needs of the inner city but Beverley started work immediately to provide support and to raise funds to improve the condition of Sydney’s homeless.
The plight of homeless people came to a head in November 1980 when several boat loads of Vietnamese refugees landed on the North Coast of Western Australia. It was a pathetic landing. The boat contained 30 children who had seen their mothers raped, killed or kidnapped and fathers shot by pirates in the China sea in their desperate escape to get to Australia.
One Thursday morning I received a phone call from the head of the then Prime Minister’s department in Canberra asking could I provide accommodation for some Vietnamese boys who were recently orphaned. The caller told me the government would provide us $5,000 as a one off grant for their care. I immediately said yes not even knowing how many orphans were involved. The next day I discovered that there were 30 of them. How could we ever provide food, clothing, lodging, schooling and on going care for 30 boys? How long would a measly $5,000 last?
We had just shifted our men out of the terrible old dormitories in Francis Street into their new center for the homeless in Darlinghurst. I had this deplorable old building vacant. In one of the most incredible periods of insane activity between Friday and the following Monday morning I managed to get that entire building completely fumigated. Wondering how to get the place cleaned up I went down to the navy dockyards where a Malaysian warship had just pulled in and appealed for the crew of that Malaysian warship to become painters. Team after team of Malaysian navy men arrived in overalls and started painting the building from top to bottom. I went on television and appealed for beds, mattresses, blankets, pillows, billiard table, a table tennis table, set of encyclopedias, study desks and everything else that was needed to care for 30 boys. The public responded with 250 truck loads of goods!
While the building was being painted top to bottom, Beverley came up with the idea on Saturday. She purchased hundreds of large plastic bags and printed off labels called “Viet Kits”. She organized four different kinds of “Viet Kits” and made up 1000 plastic bags. The kits had lists on a sheet of paper. The first one was a hygiene kit and would involve such things as toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, towels, face washers and so on. The second was an education kit and would consist of a dictionary, books, pens, pencils, coloured textas, rulers and all the things needed for young boys going to school. The third was a medical kit and it would include the kinds of medical items that young men who had been in the exposed weather at the China sea would require, skin lotions, sunburn cream, antiseptic, band aids, bandages and the like. The fourth kit was a clothing kit. On the list were such things as socks, shoes, underwear, jumpers, shirts, shorts and so on. All Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning, Beverley and I drove around Sydney knocking on Ministers doors who were sound asleep following their final preparations for Sunday morning asking them if they would distribute the plastic bags to church members the following day and ask families to fill a bag with items listed on the bag for one boy. I needed them back by Sunday night.
By Monday morning I had bedding for 30 children, furniture, books, school requisites, health care items, cooking utensils, language interpreters, staff and a number of volunteers who had been recruited and organized.
When the buses arrived and these pathetic waifs got out in Sydney they were met with a huge reception of people who had cooked Vietnamese food and who presented a Vietnamese, Chinese lion dance of welcome.
Over the next six years we cared for those boys without any Government funding. Each boy completed the High School Certificate and everyone went to a University or an Institute of Technology. One of these commenced a motor engine repair business, and another opened his own restaurant. In all of this Beverley became foster mother to the boys in the grief of their own loss of their mothers and fathers and helped them in the difficulties of establishing them in a strange land with a different language and culture.
It was six years of intensive effort to help those 30 young lads adjust to Australia as their real home. Time and again those young teenage boys, as they went on to university and higher education expressed their appreciation for their new Australian mother.
At the same time we were facing the problems of not having enough money for all of the other areas of work. It was then that I lost the President, Vice President and Secretary of the band of women who organized the Spring Fair. There had been some moral indiscretions and I could do nothing else but ask for the resignation of the President. The others resigned with her. With the Spring Fair soon to occur in 1980 it left me with an enormous hole within our leadership team. How were we going to raise money to provide for Sydney’s homeless, Vietnam orphans, the aged people and the children in our care without good leadership? There was only one person I could turn to.
I asked Beverley if she would head up the Spring Fair Committee and raise money for us. She said “I will do anything that God wants me to do and I will do anything that you ask me to do to help you in your work, but please don’t ask me to raise money”. Beverley was an extraordinarily shy and retiring person and to ask her to raise money was not part of her experience or training.
But now she knew I was faced with an enormous difficulty of lack of leadership in our major fundraising. These ladies had raised thirty and forty thousand dollars in previous years.
After a few minutes of consideration, she replied, “I can count on God to help me and I know you will, so I will give it a go”. Beverley organized a group of mainly elderly ladies in craft stalls, baking cakes, conducting dinner parties and the like and in her first year raised a record $72,000.
Beverley was amazed when she saw what the money did in providing personal comfort for people in our care. Aged people received a new bus to take them shopping. Holidays were granted for the underprivileged and relief was given for inner city families. With immense enthusiasm she threw herself into a new year of raising money. She organized concerts, garage sales, book fairs, garden parties, dinners, dances, hundreds of stalls to sell cakes, food and handcrafts, organized radio and television ads, distributed hand bills, gained the presence of personalities from the media, from political and ceremonial life including Hazel Hawke, Lady Stephen, Lady Roland, Lady Cutler and a host of others. She worked full time in what was a totally unpaid voluntary task. She kept this up year after year.
The personal pressure must have been enormous. But it became a united family effort with each of our children helping their Mum.
Beverley set up her own office at home where she would type letters, sew bedspreads, make cushions and aprons, bake cakes and make floral arrangements. Everyday she spent some time soaking tens of thousands of used postage stamps and repackaging them for sale. She organized letters to hundreds of companies requesting donations of outdated stock, off cuts and factory seconds. Whenever she got these goods she distributed them to other people who would make goods for sale.
Before long she had over 400 volunteers who were recruited and organized through monthly meetings, which she chaired. It had never been her lot previously to chair such business meetings, but month after month, year after year she drew her volunteers together inspired them and directed them on. Soon she was providing help for 14 children’s homes, a sheltered workshop, nine aged care centers, two hospitals, and sixteen homes for the intellectually handicapped.
From the most surprising sources came people to help her. One retired lady jeweller offered her services to repair fashion jewellery. Consequently, broken jewellery and seconds from jewellery houses were delivered in large cardboard boxes and this lady repaired them. So Beverley set up in George Street a stall where she personally sold jewellery every week to passers by. She raised thousands of dollars from this street front stall. She lead by example and that encouraged many others to help in all areas of fundraising.
But there was always a special personal ministry particularly among the homeless. A personal ministry that saw her comforting and encouraging some of the men suffering from alcohol addiction and debilitating sickness. It was through the close contact of one of these men that on one occasion Beverley caught scabies. The terrible skin condition affected her whole body. Every day she had to bathe and treat all of her skin where the dreadful rash appeared.
In all of this Beverley continued her role as wife of the Senior Minister at Wesley Mission and an Elder within the congregation visiting the sick and the aged and shut in. As the years went by the amount of money being raised each year grew and more was raised than the year before. By 1990 she was raising a quarter of a million dollars each year and by 1995 she and her companions and raised more than three and a half million dollars. This was all without expenses, because everybody who worked was a volunteer who gave of their time to the poor, the needy, the homeless, the derelict and the sick. Spring Fair has now become so big that we have a paid employer to look after this area of our work.
Her work did not go unnoticed. In recognition of Beverley’s voluntary work to help the needy a poll was taken by the Australian Bi-Centennial Authority and Beverley was honoured by the Bi-Centennial Authority with the Bi-Centennial Woman 1988 Awards, as one of 20 outstanding women achievers in Australia. She was then elected as one of the top ten major award recipients, which was presented at a glittering function in the presence of Australia’s most famous women. Along side her stood Marjorie Jackson honoured for her great tribute to sport and for her support for the foundation named after husband Peter. Beverley received the accolades from Australians for being one of this nations ten outstanding women. In 1989 Beverley was the recipient of an Australia Day Citizenship Award given as Citizen of the Year by the Sydney City Council in recognition of her voluntary service to people in the city of Sydney. In the same year in the Queens Birthday Honours List Beverley was appointed AM a member of the General Division of the Order of Australia. Not long afterwards the Rotary Club of Sydney awarded her a Paul Harris Fellowship, Rotary’s highest award.
In all of this she was a busy wife and mother. Each of the children got married and grandchildren began arriving and she saw her role increasingly as being mother, not only to her family, but also to the many hundreds of people within the life of Wesley Mission. As an active Elder of the church she is busy caring and counselling people in the life of the worshipping congregations.
That part of her life has evolved and changed leaving her a very experienced public speaker and mature leader. One aspect of Beverley’s life and ministry in Sydney has been the exercise of a gift of hospitality. Hundreds of people have appreciated the meals that she has prepared and served in our Roseville home. The dining room table seats 12 so consequently dinner parties always have 12 present. She has cooked and prepared for hundreds of people over the years in these dinner parties. New staff, donors to Wesley Mission, members, visitors to this country have all been welcomed as guests to our table. She has also presided at meals or functions in which more than a dozen Governors General, Prime Ministers, Premiers and their wives have been present, as well as visiting dignitaries from overseas such as Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York. In turn Beverley has been a guest at many functions for distinguished and royal visitors. She has had conversations with the Queen and Prince Philip and other members of the Royal family.
In all of this Beverley remains a very humble person, loving her garden, always growing flowers and giving them to other people or a carton of eggs from our chooks or a parcel of vegetables from her extensive vegetable garden. But Beverley is never happier than when fulfilling her role as an Elder within Wesley Mission congregations; visiting the sick, leading the home Bible study group and home prayer group, welcoming visitors and caring for those who sit in the pews. Her gifts and talents in ministry did not come naturally; they have been acquired by hard work, careful preparation and a willingness to be uncomfortable as she tackles something new.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.