Marjorie Jackson
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.
Most of the famous people that we have come to know and appreciate during our ministry at Wesley Mission has been because of my position of Superintendent. But one wonderful woman came into our lives because of the significance of my wife Beverley. Our friendship developed with these women because of Beverley’s accomplishments.
The Olympic Games helped countries overcome the depressing aspects of World War 2. The Games held in London in 1948 and in Helsinki in 1952 were instrumental in helping recover national spirit after the austerity of the War. In Australia, we needed something to give us fresh hope. One woman more than any did that. Marjorie was a young sprinter from Lithgow in the Blue Mountains.
Marjorie Jackson should have been in the 1948 London Olympics. It was her great dream to represent Australia. She had lived and trained on that dream. But the dream was broken. Although she won every 100-yard event in inter-club meets, the NSW Championships would determine who would be selected for the Olympics. She was the favourite with the fastest times. Braced on her mark for the starters pistol, she sensed a flurry of movement from the other girls, and thinking someone had broken and beaten the gun, sat on her haunches waiting for them to be recalled. It never came. She remained utterly alone on the blocks. All appeals were rejected. The first three went to the Olympics. Marjorie stayed at home.
She returned to training in Lithgow. Then it was announced the famous winner for four gold medals in London, Fanny Blankers-Koen would tour Australia, much to the delight of all the Dutch post-war immigrants. Everyone believed that Fanny was the fastest woman in the world. This was proved by her four gold medals. She was to compete in three races in Sydney. In the first race, Marjorie beat Fanny in a time that was a yard faster than Fanny’s Gold Medal Olympic performance.
Then in the second race held a few days later, officials asked Marjorie to withdraw stating there was a huge Dutch crowd present who had come to see their heroine win. It was to be “Fanny’s night”. Marjorie’s coach furiously opposed her withdrawal. The officials changed their minds and allowed Marjorie to run. But Fanny Blankers-Koen picked up her starting blocks and withdrew. Marjorie ran and won easily. The third race was the following Saturday. A huge crowd assembled. Both women started quickly. At the 75-yard mark Marjorie looked to the side and Fanny was just behind her. Marjorie put everything into the remaining 25 yards and won. It was a new national record and faster than the Olympic record that Fanny had set in the London Games. But there was consternation. Fanny had actually stopped before the tape and claimed she had put her foot in a pothole and twisted her ankle. Sceptical newsmen examined every inch of the course and could not find any indentation whatever. There was no possible doubt: Marjorie Jackson was the world’s fastest woman.
Shortly afterwards Marjorie ran in the Empire Games winning four gold medals and setting two new world records. She was a true amateur. She could not afford running spikes. The pair she was given were second hand, but she stuffed the toes with tissue paper. The people of Lithgow, as she trained for the 1952 Helsinki Games built her a cinders track for training, but they couldn’t afford any lighting. She trained after work in the pitch black and cold and fog that enshrouds mountainous Lithgow. A car would station itself at the end of the track and turn on its headlights and she would run towards them. For six nights a week she trained by car-headlights.
Athletes had to raise money for the fares themselves by conducting raffles, and baking cakes. The Australian Olympic Committee had only enough money to send 35 athletes including two women runners and three swimmers, which meant they could not compete in the relays. To raise money to send two more women, Marjorie worked each week at the Wentworth Greyhound Track, grooming greyhounds. Other athletes conducted raffles and parents even mortgaged their houses. Eventually 10 women went.
Marjorie was the fastest woman in the world. In the 200 metres she set a world record that lasted 17 years. Marjorie had run twelve yards faster than her previous best. In the 100 metres, she became the first Australian woman to win an Olympic Gold medal in a track event. But she won by a greater margin than ever in history. In fact, this was referred to in the Sydney Olympics 2000, when Marion Jones won far in front of all other competitors. It was announced that her winning margin was the greatest, with the exception of Marjorie Jackson’s winning margin in 1952. In Lithgow, after her win, the whole town came out to celebrate and they chose to do it with noise. Every single person was to make as much noise as possible. The police and fire sirens wailed, the small arms factory blew its whistle, church bells rang, children banged pot lids and cymbals, and people blew whistles in pride. The Lithgow Flash was the fastest. Then came the 200 metres women’s relay. The four Australian women were among the six fastest in the world and Jackson was the fastest. But something happened in that relay.
As a young athlete I saw the film of this relay until I knew it by heart. The four Australian women won their heat and semi-finals so easily. They set a new world record not even running flat out. In the final, the first two runners set a blistering pace. They were ahead of everyone and the world record. The third runner, Winsome Cripps was far in front when she passed the baton onto Marjorie Jackson. It was a clean pass and Marjorie held it firm. But the lanes were narrow and as Marjorie took off to the finish line, her right arm flew back with the baton and caught Winsome’s knee knocking the baton into the air. The dream dissolved into a nightmare.
Despite this, Marjorie can look back with pride. She had dreamed about representing her country, winning Olympic Gold, and setting world records. She achieved every part of this dream. She was never beaten in international competition over five years. Marjorie married her boyfriend, Peter Nelson who was an Olympic cyclist. She retired at the early age of 22 years. Peter died not long afterwards of leukaemia. Since then, Marjorie has raised more than a million dollars for the Leukaemia Foundation in memory of Peter. She never remarried. She became a friend of ours when my wife, Beverley, was elected by the Australian Bicentennial Foundation in 1988, as one of Australia’s ten outstanding women, and Marjorie was also in the final selection.
The programme of the Australian Bicentennial Authority was really a wonderful one. They called for nominations for Australia’s most outstanding women in every part of the nation, and 1200 women were nominated for their outstanding permanent achievement to Australian society. The aim of the Bicentennial year was to recognise the achievements of Australian women and to give public recognition of women who have a high personal quality that has been translated to significant achievement in their personal and community lives.
As I said over 1200 significant women were nominated including Sallyanne Atkinson then the Lord Mayor of Brisbane; General Eva Burrows, then the world leader of the Salvation Army; Joan Carden, Opera Singer; Nancy Kato, author; June Dally-Watkins, famous model; Caroline Jones, media presenter; Eileen Joyce, the great international pianist; Dame Leonie Kramer, the university professor just elected Chancellor of Sydney University; Senator Jean Melzer of Victoria; the athletes Shirley Strickland and Marjorie Jackson; Margaret Noffsof the Wayside Chapel, Nancy Bird-Walton the famous aviatrix, Professor Di Yerbury – Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University and so many others. Every famous woman in Australia was on the nomination list
My wife Beverley had been nominated by some men on our Church Board. The requirements were that the Australian Bicentennial Authority were looking for “Australian women who have consistently shown such qualities as courage, tenacity, leadership, compassion, humanity, determination, and creativity in the work in which they were involved.”
Beverley was told she had been a chosen among 20 such women to be the final representatives from NSW.
She and I were invited to fly to Melbourne to a special dinner of honour to be attended by hundreds of people in the Melbourne Hilton.
For many years Beverley has not only been a tremendous support to me in my ministry, but she has developed a remarkable ministry of her own. For years she was involved in many levels of community service, in youth leadership, running girls clubs, teaching scripture in State schools, Sunday School and teenage youth camps, providing extensive care for transients and derelicts who called at our home for meals and a counselling ministry for troubled women in our congregation. She took into our home people who needed special nursing ranging from an aged sick lady to a young drug addict still on drugs.
At Wesley Mission she led in a programme of providing clothing, teaching aids and hygiene facilities for more than 30 young Vietnam orphans from 1979 to 1984. Beverley conceived the idea of ‘Viet Kits’ and more than a thousand people responded to her appeal by filling one of the plastic bags she designed especially for the educational, hygiene or personal clothing of one boy. She became mother to those 30 young Vietnam orphans who had seen their parents killed, their fathers shot and mothers raped. All 30 arrived on a refugee boat one day in 1979 and Beverley and I undertook to provide everyone accommodation, clothing, furniture, schooling, and act as surrogate parents. We kept the boys together and over the next five years had an incredible extended family of thirty to add to our four kids and ourselves. Every one of those boys completed high school education and all but two went on to university. Of the two that didn’t, one opened his own restaurant and the other an automotive repair shop.
For 17 years Beverley was president of Wesley Mission’s Spring Fair and with a tremendous team of helpers raised more than $3.5 Million for the work of the homeless and poor.
At the Melbourne Hilton, there were more than 500 of Australia’s outstanding women. There were ten chosen as the outstanding achievers in Australia. There was Dr Patricia Brennen, doctor, missionary, reformer, leader of the movement to ordain women priests in the Anglican Church; Dr Helen Caldicot, medical doctor and leader of the powerful US group Doctors for Social Responsibility and well known anti-nuclear campaigner; there was Kay Cottee the solo yachtswoman who was the first woman to solo circum navigate the world in a sailing vessel; there was Dr Joselyn Scutt Australia’s most academically qualified lawyer including four masters degrees in two different fields and her doctorate was done in the work of rape and prostitution and non-sexist law. There was Christine Milne a remarkable member of the Tasmanian Parliament. There was Marjorie Silver Weiss, the founder of Australia’s Flying Nurses Service which pre-dated even the Royal Flying Doctor Service and who has given a long life time of serving the Far West Children’s Hospital Scheme and outback nursing. Joan Winch, outback health worker of Western Australia, who was named the Aboriginal of the year, 1987. Among these top ten was Beverley Moyes, for a life time of support to people in need, using her own home and organizing church women in raising millions of dollars for charity, the most successful in Australian history, using traditional women’s methods of crafts, cooking, concerts and the like.
The judges said of Beverley, “She rarely receives recognition for her extraordinary community service. This modest self-effacing woman is truly typical of Australia’s quiet achievers.” For us as a family, it was not new that wife and mother should be elected as one of the ten most significant women in Australia. We all knew she deserved this honour.
Beverley stood before those 500 outstanding Australian women being chosen in the top ten. It was such an honour but more was to come. Beverley was asked to speak on behalf of all of the women of Australia. Hers was the only speech given by the ten award winners.
Beverley acknowledged her faith in God and what a privilege it was to help those people who can’t help themselves. She thanked church members and others who motivated and inspired her and indicated that she wanted to go on helping others in the community as long as she was able. It was a beautiful speech and strongly applauded by the ten fellow awardees and the 500 guests.
The ten top awardees each received a gold, ebony and silver broach and $2000 worth of crafts of her own choosing made by outstanding Australian craftswomen. Beverley chose a magnificent quilted wall hanging, which hangs in our house to this day and a hand-crafted leather handbag and some jewellery. At our table was Marjorie Jackson. Marjorie received a special commendation for her work, as not only an all Australian great athlete but for her work in raising more than $1 million for the Leukaemia Foundation. Beverley and Marjorie became close friends because of this meeting. Because of a number of press conferences and media events in which they were both involved they spent some quality time together. We never lost contact with this remarkable lady. Now in her late 60’s, Marjorie still lives in Adelaide.
During the Sydney 2000 Olympic torch relay she ran the leg into her old home city of Lithgow. While there a large bronze statue of her running was unveiled by a proud City Council. No athlete had brought such credit to Lithgow as Marjorie Jackson.
Her achievement in athletics and her work in the community have not gone unnoticed. She has received many other awards honouring her past and present achievements. In 1995 she was made a legend of Australian Sport. During the Olympics 2000, Marjorie gave special commentary on Channel 7’s Olympic coverage worldwide.
During the various controversies prior to the 2000 Olympic Games, when the Organising Committee of the Olympics was under criticism, Marjorie Jackson was elected to the Organising Committee. The athletes had full trust in her capacity and down to earth common sense.
This month Marjorie Jackson was named the new governor of South Australia. A whole new world of serving the community has just opened up for this remarkable Australian athlete and dedicated woman whom we are pleased to call our friend.
The story of Marjorie Jackson, a Godly woman, is a simple one. She had a dream and worked hard to accomplish it. She remains a humble and warm woman.
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.