GordonMoyes.com

We are all conscious of the personal cost to so many of our farmers of the continuing drought. Although many parts of our state have received some rain, one area in particular is in desperate need of water. This week’s TIME Magazine features a story by Daniel Williams entitled “THE BIG DRY – a savage drought has hit Australian grain growers hard. Some won’t survive.” He writes “The driest continent on earth is in the grip of the worst drought in its recorded history. Beginning in 2002 and spanning, at times, the breadth of the country, the dry spell has pushed farmers to the limits of their ingenuity and patience. Some have cracked. In this hot land, the suicide rate in rural areas is 20% higher than in the cities.

Many people, including journalists, believing what they read in the papers, see all the conflict being created in many areas of the world – Sudan, Middle East, Indonesia and the Philippines – and assume that Islam is becoming triumphant. They are pessimistic about the future of Christianity because some Christians constantly harp on Muslim aggressiveness and persecution in some areas and terrorism in others.

Recently, Beverley and I spent a delightful weekend in Ulverstone, Tasmania. It was a few years since we were last there, and over thirty years since I spent a great deal of time conducting evangelistic missions in every one of the Churches of Christ churches in that state. Now every one of the score or more churches came together for their annual State Conference, ministers meeting and also to celebrate the centenary of the lovely, fairly new Church at Ulverstone. Not far away in Devonport is a historic house where once I stayed in most unusual circumstances.

On one of the walls of our home, where Beverley does her sewing and ironing, hangs a magnificent wall hanging made by one of Australia’s top artists. It is easy to see that this is a professionally made and expensive piece of art. It did not cost us a cent. Beverley has been my girlfriend since she and I were both thirteen. She is my wife, the mother of our children and my partner in full time ministry for fifty years.

There is a ledge round the windows of my study with bookshelves underneath. On the wide ledge are various mementoes of fifty years of ministry and travels. There is some scrimshaw, a carved whale’s tooth depicting a whale being harpooned from a sailing vessel in 1840, given to me when I had an evangelistic mission near the old whaling station in Esperance in Western Australia. There is a decorated aboriginal flint knife and other artifacts given to me by indigenous people following ministry among them.

The anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli every year challenges us all. The stories of that event, together with the various myths and legends that grew up in the youth of nationhood have meant that Australians have a special place in their hearts for that Turkish Peninsula.

As my wife and I have planned our garden over the past twenty years, we have developed a number of “rooms” or vistas, which greet the eye as you walk about the garden. Because we spend only what we have, there is much more to be done, but setting up a garden is a task that takes decades and the pleasure is in doing it, not just enjoying it when all is finished. One of my favourites is the view as you walk down the Santa Scala.

I was named after the four surnames of my four grandparents, all descended from Scottish clans. My first Christian name, Gordon, was to honour my maternal grandfather Robert James Gordon. He was the son and grandson of Scots shepherds who lived and worked in the area of Donnybrook north of Melbourne. A local cemetery there marks the burial site of scores of my ancestors. I have guessed that the early arrivals in Victoria from Scotland came about as a result of the shameful enclosures in the highlands.

One man’s pet is another man’s pest. I have known people to keep pet snakes, but in another context snakes are feared. Spiders can be both pets and pests. So are pit bull terriers, rats and cats. It is all in the eye of the beholder. A pest is an organism that is unwanted. So an animal may be a pest in one setting but a pet in another. At different times, ants, spiders, fleas, cockroaches and mosquitoes have also made the top of the list of pests but quick action and they are eradicated. These will always be pests.

The latest drought figures just released say that 40% of New South Wales is still in drought, 16% is marginal and 44% is satisfactory. Most people live in the satisfactory areas and so we tend to forget those over the Great Dividing Range, in the far west of the state, and those in the irrigation areas of the Darling Murray and the Murrumbidgee.