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Soon after the Moyes began work in Ararat they learned that the Methodist minister had arrived there about the same time as they did. The Salvation Army Captain had been in town twelve months already so he was an old hand and the two ministerial newcomers relied heavily on him for wisdom and advice. The Anglican vicar had been in the community for twenty-four years but he took very little part in the life of the town.

Gordon and Beverley did not know whether to laugh or cry when they realized the dreadful truth. Despite their faith and prayers the ship had actually sailed without them. Now what were they going to do?

Despite the heavy duties as Probation Officer, and all the responsibility and work connected with two churches and their on-going programmes, the Moyes’ last few years of ministry in North Melbourne were sweet with the taste of success.

As he went from house to house, becoming acquainted with the people in Ascot Vale and Newmarket, Gordon found that most of the men in the area worked at one of the nearby industries—the abattoirs, the tannery or the boiling-down works. He also learned that nearly of them had ‘done time.’

Gordon saw many changes during the almost eight years he served the Newmarket and Ascot Vale churches in North Melbourne. The narrow, single-storey slum houses gradually gave place to new 30 storey concrete buildings which eventually housed more than four thousand people.

During Gordon’s childhood the east Melbourne railway line ended just beyond Box Hill. Trees dotted the landscape and cows grazed in the lush paddocks. People lived in separate houses with fenced frontlawns and backyard vegetable gardens. At weekends neighbours chatted over the back fence and children played ball games in the quiet streets.

Despite the misgivings of certain friends and relatives Gordon’s determination strengthened. In February 1957, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he lined up with a dozen other newcomers at the Federal College of the Bible in Glen Iris, an outer suburb of Melbourne.

In his fifth year at high school Gordon and Ziggy discovered philosophy and spent hours discussing the merits of Marxism and Socialism and many other ‘isms.’ They deplored the corrupt practices of Capitalism and the blatant hypocrisy of a Democracy that ignored the plight of the poor.

Gordon Keith MacKenzie Moyes carries the surnames of all four of his grandparents. He was born in Box Hill on the 17th of November, 1938, but according to him, his life did not really begin until after his alcoholic father died in 1947.

As soon as Gordon decided to become a Churches of Christ minister he began gaining experience by volunteering to speak at youth camps and any other suitable church activity.