DAY TWELVE: THURSDAY MARCH 30 DARWIN TO TOWNSVILLE

Stuart McMillan is a total Trojan. He lives at Humpty Doo which is about forty minutes drive from Darwin. He was so keen to spend time hanging out with us and reviewing the time we had together in Darwin that he overruled our protests about him driving the other guys to the airport but got up early enough to pick them up at 4:30 so that we could spend some time at the airport before the plane left. It was a profitable time, too, because we were able to talk about different observations we had had and about some possible future directions for building the church in the city of Darwin. He has this revelation strong and deep in his heart. He is also a long term committed Top Ender (a lot of people come and go from the Top End). We were so impressed by his loving but strong capability that we agreed he would be worth doing anything for in order to support.


The plane left at 6:00 and arrived at Cairns just on 9:00 am. With the half hour time differential that made it just a two and a half hour flight. There wasn’t as much heavy cloud across the top as I had expected with the cyclonic activity of the week before but by the time we got to the coast we were in some heavy cloud. Cairns missed the damage that Innisfail experienced so it was just wet and not quite as muggy as Darwin. There was about an hour transit time and we were on a packed Dash 8 (thirty eight seat aircraft) for the forty five minute flight to Townsville. Anne Harley (Uniting Church) was there to meet us and we were dumped our bags at the motel and headed down to the Strand. This part of Townsville has been beautifully developed with parks and walkways and restaurants. It looks over the bay to Magnetic Island, about a twenty minute boat ride. I was reminded of a story that Briant Clark told me about a parachute training exercise he had to do in the army when he was here. They were taken up in a Carabou and dropped into the sea. He said he spent the whole ten minutes or more in the water wondering if sharks might or might not be attracted to the colourful material and whether there was a way of using the chute to protect himself if one came around.


Our first engagement was a lunch meeting with the leadership team here in Townsville. Peter Patterson is an AOG pastor who gives leadership to the group who meet to pray each Friday in the two cities of Townsville and Thuringowa. The whole dual city now comprises about 160,000 people and about 70 churches. We had a great time talking with these guys. They have done some terrific stuff together and while they, like everyone, have a long way to go, there is a strong and deepening conviction that the church of Jesus Christ in the city must be built and it must be built as one. They have a great relationship with the two mayors and councils who fund a number of their initiatives. The actual funding is not so much the issue. It is the strength of the relationship and the level of respect they have earned. They had a twenty one day continuous prayer gathering some time ago and saw significant increase as a result. Some time after that there was some feeling that the momentum had been lost. But all in all there was a healthy optimism and a sense of direction. We agreed that of all the places we had been, this level of unity was unsurpassed.


After a long lunch we were taken back to check in to the Motel. Some went for a sleep and I went over to McDonalds to plug in to the internet, answer emails and send off a blog. By the time that was done we were ready to be picked up for the next part of the program. Anne Harley took three of us to an Aboriginal boarding school called Shalom. Aboriginal kids come from all over the top end to this school. It is a great idea and involves a huge amount of work to keep it happening. The kids were terrific. Shy to begin with but warmed up after a while. Anne had planned a band to come to play for worship, but they were late getting there and the sound stuff didn’t work too well. That side of things was a bit of a shamozzle (why does the spell checker not know that word) but in the big picture it didn’t matter at all. It was probably very consistent with what happens in most tribal situations. We get upset about stuff like that, but Aboriginal people don’t fuss about it at all. Anne was getting pretty frustrated….understandably from her point of view. She has a good rapport with these kids and there must have been fifty there altogether and it was totally voluntary attendance. An island girl and a while girl did a spiritual movement thing to one of the songs and did a great job. I was to give the talk, so I told them the story of Jesus and Bartimaeus and did some simulated activity to tell the story and they got involved pretty well. We ended up staying around praying for many of them. The prayer they were wanting was so consistently for their families and Anne was telling us that there is a great challenge because many of these kids have lots of opportunities at the school that never eventuate simply because of the dysfunctional situations with their families in the communities they come from. Not all come from far away. Quite a number are from around Townsville and up and down the coast from here.


We just had time for some take away food on the way to the evening meeting. It was at Peter Patterson’s AOG church. They bought what was a supermarket near the beach area of Townsville, just north of the main city area. It is a good setup. There were only twenty or so people there and we shared some of our city church stuff and some experiences from around the nation. A good discussion followed. There are a core of people here who have this vision and they were encouraged. I think the leaders have a clearer idea of where to go from here because of things that they heard about and that came up in the context of the meeting.
Anne generously asked us if we wanted to go for coffee after the meeting, but four tired old voices sounded a grateful but negative response. We were, to put it in colloquial language, “totally knackered.” Add to that the growing sense that I tend to get at this point of a time away from Canberra, of wanting very much to get on a plane and get home….and you can tell why I just came to the motel and crashed.