A Town Like Alice

by The Rt. Rev. John S. Spong

In the heart of Australia lies the town of Alice Springs. It is an unusual community, remote, surrounded by the bush of Australia's interior and separated from any other town or city by more than a thousand miles. It is four hours by air from Perth, three hours by air from Darwin and twenty-two hours by train from Adelaide.

Alice Springs, however, has a rather romantic reputation and has been immortalized in a popular novel in the fifties by Neville Shute entitled A Town Like Alice. My wife and I passed through Alice Springs twice on my sabbatical leave last fall, coming once from Perth and once from Darwin. It is an amazing sight to approach this town by air. It is so vulnerably alone, so isolated, so bounded by miles of nothingness, that one is drawn to it immediately. On our second visit we stayed four days. It was a remarkable a visit .

First we were met at the airport by the Anglican vicar who turned out to be among the most unusual and gifted clergy persons I have ever known. His name was Gerald Beaumont. His wife, Lynn, was a medical doctor. They had been in that community for only three years. He was a man in his fifties, quietly competent, incredibly sensitive pastorally and possessing enormous leadership skills. In a short time he had emerged as a leader in the entire community. His advice was sought in every area of the town's life. Politicians, business leaders and his fellow clergy of every tradition viewed him with great respect. But so did those who might be called the little people of the community - the baggage handlers at the train station, the clerks in the grocery store, the children he would pass on the streets.

I delivered a lecture at his church. The town clearly turned out for this event. The lecture hall was packed. The clergy from every church in town were present. The questions and the discussion that followed were engaging. Life stories were shared with me at the social hour which followed. I had the privilege of listening as people willingly invited me into their lives that evening.

Prior to the lecture we were guests at a dinner in the vicarage but we actually arrived with Gerald just about the same time that the guests arrived. It proved to be no problem, for dinner just appeared. One family had cooked and brought the entire meal of salad, a roast, vegetables, potatoes, rolls, gravy and dessert. The guests were not necessarily church people, but educators and business leaders. They had lived in various places such as Rhodesia when it still bore that name and the isle of Crete. Coming to Alice Springs they had been quickly incorporated into the community's life, which is the nature of an isolated place. Gerald was, it seemed to me, the lynchpin in the development of that quality of this community's life.

Gerald was also an artist, recognized and appreciated. He taught an art class for "those who know they cannot paint," and he helped people in this community to develop new forms of self expression.

The closest thing to Alice Springs that one might have heard of is Ayer's Rock, now called by its aboriginal name, Uluru. It is by car about a five to six hour drive from Alice, as far away as Richmond is from Newark. Gerald agreed to take us to this spectacular site. It would be a two day trip and once again, it revealed some of the remarkable characteristics of this priest and pastor, as well as his intense love for this part of Australia. His preparations were themselves impressive. The car was checked and filled with
gas. He packed a lunch for us which included a bottle of Australia's best Chardonnay. These steps were necessary because there are no restaurants in the Australian bush and very few gas stations. Along the way Gerald interpreted the land to us and stopped at sites that would be of interest. One was a crater formed at some time in the distant past by a meteor, but it is so much like the surface of the moon that American astronauts had gone there to train for both their moon landing and their moon walk. Across this lonely highway would scurry some of Australia's wildlife. The roads were very safe in this part of Australia for cars are few and far between. These creatures were never in harm's way for the drivers viewed them as national resources and willingly shared the roads with them. We stopped on one occasion to examine up close a blue-tongued lizard that was in the middle of the highway. Gerald explained the habits and characteristics of this creature to us in detail as he held it in his hand. Then he gave us a book that he had in his glove compartment that gave us even more background about blue-tongued lizards. Gerald placed the creature in the bush beyond the road and we were off again.

About three hours out of Alice in the middle of this remote area there was a truck stop. It offered gasoline and oil, repair services and short order food with a couple of motel rooms, though why anyone would spend the night in such a place escaped me. Though we did not need gas we stopped. Gerald's purpose was simply to speak to two women who worked in the grill and who lived in an apartment attached to the short-order cafe. One of these women was an Australian, one was English. This was a lesbian couple we learned, the older of whom was living with a cancer diagnosis. Gerald had met her in the hospital a year or so earlier and they had become fast friends. He even knew their work schedule and thus that they would be off the next day when we were to be passing through on our return to Alice Springs. They invited us to stop for tea and we agreed to do so. Then on we drove.

When we finally arrived at Uluru we checked into a motel owned and run by The Uluru Foundation that cared for this natural wonder the world knows as Ayer's Rock. Chris and I walked to a lookout to watch the sun go down in this magnificent desert setting. Gerald went off to one of the few private homes in that area where he had a standing invitation to stay in a house occupied by a young couple and their five-year- old son. The guest room was known as Gerald's room. This family had invited us for dinner. The five- year-old son spent all his time with Gerald who was clearly his special friend. The couple not only fed us magnificently, but they also talked about their lives, their jobs, their values and their marriage so openly that it was obvious that they knew and trusted Gerald very deeply.

Returning to our room we turned on the television to discover a program I had recorded a week or so earlier from Darwin. It was a three-way debate pitting me against an Anglican evangelical bishop from Sydney who had decided to accuse me of being a gnostic. That amused me since I wondered how many in the Australian national audience would have any idea what that meant. I was not offended. He was so clearly not in touch with contemporary biblical scholarship. My other opponent was a Roman Catholic priest who talked constantly about things that were not being discussed. When the hour-long program was over, I turned to Chris to ask her what she thought of it. She was sound asleep. That told me all I needed to know. It was not long before I too was in that blissful state.

We rose early to see the sunrise. It was about as exquisite as the sunset. After breakfast we began our tour of Uluru. Some tourist spots are oversold in the publicity. Ayer's Rock is far more than publicity hype can ever capture. This enormous outcropping of rock was a holy place for the aboriginal people. It is easy to understand why. It is stunning, massive, mysterious and eerie. People still climb it, though the aboriginal people who now administer it request that it not be climbed since it is to them holy ground. That holiness was obvious to me. We walked into its caves, looked at aboriginal art on its walls, tried to imagine this magnificent rock in a rain storm. We viewed tiny crevices in this multi-acre size structure where over
the years dust gathered to form sufficient earth to nurture plant life. The bias toward life in this universe became obvious. Not far from the Rock are other massive rocks known as The Olgas. There we walked into the Valley of the Wind where trapped between these giant rocks the wind whistles with an incredible fury. In every part of this journey I had the sense that God was revealed in this place in the wonder of creation. But this awesome morning passed quickly and after lunch we began our long ride home.

Tea at the truck stop with the lesbian couple broke the journey. It was very English with smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches and delicious "biscuits" as the English call cookies. What was most impressive, however, was the depth of knowledge that Gerald had about these two women who lived in the middle of nowhere. How affirming he was of their life together and their love and how deeply they trusted him. The visit was, I am sure, the high point of their week. Theirs is a lonely isolated life. I was glad they had each other.

We returned to Alice for our final day. I had an appointment to be interviewed by the Alice Springs press. I also had a chance to meet and talk with the one who cooked the dinner for our first night in town. She was both lovely and fascinating, married and the mother of three bright children. She loved Alice Springs and was deeply touched by Gerald Beaumont. The next morning we packed and went to the train station to take the Ghan (the train named for the Afghans who with their camels had provided transportation for supplies in an earlier time) to Adelaide. We bade Gerald Beaumont farewell. As he left us we watched him speak to almost everyone in the train station. We may never see him again.

But we will never forget him. He was the living incarnation of what an effective priest and pastor is called to be. He was a teacher and scholar of significant proportions. He was theologically open and pastorally sensitive. He loved his ministry, his town, his country and the people he felt privileged to serve. He gave himself to them in remarkable ways and they loved and trusted him in a manner I have seldom seen. He served his Lord by serving his people. That is the essence of Christian ministry. I found it in the central Australian town called Alice Springs. Knowing Gerald Beaumont was worth the entire trip.

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