THE Marra Creek district of north-west NSW has long been associated with the breeding of Merino sheep, but its “shepherds” have long had human as well as ovine roles.
A tiny bush church located on the creek’s blacksoil banks near well-known Lemon Grove Station was among the first in NSW to be ministered by the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd.
The Brotherhood was founded in Dubbo in 1904 and for about 80 years a network of peripatetic “Bush Brothers” delivered Anglican services to isolated outback communities.
Built in 1912 from local pine and consecrated the following year by Bishop Long from Bathurst, the Anglican Church of St Mary the Virgin this year celebrates a century of outback worship.
And next Sunday at 11am, worshippers past and present will gather at the Marra to join Bishop Richard Hurford from Bathurst as he conducts the historic centenary service.
It will be a memorable day for members of the tiny church’s faithful flock, not least for local grazier Jim Marr, “Illabunda”, who has been church warden for a remarkable 51 years.
Jim, who is also a licensed lay minister, came to the district in 1951 and took over the warden’s duties 10 years later from Norman and Molly Gaul.
He is one of a core of locals – another being (Mrs) Lee Thornton, “Lemon Grove”, who does the flowers – committed to the care and ongoing operation of their precious bush church.
It is, after all, a long way to the next one: the church is situated in sparsely-settled station country roughly equidistant from Brewarrina, Nyngan, Coonamble and Walgett.
Services are conducted monthly, usually by the Reverend Jeff Tym from Coonamble, whose St Barnabas Parish takes in five outlying locations, all serviced on a rotating roster.
Congregations at Marra Creek services usually average a dozen or so worshippers, although Christmas and Easter services see numbers swell to more than 50 (on one occasion, 97).
Reverend Tym is one of eight widely-scattered ministers – variously full-time and part-time, ordained and lay – who now form the Company of the Good Shepherd, formed in 2002 to take up the work previously performed by its Brotherhood namesake.
Like the Bush Brothers before them, the Companions are of the “high-church” faction, which means their services preserve a degree of formality and ceremony now missing from much of the Anglican ministry.
The church sits on a dedicated one acre block, flanked by rows of gravestones in family groupings bearing the names of local property owners, past and present.
Among the names well represented are Thornton (of “Lemon Grove”), Green (of “Mundadoo”), Johnstone, Nott, Lamph and Simpson.
According to Jim Marr, many of the local properties (including his own) originated in the 1880s with the break-up of the originally vast Buckiinguy Station.
Among the Green graves is that of Albert Green, who was buried in 1976 at the ripe old age of 96 – that was the same Albert Green who, as a young man, rode to Coolabah railway station with spare horses to escort Bishop Long to the church’s consecration in 1913.
Bishop Hurford won’t be travelling by train to Coolabah on his visit next Sunday – the line closed 23 years ago.
