2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Jim Page is on his way to Copley. Snaking along the rails through the generous valleys ofSouth Australia’s mid-north until the land levels into plains lapping against mountain ranges,Jim relaxes to the easy ter-tunck! of the trains rhythm, sorting through the events of thejourney.At Peterborough he had broken his journey to receive donations from the good folk whosupported the UAM there. Bundles and bundles of clothes: such a mixed blessing, and suchunwieldy baggage for the trip ahead.He had crossed the plains of broken promises – the blanched Willochra plain where theloading ramps at the station at Bruce still reflected its glory days as a wheat bowl forty yearsbefore. Then the familiar spreading skirts of Quorn, where he spent the night with MatronHyde and Sister Rutter at the UAM’s Colebrook Home for the children they had ‘rescued’from further north. The sisters had urged him to write of miracles in the lives of their twentyfivechildren for The UAM Messenger; but he could not help but notice Gilpin, the thirteenyear old boy tubercular and sweating alone in a cot by the kitchen alcove. 123 The twelvehundred pounds Matron Hyde prayed for God to provide to improve their shabby buildingswould not save him, if it ever came at all. 124Colebrook Home, Quorn, 2003‘But life’s like that…’ Clara Brady stood in the close cream kitchen of Colebrook Home, herjaw as firm as ever and her gaze direct as she told a group of school teachers the lessons ofher life growing up there. I watched from the edge of the group clustered in the old kitchen,supervising my toddler playing outside at the same time. Clara threw me a smile every sooften, from one Christian to another.75