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They say that one generation passes and another generation takes its place. And I suppose that's the way it is in life, as we look back over the years, we realize that this generation of mine is very near to the end.

I've been asked to speak a little bit about my experiences in life — perhaps this might be of interest to some in years to come. I was brought up in a home in Chatsworth [Queensland, Australia], near Gympie, and my parents were not what I would call really religious, but they used to go to various services that were held in the hall or in the church nearby— sometimes Baptist, sometimes Church of England. Mum was brought up Presbyterian, Dad was Church of England. But anyway, when two men came one time in 1920, Gus Hornybrook and Nestor Ferguson, they wanted a place to have Meetings.

They had a tent, and they came and asked my Dad if he would let them put their tent up on our property. Of course Dad was quite willing for them to do that, and that's the way it happened that they heard the Gospel. Dad, at that time was quite energetic and doing public affairs and so on, he was very interested in showing. He used to have one farm, and district exhibits in the Brisbane Show, and it was during that time that the Mission was held, that Dad had to go to Brisbane for the Show. He and my older sister Doris went down for two weeks. Nestor helped them milk at home while they were away.

Mum always said that the first Meeting she went into was one that convinced her that this is what she wanted. So she and my sister Hilda, (while Doris and Dad were away,) more or less came to the conclusion that they were going to decide, and Hilda wrote to my sister to the effect. But Doris wrote back that she shouldn't be so foolish. Anyway, Doris and Dad came back, and they also, with Mum and Hilda, professed, so the four of them made their decision.

At the first, the whole district turned up, and they soon dwindled one by one until there was only Dad and our family, and I think there were one or two other families that came to the finish but they never made any move.

I was 6 years old at the time, so of course I can't remember too much about what took place, but I do remember they sang hymns quite often. "It was for me, for me alone, the Saviour left His glorious throne," and "Sound the Gospel of grace abroad." I was concerned, I suppose very soon in my early years, and was convinced in my mind that when I was old enough, I would be willing to serve the Lord, but there was one thing that kind of stuck in my mind, and that was the fact that when I was old enough, that I would have to go and preach the Gospel.

So when I did decide, this thought still in my mind, it didn't please me very well. I  had other things in view.  I was quite active on the farm, and it was something that I enjoyed very much. But anyway, as time went on, I felt that there was one thing that I couldn't get away from, and I had to go in the Work. We had bought another farm in the meantime and that had to be paid for during the depression years. I kind of prayed that the Lord would help us to pay that farm off and then I would be willing to go in the Work. And that's what happened.

I had just turned 22 years of age. I wrote to the Workers and told them that I would be willing to go in the Work. I got word back from them to say that there were two others ahead of me and that I would have to wait. Well that was in July. In August, about the end, I was milking and Mum come up from the house and said that Doug McKinney rang up wanting to speak to me. I had to ring him that night. The reason that he rang was that he wanted me to get to Brisbane as soon as I could. That was on a Friday night and on Monday we picked beans all day and packed them on Monday night. Tuesday morning I got ready and went to town and caught the train just after midday to Brisbane.

Got down there on Tuesday night and Doug met me at the station. He took me out to where the tent was, and we pulled the tent down next day and then shifted over to the corner of Edinborough Castle Road and Shaw Road, and that's where we had the Mission then.

The first meeting we had 26 strangers in. You wouldn't get that very often these days. But anyway, out of that 26, there was only one family, that was the Hackshall family, Mr. & Mrs. Hackshall, and Owen and Jean, the eldest two, professed. Others of the family professed afterwards. So we were only there for six weeks, and we shifted down to Julia Street in Nundah also and put up a tent there.

There was a woman came, a Mrs. Butcher, and she professed too, but she didn't go on very long. And then we came on to Special Meetings, and I went back up to Gympie and Wondai and Palmwoods for Special Meetings. And then went back to Brisbane and had some Meetings under the Bickmore home at Gaythome, and that was just before Preparations, there was no one interested there. So then Doug and I went out to Rochedale for the Preparations.

It was a very dry time, that summer. Hot, and dry too. We were glad to see rain later on, but it was a very heavy rain—it was a cyclone. It rained for three days and never stopped. That was the time when the Stinson bomber plane went down up on the Tablelands. There were seven people killed, two others survived. One of the seven fell down a cliff and perished.

Then during that Convention, Nestor Ferguson came from West Australia, and he asked Tom if  I could go to the West. Tom came to me and talked about it and so I readily agreed to go to the West. When I left home first, I thought, well I'd preach the Gospel in Queensland, but I didn't seem to think too much about going anywhere else.  I had heard a whisper that Nestor wanted someone and I prayed it would be me. So when Tom asked me to go to West Australia, by that time my mind had changed, and I was very ready to go.

So straight after Conventions, Nestor and I went back to the West. In those days it was a weeks' trip on the train. And we landed at a place called Meniden, it was up in the wheat belt, and we stayed the night there with Fred Gibbons and his wife. Fred's wife died that same year. And then we went down to Bruce Rock and Narembeen and saw the friends in those areas and then onto Perth the next day. Got down to Canea and we went into Burgess' at Basendean for the Meeting.

We picked up Albert Salmoni at Narembeen and he went down with us, so Albert and I went into Burgess Meeting on that Wednesday night, and Nestor stayed out at Canea Convention grounds. Next day we went into town, and when Albert got into town he found out that he had left something behind that he wanted. So he asked me to go back and get it and then meet him in town afterwards.

Of course, I was new to the place, and I was a bit scared of going right back out and then finding him in Perth afterwards, but anyway I managed alright and met up with him. So then he and I had some Meetings in Perth for a little while. Eric Godfrey from New South Wales was to come and join me but he hadn't arrived yet. So Albert and I had Meetings in Mr. Taylor's home at Mount Lawley and we had two lads that came there, and that was Stephen Gregory and Jimmy Ward. Jim professed but Stephen didn't, and it was told me afterwards that Stephen said that he wanted to enjoy the world for a few years and then he would do something about it afterwards. Well, he only had three years—one night going home on his motorbike he was killed. So he never had a chance to serve the Lord at all. That's the way it is with so many, and they are careless about life and indifferent to what they should be doing in serving the Lord, and then it was too late.

So then on the 28th May, which was my birthday, Eric Godfrey and I went up with Nestor and Albert to Geraldton in the car—an old Dodge car we went in. It overheated too,  going up, but anyway it was very hot at the time and dry. Dry everywhere. Something that I hadn't been used to was, seeing barren dirt, just dirt and dry weather. Of course, everything had to come from seed after the rains came—different from here in Queensland. Eric and I then went up to Northampton; Albert and Nestor stayed in Geraldton.

There were no friends in Northhampton. The nearest was the Scott family in Geraldton—they were 30 miles away. They did come up and see us once while we were there. We rented an old house and it was pretty run down. Boards off the walls and the floors not very weather proof—plenty of holes in it, but the trouble was we didn't have any beds. There was an old mattress, a spring mattress there in the house, and Eric slept on that with a bag underneath him, and I slept on the floor with two bags underneath me. I had two rugs with me that I had taken from home and a little bit of a cushion, and I also had a fairly heavy overcoat, so between the lot I was able to get some sleep.

After a time, we were able to get some straw from the store and put that in the bags and made sleeping a little bit more comfortable. We visited the place and the first Meeting there was one old lady came, she was about 83 I think, and she never came back any more. The next Sunday a Mr. Henly came, he was a neighbour, and there was still nobody there when the time of the Meeting to start, but I'd spoken to Mrs. Ford the previous week, and she had promised to come then—but when I saw her again afterwards, she said she had gone to sleep in the afternoon and didn't wake up in time, but she said, "I'll be there next week." Well this was the next week and she still wasn't there at Meeting time. But I   looked up the road, and way up in the distance about a mile away I could see her coming. She was walking down the road so we waited for her to come. So just her and Mr. Henly for that Meeting. But that was the beginning of things then.

First her daughter, and then some of her sons, came to Meetings and her son's girlfriend, and the Woodcock family and up to about 17 came eventually, and Mr. Ford. He used to grow tomatoes, and I was not long from the farm so I could talk to him about tomatoes, and eventually he came too. And then there was Fred Morris and Mrs. Chizholm and a few others. Anyway Mr.  Cook was the Methodist preacher there, and he was very suspicious of us, because he had been in Pingelly when the Pearson's professed and he suspected we were the same. Anyway, eventually Mr. & Mrs. Ford and Grace and Fred Morrison and Mrs. Chizholm all professed.

The next week Mr. Cook must have heard something about it. He came to see us, but Eric had just gone out, and I was ready to go myself when he turned up. So he came in and talked and spoke very disparagingly of Eric and myself, and said I was too young to know what I was doing. Anyway, before he left, he said to me, "Now if you tell anybody what I've said here today, look out"!! So I don't know what he meant by that.

But years afterwards I was going up the street in Perth and looked ahead of me, and there he was walking, coming down the street, but he must of seen me because he kept his head turned away til he walked past. I should have tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Gidday, Mr. Cook." But anyway, he told us at that time when he saw me  that there was one home in the district that we wouldn't get back into, and we had just started Meetings a few miles out of town in a school, and the school master was very interested. That was the man, who he said that we wouldn't get back into his home anymore, and when we went out next for the Meeting, true enough, they wouldn't let us in the door. But if he said to them what he said to me that day at the house, well you can understand why they didn't want us. But anyway, he will have to answer for that one day.

That was 1937. I should have said in the first place that it was Sept 1st, 1936, when I went in the Work and April 19th, 1937 when I left for the West. And then, the end of the year we went down to Perth to Preparations. Somebody gave us the loan of a cow, and I used to do the milking, but one day I couldn't catch her and Albert Salmoni came to help me. He caught this cow, but she pulled away from him and dragged him down, and it kind of upset his problem that he had while he was here in Queensland.

Albert [Salmoni] and Walter Schloss came from Queensland three years before me, to the West. So word came about Syd Preshaw then. Syd and Ray Barnes, they were in Kelleberrin, where Ray's father was the Presbyterian parson there, and they wanted to go preaching in the right way. They hadn't found the truth themselves. So this parson chap told them about a family up the top end of the town who had Meetings in their home and so these boys went to see them. And of course, that was the beginning of days for them.

The McClelland's sent word down to Convention to tell us about these boys. So Albert, who wasn't too well, and Jim Gorman who had crook legs and couldn't do much work on the grounds, went up and they had Meetings every day for them for a week, and they professed. Then they came back and the two boys came down to Preparations with them. So that was the beginning of their time in the way of God.

The next year, 1938, Albert Salmoni went with Eric [Godfrey] back up to Northampton. They had Meetings up there where we had been having them before, and others had come at that time. But no one professed that year.

Walter Schloss and myself, went up to a place called Youanmi—it was a gold mining town that was found by two men, and so when they found the mine they called it Youanmi. It had been started before World War I,  and then when World War I started, it was closed down. Then in 1939, just before World War II, it was closed down again. But anyway, we went up there for Meetings, and we had Alice Higgs and Harry Stacy to profess while we were there.

And it was very dry, we had no rain at that time. On the way up we had gone through Paynes Find. It was a little gold mining place too, and we both decided that we would like to go back there and have a Mission, which we did. It was a mostly half cast and pure Aboriginal place, but anyway when we started the Meetings, there was only one or two whites and the rest where half casts, up to about 30 of  them. They came to every Meeting and they listened well, and I think there were round about 12 or 13 professed at that time. They didn't all go on, but there were about 8 or 9 that did continue. Only one of them is left today—that's Mrs. Rose Norton—she's living in America. So the rest have all passed on into Eternity.

So then we came back to Perth before the year was out, and Willie Phyn had come from New Zealand. Nestor Ferguson had left the Work and was married, and Willie Phyn took his place for a little while. So when we came back to Perth, Walter joined Willie, and I  joined Jim Gorman, and we went up to a place called Bruce Rock and had some Meetings there.

We also went out to a place called Ardath. That was just out of town a bit and there were a few people, who came there then too, but there wasn't time really to do much for them—we had to go back for Preparations in Canea. After the Convention, Willie Phyn went back to Egypt and Sam Jones came. Sam came in time for the Convention. He and John Hardie had gone to Ireland, and then they came back. Sam got off there and he took over in the West. That was the only trip that Sam had home to Ireland in all the years he was in Australia. He came out in 1908, and he died in 1946, so he didn't go home very much.

But anyway, Albert Salmoni and I went up to a place called York. Most people have heard of Sam's experience in York when his companion left him—that was in the early days when he first arrived in Australia. Sam got sick and he was living underneath a bridge in York and the gypsies found him there and they fed him and got him back to health again. So Sam always says they saved his life.

When Albert Salmoni and I went up there, Albert hadn't been very well. We had Meetings for a while. Mr. & Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Allen (Mrs. Reynold's mother), professed, then they went up to Northam, about 60 odd miles away.

After they had been up there some time, we decided to go up and see them on the bikes. The night after we came back, Albert vomited quite a bit. He had been to the doctor before, and then he went again, and the doctor told him that the lump in his stomach had doubled its size in about two weeks. So he was sent off to Perth then to get radium treatment. So Sam came up and joined me then for a few weeks. But Sam wasn't very well.

One experience we had there was with a Mr. Thomas. He was a very nice man, kind man, Church of Christ. He used to tell me different things about the Church of Christ that he wasn't happy with, but his wife was and she was a Pharisee. So one day he came over and he asked Sam and I whether we'd go and have a Meeting in his house as Mrs. Westphal had come in and was going to have the evening and stay the night there.

So we went over to have this Meeting after tea, and there was a couch there, not many chairs. Mrs. Westphal and another old lady sat on this couch, and the only place for me was in between them. So this old lady said, "a rose between two thorns." And then Mrs. Thomas said, "a thorn between two roses"! And then she kept on talking and never stopped till we left. So we never had a Meeting. Next day Mr. Thomas came over and said, "You know, I'm known as Mr. Thomas, the husband of Mrs. Thomas."  So she was the boss. Apparently, she didn't want the Meeting. I don't know why she didn't object before he came over to see us, but anyway that's how it was.

I talked to Mrs. Westphal and I asked her if she would come if we had Meetings out at Gwambygine, near her place. She said that perhaps her husband would let her come, but he was not a very nice man, and he objected to her going about, wouldn't let her go to church. We decided we would try Meetings out there, so I went out and visited the place. It was late in the evening, I was tired, and I was wondering whether I'd go home or keep on going but there was a hill, and quite a steep one too, and so I said to myself, "I'll go to the top of this hill and if I can see any houses, I'll go and visit them."

And when I got to the top of the hill, there was a house about four miles away in a paddock a long way up a hill. So I went and found houses along the road and went to this house and knocked at the door and a man came out. I told him who I was and what I wanted. "Oh" he said, "My wife wants to meet you". I said, "I don't think so, I don't know your wife". "Oh yes" he said, "She wants to meet you". So he went and got her and I found out that she was a friend of Mrs. Westphal, and Mrs. Westphal had talked to her about me, so she did really want to meet me. And it turned out that she and her husband were the only two that came to the Meeting. Mrs. Westphal wasn't allowed.

So after a couple of Meetings, I said to Mr. & Mrs. Scott that they were the only ones coming, so what about we have Meetings at your place instead of coming down here to the hall in the cold in the winter time. So she jumped at the chance and she said Mrs. Westphal would be able to come too. And that's what happened. Mrs. Westphal came and so both those two, Mrs. Westphal and Mrs. Scott, professed, but Mr. Scott never decided. Although he was friendly right until his death, he was very friendly, but never ever made it. I called on him once when I was home from Vietnam, Mrs. Scott was then deceased, and he was sitting by the fire, a poor dejected man.

I didn't mention before, which I should have done, that Sam [Jones] only stayed a few weeks and then Syd Preshaw came. He had professed 18 months before that, and I was only a young fellow two years and eight months in the Work when we had that Mission at Mrs. Scott's house. While we were there, the war broke out, and we got to know when we were at Scott's place. So we went down to Beverley, the next place down, and had some Meetings there, but it was war, and war fever was on and the attitude of people against young fellows like us, of course, wasn't so good.

Anyway we did have some along to Meetings but none decided. They were religious folk and self satisfied. While there we had a room in an old hotel, and we asked the man who had control, how much he wanted for the room. And he said, "What would you want to pay?" I said, "Not too much, five shillings a week." And he threw up his arms, but anyway he let us have it for five shillings a week. So that was that. At the end of that year, we went back to Perth and had a few Meetings around Perth before the Preparation time. That was 1939.

1940, Eric [Godfrey] and I went up to the North around Morawa and Pintharooka, etc. We had Meetings in quite a few places up there, but only Harry Arthurell came out of that place. Once we went over to Paynes Find to see the folk there, which was about 100 odd miles from where we were. We went by bike through the bush, and coming back, we ran out of water. We couldn't get any from the wells and the tanks were all dirty--couldn't drink the water, so we had a bit of a rough time for awhile. Finally, we let a wire down with a billy on it down one of the wells and we got some nice water. Then we got a storm, and we had to hurry into an old deserted mine place called Rothsay to get out of the storm. So we stayed there the night and slept on the floor of one of the camps. Then we went back up to Perenjori the next day. We had Meetings in a few places then, and a few people professed but none of them did very well. That was 1940.

In 1940 Doug McKinney had come from Queensland . I had a meter on my bike that year, and in nine months I turned it over to 10,000 miles, and then it stopped. Perhaps that was the most miles I had done in that time.

In 1941, Doug and I went back down to a place called Mt. Kokeby—it's just near Beverley where we had been in 1939. No-one turned up there, so we went out to a place called BallyBally. There were some people coming there, but then somebody reported us from Mt. Kokeby—that we were JWs—and at that time they were not allowed to operate. So the police went out to Mt. Kokeby and found out that we had shifted to BallyBally but they didn't bother coming out to see us. They rang the girl at the exchange and asked if we were there. So of course once she got news that the police were after us, she spread the story around the district, and no others came, although some had been promising.

Frank Goodfield came from a professing home in England, and he came to Australia to get away from the Truth, he was only here 6 months when Maud Kerns gave him an invitation to Meetings, and again later he was invited. But when we met, he was married and had a baby girl and his attitude had changed. He and his wife had been coming to Meetings and Percy Holman and his wife, and they came to the Meeting on Thursday night and told us what was taking place. Percy said he was going into Beverley the next day so Doug said I could go with him.

I went in and saw the policeman in Beverley and found out why they were looking for us. But he said they were satisfied we were not JWs, so they didn't bother enquiring any more. So I told him that he had made it very awkward for us,  and he apologised to me for that. So that put an end to that question. But anyway, after the Mission at BallyBally, when Frank and his wife and Percy and his wife professed, then Doug had to go back to Queensland.

But before that we went up to Bruce Rock to see the Schuberts and others up there. We had about 17 miles ride across to Jacob's Well, (the siding). We had our luggage on our bikes, which was pretty heavy, and my bike started to break spokes, and this was about half a mile from the station, so I had to get off and walk. We just got to the railway line when the train went past. Doug hurried along and asked them to wait for me, which they did. If I had been stranded there, it would have been very difficult because there was no way of getting back with my bike like it was.

So we went on to Bruce Rock and then on the Sunday we came back and had a Meeting for the folk that had professed in BallyBally. Then I went back with the Schuberts, and Eric  [Godfrey] joined me then in Bruce Rock and Doug went back to Queensland.

So Eric and I had Meetings in Bruce Rock for a little while but nothing eventuated. Then we went out to Naranbeen. Ruth Hebberman professed out there. Then we went out to a place called Conigin, and we had a few come to Meetings there too. We had the organ in the tent. We had a little place in a farmhouse we were camping in. Somebody got in one night and they broke up the organ and did a few things which wasn't so good. So we went back down for Preps, that would have been 1941.

In 1942, I was called up in the army. I went through the Conscientious Objector's Court and they gave me civil service. Big headlines in the paper read, "So said Colin Frederick Weston Allen".

Sam and I went down to Greenbushes and Sam got sick— he had quite a lot of sicknesses at that time. So he couldn't do any more as far as the preaching goes, and I looked after him and tried to have Meetings on my own. He was cold and I couldn't get a hot water bag, so I used to get bricks and heat them up and put them in bed with him and kept him warm that way. Then he wanted hot scones, and I had never made scones before in my life. What I made were pretty heavy looking things, but anyway, he ate them. So then I wrote to one of the girls (Sisters) and got information on how to make scones and afterwards, I could do pretty well with them.

Anyway, after a while we shifted over to Balingup, where Alan Prowse and his wife lived. It was more comfortable there for Sam, and I used to work from there—had Meetings in a few places but it was during the war and very hard to get people out. And of course, I was looking after Sam, and sometimes Alan Prowse and his wife were away for weeks at a time, so I had to do the housework and do the preaching and milk a few cows and odds and ends around the place—so I was kept pretty busy during those days.

It was during that time that Sam's sister, Mrs. Guy, died over in Boyupbrook, and I had to go over to the funeral. The car broke down on the way—the funeral was supposed to be at 1 o'clock, and I got out onto the main road at 1 o'clock. I had taken a bush track, a car had picked me up and took me out to the main road, and then I had to walk, and another car picked me up and took me into Boyupbrook. I got there at 2 o'clock instead of 1 o'clock, and they were just taking the coffin out to go to the funeral when I got there.

They had put the funeral off for an hour. That was the first funeral I had taken on my own like that. Then we had to get the old car back to Balingup where I was with Sam. The Graham family from Collie had come to the funeral, and they took me back that night and pulled the car over to Balingup. Then we went out to the farm where Sam was. He didn't know what had happened to me because I left the house at 11 o'clock and it was now 8 o'clock at night. I had to get tea then for 8 people that night, after a pretty exciting sort of a day, so I was glad to get to bed that night.

At the end of that year, Sam was very, very sick so we took him up to Perth and got him into hospital, and I said to the doctor, "If he's any worse let us know." He said, "If he's any worse, he'll be dead." But anyway, he revived and he lived. That was at the end of 1942—and he lived till April 1946, so it was over three years afterwards before he died. After Sam died, then Joe Williamson came and took his place.

Joe was only there for a couple of years and then Walter Schloss came. Walter had gone home to Queensland after Albert [Salmoni] died, and so Walter came back and was there for a few years. He returned to Queensland and was there when Tom Turner died in 1959, but I am not sure the year he went over. Bert Cameron took his place and Clem Geue after Bert died, and Bill McCourt when Clem died.

In 1943, Syd Preshaw and I were together again in Collie, and some young folk decided down there. We also had meetings at Noggerup, Cardiff and Shotts.

In 1944, we went over to Wilga and a few other places, but nothing much happened. Eddie Guy decided. We also had Meetings at Dinninup and Yornup.

In 1945, I came back to Queensland and that was in March.  I had the Conventions and then Tom Beattie and I had Meetings in Ipswich , and Lindsay Schulz and Lorraine Vollbrecht, professed at that time. Tom went back to New South Wales, and I went up to Mackay to be with Doug McKinney—his mate had gone back to South Australia . So we had Meetings up there but nothing happened.

Then I went back to Western Australia, on Dec 7th, 1945. On the way there was a little girl on the train and she had measles. We didn't know the first day when she was running around amongst us - but then when I got to the West, I got measles too, so I knew where I got it from. It was a pretty bad case—my temperature was 44°C for about three or four days, so I got bad bronchitis and I've been affected by that ever since. So then I was in hospital for a week. That was 1945.

In 1946, that's when Sam [Jones] died, and then Syd [Preshaw] and I went back to Collie again and some of the young ones down there, Harry Rowe, Syd and Joe Graham, professed and also Mrs. Edwards and her son and daughter. (Mrs. Edwards was a daughter of Mrs. Ford who professed up at Northampton in 1937.)

So after we finished the Mission there, there was a call that came to go up to Culbun where they have the Convention ground now. Mrs. Emshaw had come to a funeral we had of a Major girl— she was only two years old. After the funeral she went back to her husband and said we've got to do something about our children. And so they saw the friends up there, who came and told us and we went back and had Meetings there for a while, not long. So Mr. & Mrs. Emshaw and Mr. & Mrs. Greeves and a Mrs. Tudor and Tudor King, (Mrs. Tudor was Tudor Kings grandmother) all professed there at that place, so we had quite a good year that year.

We went back to Darkan afterwards—very wet weather and we waded and rode our bikes through the water and had Meetings at Darkan and Dardadine and a few other places, with little interest. A Mrs. Rajanda did profess but she never got away from her old religion. There was no one close enough to have fellowship with. Mrs. Pollard also decided, but her husband got mad and wouldn't let her have anything to do with us. We had Meetings in her parents' home, the Stricklands, but they just treated it as a lovely song. A Mrs. Smyth and her daughter and son-in-law, the Steadys, came with their family. One was a girl of 14 years who showed good interest, but none of the family decided and all remained outside, so that was 1946, and perhaps my best year in the West, and it would have been the wettest year.

1947, Albert Barnes and I went back up that direction too. It was wet too and a tent we lived in leaked badly. We got some old bags from a man there, which saved us from getting too wet. Later we had Meetings around Arthur River. One man was very hostile and threatened us, but some befriended us. We also had some Meetings again at Culbun and Brenda Murdock and Calvert King decided.

1948, Jim and I went to Narrogin, and no one professed there either. We had Meetings in a place about 9 miles south of Narrogin in a home and the woman was keen till she talked to her father who was a Methodist parson. She said she was a Methodist born and bred and when she died she would be a Methodist dead!

In 1949,  John Hardie (he had come through in the end of 1948), suggested that someone should go up to Carnarvon. So it was suggested that I could go—which I was glad to. So Syd Preshaw and I went up to Carnarvon in 1949. We were there in 1949 and 1950, two years in a row. We went up with the Bell brothers in their big trucks—they were going up for a job at Onslow. We left Perth on Saturday afternoon and we got to Carnarvon on Saturday morning the next week. So that's how long it took to go 600 miles. The first 300 miles we did in 24 hours, the last 300 we did in five days, so it was a pretty slow trip. We had Meetings up there for awhile. There was a young couple professed, but they didn't go on. But an old lady and her son, they lived not too far away and we used to go and visit them and help them, and they both professed but they didn't live very long. They were both dead inside about two years.

In 1950, Syd and I went back to Carnarvon, we tried to help the young couple who decided the year before (Wilsons) with no success. We also went out to the coast near the whaling station, which gave us plenty of perfume!! One night we had a storm and lots of wind and our pegs were only in sand. We kept getting up to drive the pegs in but finally a strong blow blew our tent from over our heads. There was a big log about 20 yards away, so we carried it over and fastened the ropes on the windy side to it, then when there was a lull, we quickly got the tent up and by daylight all was in place again. No damage was done and the neighbours knew nothing about it.

In 1951, Albert Barnes went up with me, Syd went to Queensland at the beginning of 1951. Ray Allen came to the West and also Lily Hart. So Albert and I went up to Onslow, Roeboume and Whitnoon Gorge. We had Meetings in those three places but we didn't have very many to Meetings at all, it was very hard to get people out. At Whitnoon Gorge there was a young man who came, and he was on the grog, I suppose, a lot of the time. He was to go back to Perth but he missed his plane so he came down to see us when he was full of beer—laid on the floor and rolled and turned all night.

So next morning we had a talk with him and so he decided he'd stay on and come to Meetings. He did and he professed, Tom McCallion, was his name. He had a pretty chequered career, poor old Tom. So afterwards, of course, he went back to Perth and he married a girl down there. But the thing about Tom was that he had his family in Kalgoolie, and the Workers were there at the time too, so we got them in touch with Tom's mother and father and some of his sisters. His mother professed and was a good woman and also one of his sisters. There were two sisters professed, but the other one I think she hasn't really done so well. Anyway, that was the end of that year, 1951.

The next year Albert [Barnes] and I went up to Port Headland, Marble Bar and Broome, and we had Meetings in those places. At Marble Bar there was an old man called George Hall. George came to a few Meetings, then we didn't see him any more for awhile, and we looked for him and couldn't find him in his camp and nobody seemed to know where he'd got to. But finally we did trace him down and he was at the hospital—he'd had a stroke. So I went up to the hospital to see him and continued to do that; he wasn't far away from where we were camped.

We were camped down in the gully, in the middle of the creek actually, and one night it started to rain and the water came down, so we had to hurry in the middle of the night and shift our camp out of the creek and onto the bank. The reason we were in the creek, because it was the only place where there were some trees.

Anyway, George made a decision then, and his friends up there got him into a home down in Geraldton—so he asked me to get his bank book and get his account transferred to Geraldton, which I did. So then at the end of the year when we went back to Perth, we called to see George in Geraldton—the Sisters had been there and been in contact with him. And he told me that he'd given some money to some of the sisters at the home—it was a Catholic place—to the matron for his funeral.

We went on down to Perth and then we went up to Paynes Find and had some Meetings there for a few days. We got word that George was dying. So one night after the Meeting at Paynes Find, I went off to Geraldton, it was an all night trip, got there at 7 o'clock the next morning after being bogged in the sand for an hour or two.  So  I went to the Sisters and they said that George had died.

I went to the undertaker and arranged for his funeral. And I told the undertaker I'd go out to the home and see about this money that George had given to the Matron. Anyway, when I got there, she just straight out said that he gave her nothing. I had nothing in writing so I couldn't deny it. Anyway, I went to the bank and I got his bank book, and I saw there where he had drawn out the money that he had said—he had definitely given her this money. But she just stole it—you might say. He still had money for his funeral, so I went to the undertaker and told him to go ahead with the plans we had made. So next day we had the funeral, then I left and went back to Paynes Find and finished our tour there and went back to Preparations in Canea. I should have said that after we were at Marble Bar, we had Meetings in Port Headland and up as far as Broome, but there were no results. So anyway, we had some interesting times in the north.

In 1953, I came back home for a visit, just a short visit, just had Convention then went straight back again. Jim Gorman had been with Walter [Schloss] in Perth, so I took Jim's place and Jim went home to Victoria . He was no longer able for the Work. Walter and I had Meetings in Perth—that was the first time that I'd been in Perth all the time I'd been over there except the first few weeks. We had some Meetings and three professed there at that time. I think they're all gone now, all dead. But anyway, Kay Reagle was one, she had come over from Burma with her family, and then she went back to India to look after her Grandmother and she died over in India.

During that time that we were in Perth we built a new dining shed at Canea and kitchen and everything combined. Put in a new cellar too, no refrigerators much in those days and so we used to keep the things down in the cellar to keep them cool. And that took us all that year getting that fixed up.

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QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

The first Workers that came to Queensland, of course, were John Sullivan and Jack Little, then there were two Sisters, Polly Hodgins and Lizzie Sargent, and they had the first results out at Dayboro. There were two sisters professed out there. One of those sisters married Ferdie Raddatz, and the other one married Bob Francis. Bob helped to carry out the two men that escaped from the plane crash in 1937 up on the mountains. And we went out there just before we went to the West and Bob gave me a little ring that he had got out of the crash, but I've lost it somewhere along the track.

I marvel sometimes when I see where those early Workers went in Queensland—they were way up in the North; by 1919 they were up in the Tablelands and around Cairns, and those days there wasn't the communication like there are today, but the Gospel was spread right throughout Queensland in a very short time, and it's been wonderful to see the results and we hope that this will continue until the Lord's return.

WEST AUSTRALIA