HISTORY and PRESENT DIRECTIONS

Diocese of Willochra and its Bishops

Diocese of Willochra Directions (pdf file)

Celebrating Nine decades of the Diocese of Willochra - to 2005

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Gilbert White             (1915-1925)
Gilbert White was born into a family with seven generations of priesthood behind it, and began life in South Africa. He was ordained priest in Truro in Cornwall in 1884 and moved to Australia. He ministered in Queensland and was consecrated Bishop of Carpentaria in 1900.
One can only hazard a guess as to what life was like in the fledgling Diocese in that first year of World War I. Although Gilbert White came to this Diocese from having been an Archdeacon and a Bishop in north Queensland, the move must have been difficult. Not even a permanent home was available, and the Rectory at Petersburgh (later Peterborough) was to be the base for some time. The new Diocese stretched from somewhere north of Clare to the Queensland/Northern Territory border, but there were just a tiny handful of parishes involved. As time passed, so the Bishop moved from Peterborough to Gladstone, once thought to become a major centre in the Mid North.
Part of the plan was to include Eyre Peninsula in the new Diocese, but this was not to eventuate for very many years. Ports Pirie and Augusta may well have been big dots on maps of the time, but the populations would have been quite small. Port Pirie was the outlet for Broken Hill ore, and the smelting works was the main activity; and Port Augusta was then in the throes of the monumental task of building the transcontinental railway through to the West.
The boundaries of the Diocese covered such areas as the Birdsville and Strzlecki Tracks, as well as the vast area to the west of the Lake Eyre basin. The many cattle and sheep stations in that area and the northern Flinders would have had intermittent but constant attention from a Bishop who travelled far and wide, under harsh conditions.
From all accounts, 1914 had been a severe drought year, and one suspects that people in the pastoral country were still reeling from the series of droughts that had seen the ignominious retreat of farmers and farming from areas almost up to Marree. The now-ghost township of Farina was so named in the expectation of being the flour capital of the north!
It must have taken a gargantuan heart to be involved as Bishop, but the same must be said for all clergy and people of those times. There could be very few people of that time still alive, but we bear them all strong tribute. Without their faithfulness and enormous effort, there would have been but tiny congregations very few and far between. In fact, most congregations and Churches in the Outback of SA were initiated and encouraged by lay people. In this day and age of Ministry Districts, that factor is often forgotten or ignored.
Bishop White resigned in 1925 and died in 1933. He is buried in Sydney.

Richard Thomas                 (1926–1958)
The second Bishop of Willochra was best known in the bush – stories abound still of his journeys and entrapments in sand and flood. As the years went by, he managed to drive better vehicles, but he still managed to get lost, and bogged …. And rescued. His ministry was vastly wide-spread, and old service registers bear testimony to his travels. Baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals all fell within the gambit of this peripatetic preacher, and in spite of his somewhat eccentric ways, he was loved all through the bush.
During his time, the Bishop’s House was extended considerably, to the present size. Quite why a single man, albeit with a housekeeper, needed to extra room is hard to imagine. Certainly, clergy passing through travelling north or south may well have needed over night accommodation from time to time.
Fulfilling the role of Bishop in such a wide-flung See for the thirty-two years of his Episcopate must have taken its toll on the man. Sadly, it was while on his way to the Lambeth Conference of Bishops in England that he died, leaving a considerable gap in the life and ministry of the Diocese. He was buried n Cowbridge in Wales.

Thomas Edward Jones         (1958–1969)
The story goes that when as an itinerant evangelist in  Liverpool, England, the then young man heard that Bishop Chambers was speaking at a gathering where he was looking for men as clergy in Australia. Tom Jones spoke to the Bishop after the meeting, but his offer was declined. ‘I suppose I will have to go back where I came from’ the young man is reputed to have said, and the Bishop asked how long it would take. ‘As long as it took to get here,’ Tom replied: ‘three days solid walking.’ The Bishop changed his mind on the spot: ‘Meet me 28 days from now with your passport’ and the rest is history. 
It seems that the Diocesan Synod did not find it easy to elect a replacement for Bishop Thomas, and the baton was passed to the then-Primate. Then Canon Jones had been a long-time Organising Missioner of the Bush Church Aid Society, and so was well-equipped for this Outback Diocese, and well aware of outback and rural needs. However, it was the first time an evangelical Churchman had been appointed Bishop and there was some concern that he would not ‘fit.’ It soon became clear that his administrative skills and pastoral awareness was just what the Diocese needed. On top of that, plans were for the Diocesan boundaries to be widened to include Yorke and Eyre Penisulas, as well as the Clare Rural Deanery. That occurred in April, 1967.
Some of Bishop Jones’ dreams became reality.  These included the Willochra Home for the Aged and the Diocesan Centre, recently renamed Camp Willochra. Perhaps his especial role lay in the re-establishment of the financial affairs of the Diocese.
He resigned because of ill-health in 1969 and died in 1972.

Stanley Bruce Rosier             (1970–1987)
Bruce Rosier was born in 1928 and educated in Western Australia before going to Oxford in 1952 as a Rhodes Scholar. He was ordained priest in Sheffield, England in 1955 later returning to Australia. He was Rector of Wyalkatchem and later Kellberrin, then consecrated as Auxiliary Bishop of Perth in 1967.
He was appointed the fourth Bishop of Willochra by the Primate in 1970, and soon became a well-loved Bishop, pastor and friend of all with whom he came in contact. He was also a keen naturalist and often entertained Rectory children with his calculator and magnifying glass, down on hands and knees with the youngsters, showing them things they had never imagined.
His enormous capacity for remembering people, their names and even the subject of the conversation they last had soon became well-known. His care of people was legendary, although he could never imagine that anyone would do anything he would not.
He resigned as Bishop in 1987, to everyone’s great regret, but continued his ministry in the Diocese of Adelaide. He will long be remembered in this Diocese.

William David Hair McCall                (1987 - 2000)
The son of an Australian Bishop, David McCall came to us from being the Rector of Goodwood, Diocese of Adelaide for a number of years. Before that, Bishop David served in the Diocese of the Riverina in a number of parishes.
It must have seemed a rather difficult time for the Bishop of this Diocese in the years the David McCall ministered among us. There was the then-contentious matter of the Ordination of Women, which saw a number of Synods debate the matter, and one or two that had a single focus against the proposition. And then there was the issue of declining population in the rural areas and the development of what are now called Ministry Districts. This strategy focuses on encouragement of local congregations in developing their own gifts and skills, and to take ownership of the direction and emphasis of being ‘Church.’
Any priest or Bishop will report on the great difficulty in attempting to get people to move out of their comfort zones. One of the ways in which this small Diocese again took quite some of the lead in this was the appointment of a Ministry Development Officer, whose role it was to offer direction and support as parishes became ministry districts and had to find new ways of responding to life and to people.
This movement reached the stage where people from other Dioceses across Australia looked to Willochra to gain some insight into the value and impact of the new directions.