The adventure got real when I left Adelaide and headed off to Victoria on a road trip in a hire car! I accepted my GPS’s offer of the fastest route to Majorca, a small town in the middle of the state, where I was to spend the evening and next morning with my friends Barry and Edith Rabone. In infamous GPS tradition, it took me through the back roads for many hours, including a long stretch on a narrow track just wide enough for the wheels of my car. When oncoming traffic approached, which happened occasionally, we both had to go almost off-road into the red soil to pass each other. Luckily I had enough fuel to just make it to a country town to fill up the tank! Once I made it to the Rabones’ place, we had a great time catching up and discussing some developments in our faith community and my ministry. The next day Edith and I took their vintage 1968 (?) Mini Minor to a nearby town to meet Suzanne for brunch and more joyful post-pandemic catching up.
The drive up to Harrietville in the Victorian Alps/High Country was stunning, with alpine forests, mountain roads, European cafes and shops along the way, and ski slopes waiting for winter snow. In recent years, I’ve tried to go somewhere I’ve never been before in Australia as I follow my ministry and travel path. Growing up in Australia, I’d somehow never heard of the Victorian Alps. That’s where Lynelle, my school friend whom I hadn’t seen since 1974, and her retired minister husband are raising her granddaughter, who is delightful. While I was there we swam in a cold mountain stream near their house, and took a night walk around the town, where I found out about Bush Kindy (similar to Forest School in the US,) heard a local indigenous man playing didgeridoo accompanied by guitar and drums outside a pub, and learned about the mid 1800s gold rush origins of the town. Sleeping in the cool mountain air after a hot day was incredibly refreshing. The next day we bought breakfast from a Swiss-owned cafe, and took it to a beautiful lake, formerly a site for dredging gold. Locals gather for picnics, fishing, swimming and hiking. We had to stop as we drove back for a herd of kangaroo who wanted to cross the road right in front of us. I’d been lamenting I hadn’t seen any Aussie wildlife so far this trip, but my luck was changing!
The driving adventure continued when Lynelle and John recommended I take the Great Alpine Road for an hour to the Mt Kosciusko Lookout. They said it was a bit of a windy road – they weren’t lying! The locals drove fast and confidently around the twisting mountainside curves, with their spectacular, terrifying dropoffs only inches from the road (probably more like metres in reality!) But tourists like me were driving slowly, and in my case praying the whole way, too nervous to really enjoy the beautiful mountain views.
More than an hour later, I made it to the Lookout, which was worth it in the end. Mt Kosciusko is the highest mountain in Australia, though actually dwarfed by the highest mountains in other countries. An hour-ish later, when I had almost finished my descent, my GPS announced the road was closed ahead and it was time to make a U-turn and drive back over the mountains! Considering all the recent rain and flooding, it seemed plausible. However, I firmly informed my GPS that I was definitely not going back over the Great Alpine Road! I continued on, and found that the closure was just roadwork that had closed off one lane.
After my Alpine adventure, I continued on to Melbourne, the capital of Victoria and Australia’s most culturally diverse city. Most of my Dad’s closest relatives live in Melbourne, having relocated from the coastal town of Portland. My Mum’s parents both originally came from Melbourne, so in a sense it is my city of origin, although I grew up in Sydney, which feels more like home.
During my time in Melbourne, I was able to have an afternoon BBQ with my rellies, meet up with some Swedenborgian/New Church friends, go to the opening evening session at the Australian Open AKA “go the tennis” as the locals say (another bucket list item!) and attend a church service at the new premises of the Swedenborg Community Victoria (formerly the Melbourne New Church.) The church building was sold in 2018 and after a short nomadic period, the community has bought a commercial unit with very adaptable spaces for their purposes: a good model I believe for congregations for whom a church building is no longer suitable.
Although my road trip through Victoria was mostly about travel and catching up with friends, I did have two wonderful conversations with colleagues in ministry. Rev. David Moffat is the Spiritual Leader for the Swedenborg Community Victoria, as well as the President of the New Church in Australia – an association of all the church communities. We talked about diminishing congregation sizes around Australia and the world, and placed that within the context of Swedenborg’s vision of “old” church-based practices being replaced by “new” spiritual practices and ways to relate to the Divine. In that context, David and I are both trying out new ways to reach people online: he’s developing the Swedenborg Community Victoria and I’m working with “Deborah’s Tree.” Right before I left Victoria to fly back to Sydney, I went for a short bushwalk with Rev. Martin Pennington and then talked over coffee. We shared our thinking and viewpoints on some aspects of Swedenborgian theology, but weren’t able to resolve all the questions and debates in our faith community! He also encouraged me to continue to offer support to a woman in Pennsylvania who was recently ordained online into a non-traditional ministry (hospital chaplaincy) in the NCIA, as I’m the closest thing to a NCIA ministry colleague for her. During our walk, Martin and I saw an echidna, an ant-eating mammal, which neither of us had ever seen in the wild. I also got to finally see and hear my favourite Aussie bird, the Kookaburra. During my path in 2022/2023 I had heard them cackling in many places, but hadn’t seen one. I felt complete in terms of connecting with Australia’s wonderful animals in the bush: kangaroo, echidna, and kookaburras.
