For 28 days in July/August 2016 I was part of a Christian Fellowship Tour of the North West of Australia, starting in Darwin and ending in Perth. There were 33 in our group in the Fantastic Aussie Tour coach Kimberley that took us to so many remarkable places.
Allan our driver was fantastic, manouvering the 48-seater coach on sealed roads, on dirt roads, into paddocks, between radio transmitter pylons and tie wires, in towns and through the unknown streets of Perth. Greg and Daylle, our tour leaders, faced all eventualities with calm and care.
After a week of the tour I really thought that there could be nothing to better what we’d already seen and experienced. But each day provided more and more evidence of God’s wonderful love and creation in both big ways and tiny ways.
Every day I would try to think of something that had taken my breath away, something that made me gasp in awe. There was always something; like caves, chasms, cliffs and sunsets and of course beautiful views. Then I liked to think of something that makes me sigh, something that gives me absolute peace; like being alone and quite in nature, hearing the distance. There are also things that give a feeling of joy and made me smile; like being able to travel to such remote places with such a caring group and to see and photograph natural patterns and minute natural treasures. And of course there was always some fun that made me laugh. There were many experiences to choose from. I loved to listen to what others thought too.
The BCA workers and other church workers we visited, shared a meal with, or shared a service with were all inspiring. There was such a variety of attitudes to the ‘towns’ in which they found themselves but coming through it all was their commitment to prayer and doing God’s will amongst His people no matter where it might lead them. They gave us insight into the difficulties and delights of living in small, and often remote, communities whose aim in being was often based on money.
Australia is vast and in many places natural and rightly ‘untamed’. But the people who live there need support and the love of God in their lives. If you get a chance go and see for yourself, your attitude to all sorts of issues might be changed forever and perhaps for the better, as mine have been.
Betty Jacobs, (a very satisfied traveller).
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