THE EBENEZER MISSION
It was so disappointing to arrive at the Ebenezer Mission to find it was high fenced and inaccessible. Sure, it has had no function for many years, but it is an important historical site, and has long been open to the curious and to those wanting a palpable sense of what once was. Today’s “no go zone” status was doubly irritating given that over the years funds have been expended on preservation works, one presumes in acknowledgement of the Mission’s importance and in recognition of ongoing interest in the Ebenezer story.
I had discovered Ebenezer some 50 years ago on the way to a camping trip atWyperfeld National Park in the central-western part of Victoria. Leave the Western Highway (the main route from Melbourne to Adelaide - or vice-versa) near Dimboola and head due north to Jeparit, a little way along reaching Antwerp. Antwerp, nominal population of 63, is more a location than a town, distinguishable mainly by the cemetery alongside the main road. Nearby is the turn-off to Ebenezer, a few kilometres to the west and close by the notherly-flowing Wimmera River.
The focal point of the Ebenezer Mission is the high-pitched church, stone built to last, and easily accommodating a hundred worshippers and those of not-so-certain belief. Re-whitewashed not so long ago, and ostensibly optimistic, it stands as a symbol of the missionary endeavour; but it stands alone, and is locked and bolted, and many metres behind the “do not trespass” fence.
The remainder of the former mission complex, also inaccessible, is a tumble of derelict buildings and an overgrown graveyard. As I recall, there are fallen-down residential quarters, and a one-time kitchen cum dining-room, with baker’s oven. And not much else. At its height Ebenezer had had 100 residents and some 20 buildings.
Despite the decline, the sense of place and of history is pervasive; and the story of Ebenezer should be more widely known.
I have no memory of how I obtained it, but I possess a document titled Aborigines of the Wimmera River System. Forty-five pages, typewritten and roneoed, written and copyrighted in 1974 by one Terri G Allen of Hopetoun. A very comprehensive dissertation on the aboriginal peoples of the north-westerly part of Victoria…….and, specifically, the connection of the Aboriginal peoples to the Ebenezer Mission. Forgive me if I bang on a bit with extracts from that document:
#. As the settlers moved further north taking up more and more land, the initial amiable relationship with the natives altered. The settlers usurped the best positions for homesteads, commandeered all available water resources, shot the native fauna which competed with their stock for grassland, and desecrated tribal grounds. This led to bloodshed and fierce skirmishes as the Aborigines retaliated, killing sheep and cattle to replace their depleted food stocks. Squatters soon chastised such raiders, ambushing and killing whole hoards: “We gave them what they will not forget in a hurry.”
#. Many settlers were heedless of the plight of the Aborigines, exterminating them like wild animals while proclaiming that [I hesitate to reproduce the following] “the only good Aborigines are dead ones”, and “it is the design of providence that the inferior races should pass away before the superior races……Since we have occupied the country the Aborigines must cease to occupy it”. Aboriginal numbers rapidly decreased, so that by the mid 1850s whole groups were extinct…..[Remember, the first European settlers arrived in Victoria as recently as 1835, so the demise of the Aborigines was rapid indeed.]
#. The introduction of European diseases such as measles and venereal disease quickly took toll of the native population…….[The incidence of fatal venereal diseases among Aboriginal women – contracted from white men – was much greater than among Aboriginal men. This led to a significant disproportion between gender numbers. Moreover, half-cast children were often killed at birth and, counting these as non-births, the birthrate dropped drastically.] In 1851 the population of Victoria’s Aborigines had been 2690, but this decreased by a thousand to 1694 in 1861…….There was an excessive masculinity, 52% being adult male, double the number of females, and only 19% being children, which [the author asserts] graphically illustrated that infanticide had been practised.
Much of this was before the establishment of Ebenezer Mission. The Ebenezer story is both a noble attempt to do good, and a foolhardy attempt to stem the flow of history. That flow overwhelmed the Mission in about 45 years, and early into the twentieth century it was no more. It closed in 1904. The Divine intervention that has preserved its memory and its bits and pieces for the most recent 120 years will need to work overtime to save it for the next 120!
A small mission to the Aborigines had been established under Pastors Hagenauer and Spieseke at Lake Boga (on the Murray, south of Swan Hill) in 1850. The missionaries were adherents of the Moravian Church, a Christian denomination from Bohemia, a denomination which today has fewer than a million followers. The Moravians are likely the oldest Protestant denomination: the sect dates from the 15th Century. Its founder, Jan Hus, was a priest who opposed many aspects of the Catholic Church, and who, for his pains and to add to them, was burned at the stake by his former Catholic chums.
The missionaries had a four-point plan, namely: (1) to preach the gospel, (2) to start a school for the children, (3) to settle the Aborigines from their nomadic ways, and (4) to teach and educate the Aborigines……put more simply, to civilise and to Christianise the Aboriginal people. Following upon the failure of their Lake Boga endeavour the pastors were promised an allocation of land for a mission station near Antwerp. This promise was not honoured immediately, but the missionaries nevertheless went ahead, selected the site, and established Ebenezer Mission in 1858.
The Mission near Antwerp prospered. A strange word, perhaps, but over time the Mission fulfilled all its objectives……..although one wonders about both the quantitative and qualitative ambit of the word “civilise”. And one has to speculate about the potential clashes between strict Moravian Protestantism, and the nomadic and other proclivities of the potential converts. Instance the requirement that as a pre-condition for receiving rations Mission residents had to attend three church services each Sunday, with children and women attending Sunday school subsequent to each service. After the construction of boys’ and girls’ dormitories in 1873 children were separated from parents, and disciplined without parental assent.
The power and the reach of Ebenezer was much diminished by the 1886 so-called Aboriginal Protection Act [widely known as the “Half-Caste Act”, in full: An Act to Provide for the Protection and Management of the Aboriginal Natives of Victoria]. The Act defined “Aboriginal” to exclude people of mixed descent, that is, with one indigenous parent only. This statute effectively expelled half-caste Aboriginal “children” from missions, and allowed children to be “stolen” from their parents – in this context “children” meant from age 8 to age 34! In the wake of the Act the number of Aboriginal Ebenezer residents reduced to 30 only.
By 1904 Ebenezer Mission was gone. Whether the perceived need had gone, or whether the zeal had gone, the effect was the same. But, even after 120 years of neglect and decay Ebenezer’s ghosts have not been exorcised.
Although time doesn’t run backwards we are nevertheless able to look backwards and to evaluate the aftermath; and because time runs forwards we are not - notwithstanding the writers of science fiction - able to see and to evaluate the consequences of what happens after now. So, when Ebenezer was transferred to the ownership and custodianship of local Aboriginal peoples, part of it in 1991 and part in 2013, nobody could foresee what would then happen. To my mind, what has eventuated is the withdrawal of the Ebenezer site from public access and from public gaze; and the likely further deterioration of its built environment. I appreciate the problems of remoteness, of vandals, of disrespect, but surely there are funds, or potential funds, at least for preventative maintenance going forward. Ebenezer could be accessible, say, once a week or once a month, there could be a small admission charge (given that there is now a fence!), there could be fund-raising. There could be engagement with the wider Wimmera community. But not if Ebenezer has been disappeared!
The National Trust proudly proclaims that it has been involved with the salvation of Ebenezer Mission from as early as 1961, that is from the time the then local committee of management asked the National Trust for assistance. The condition of the buildings surviving as at 1961 was described as “ruinous” – sixty years ago, mind you. A decade on, in 1971, part of the freehold [kitchen, dormitory, toilet block] was gifted to the National Trust; and more in 1980 [the church and the cemetery]. The church was re-roofed and renovated by the Trust; and in 1991 the church site was sold to the local Aboriginal health and welfare co-operative. Finally - I say “finally” with some misgiving - in 2013 “after extensive conservation and repair works to a dozen headstones and burial plots of both Aboriginal persons and Moravian missionaries in preparation for the handover”, the remaining Ebenezer Mission property was handed over by the National Trust to Barengi Gadjin Land Council Aboriginal Corporation – where it languishes today.
The National Trust’s on-line Fact Sheet is not short of self-congratulation at what it “achieved” over its 52 years of stewardship, but buried shallow in those puffed-out chests I sense elements of both Pontius Pilate hand-washing, and pass-the-poisoned-pill.
Gary Andrews
