Margaret Somerville - A Missionary

1912 - Margaret turned 100 in September and is still going strong
Margaret was the daughter of a Methodist minister. She knew she was called as a missionary and would only go where the Lord sent her. She was sent to Croker Island, an island an hour’s flight north of Darwin, at the meeting of the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea.
Margaret left for Darwin in November 1941. She was employed as a ‘Cottage Mother’ taking care of and teaching Aboriginal children at the Croker Island Methodist Mission. She spent 6 months there before being ordered to leave before the approaching Japanese captured her.

On April 7th 1942 she managed to evacuate 95 children from Croker Island, to the coast of Arnhem Land, where she and the children were left to fend for themselves. With the children she started to march towards Darwin. The heat, flies and lack of facilities, including any roads, made it difficult for the children to continue. She carried flour and made damper. They built a raft to cross crocodile infested waters. A cattle station owner killed a bullock to give them some meat. They drank rainwater. They spent three weeks at the Church of England Mission station at Oenpelli. To ensure the safety of the children Margaret wanted to go the 3000 miles to Sydney. The journey would take six weeks to complete.

Margaret Somerville (rear right) with Children from Croker Island 
(Peter and Sheila Forrest Collection - Croker Island Exodus)

She encouraged the children to sing the songs she had taught them, to keep up their spirits. She and the 95 children hitched a ride in the back of a cattle truck over hundreds of miles on unsealed roads to Alice Springs. They then caught ‘The Ghan’ to Adelaide plus another Logan Branch.

5 days on half a dozen trains from Adelaide to Melbourne, to Albury to Sydney. As they pulled into Albury almost all of the 95 children were sick from a stomach and intestinal virus. They were tired, sick, hungry and crying, but this 30 year old woman was softly singing to keep their spirits up, mopping up vomit, nursing the fearful little ones, and trying to get the 95 children off one train onto another. They had no supplies of food, clothing, bedding or medical requisites apart from what she could scrounge on the way. Margaret settled the children in a church camp at Otford in NSW where they spent the rest of the war in safety.

The journey across the centre of Australia, travelling 3000 miles, took six weeks through the worst of the nation’s heat. It was an incredible journey led by Margaret Somerville.
After the war Margaret returned to Croker Island with 69 of the children and continued as ‘Cottage Mother’ for 24 years.

In 1965 Margaret returned to Sydney, accompanied by two foster children who later returned to their family.

Margaret’s service to young Aboriginal people has been recognized by the Queen with an MBE and by the naming of the Somerville Homes in her honour. The work on Croker Island was moved to Darwin in 1968 and continues to care for underprivileged children under the name of Somerville Community Services. The Somerville Homes care for handicapped young people.
Margaret was the first Australian woman to be presented with the Battle of Australia medallion in 1991.
Margaret wrote a book called ‘They Crossed a Continent’. During her retirement years she has made and sold finger puppets to fund missions worldwide. She recently celebrated her 100th birthday with some of the children now in their 70’s celebrating with her.
Enabling her through all of her life has been the conviction from the Scripture “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Truly an amazing woman of God!!

Isabella Parry & The Nurture Of Children

Early in 1830, after a fifteen hour sea voyage from Sydney, Isabella Parry disembarked at Tahlee, Port Stephens, north of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley. She was accompanied by her husband, Sir Edward Parry, the polar explorer. They were also accompanied by their twin children, Isabella and Edward.
They were named after their parents but they were not named by their parents.

The twins were two months old when they landed at Port Stephens. They had been born in government house in Sydney moments after the Parry’s had arrived in Port Jackson. The babies were premature and very poorly and Isabella was in danger of her life. She had already lost two children in infancy and a third had miscarried.

Eliza Darling, the governors wife had the twins baptized immediately, naming them after their parents. Eliza Darling even suckled little Edward at her breast such was her care for children. Both Eliza Darling and Isabella Parry were devout evangelical Christian women. Isabella was strong in heart and clear in mind. Her desire was to serve God and she believed she could do this best by attending to ‘the one thing needful’ (Luke 10:42). This meant doing whatever was required to ensure the salvation of those for whom one was responsible. In Isabella’s case, this meant her family, herself, and the employees or ‘servants’ of the Company, the assigned convicts and the aborigines.

She had another two children, Lucy and Charles in quick succession. Her husband ran the local church, while she opened a school for 42 young pupils and another for adult convicts, and she established a lending library. She visited the sick and concerned herself with the temporal and the spiritual well-being of all around her. She successfully befriended the aboriginal people in a nearby camp.

Isabella loved her husband and missed him when he was away which was often. The two of them, even when separated, read the Bible and prayed at the same time each day, so that they would feel their oneness in the Lord.

After the family returned to England in 1837 Isabella suffered much. The Parry’s eldest daughter died of scarlet fever and Isabella had another daughter who died and she herself died in 1839 aged 38 years, having another set of twins. Her eldest son Edward was only nine years of age and was present when she died. His father had read to her the Scripture, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith“, and Isabella said ‘and the finisher’.

Further articles about Isabella Parry