A PARSON IN OUTBACK AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21656, 14 December 1935, Page 19

A PARSON IN OUTBACK AUSTRALIA

The Boundary Rider, By R. B. Plowman. Angrus and Robertson Ltd. 278 pp. (6/-.)

The clergymen who do duty for the Australian Inland Mission have plenty of scope for their energies. Mr Plowman’s “parish” of 10,000 square miles is a fair sample of their territory. This is the third book that he has written about his experiences as a clergyman in the Australian outback, and every line of it can be read with real interest, not only by Australians, but also by all others who are concerned with the problems of populating the continent’s interior. Nowadays the mission has widely extended its activities and improved the value of its work with the use of aeroplanes, especially for medical services, but in the days of which Mr Plowman writes most of the country was covered with a buggy and pair. The author himself in a journey of 4000 miles by this comparatively primitive conveyance, visited nearly all his parishioners, including not only homesteads, but also solitary boundary riders and workmen’s camps. It was, as the book discloses, a remarkable experience. The main impression left on the reader is one of warm admiration for the men and women who have the hardihood and courage to live in the interior, to face cheerfully their voluntary separation from civilisation and even to prefer the life to a far less exacting and strenuous existence nearer the centres of population. The work of the mission is not emphasised and its value is the more evident for that.