A WANDERER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 272, 15 October 1927, Page 2

A WANDERER.

PREACHING OUTBACK,

MELBOURNE, Sept. 29. When Phillip Lewis, “The Wandering Jew out the Outback,” walked into Melbourne to-day, he had travelled 193,350 miles since he felt himself called to file role of swaggie preacher 29 years ago. In his shabby old diary he keeps a record of his travels, of which he says 62,510 miles have been on foot. He was working in Sydney when two men from outback told him they lived 60 miles from the nearest preacher, and their children wore growing up without religion. He rolled his swag and hit the long trail, preaching a kind of evangelism he learned from Gipsy Smith, although lie is a Jew by birth.

He says that people are kind to him and that he has never gone hungry. Occasionally there is a small collection which helps him buy a new collar or tie. He has faced bush fires and storms, passed through land stricken with drought, and shared the privations of the pioneers of outback, but bush hospitality and kindliness have helped to kebp him from discouragement. The sun-tanned little man is not so vigorous as he used to be and his figure was bowed as he hobbled away to take up his wanderings again. '