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Traveller of the compassionate way

November 24, 2003

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Ron Williams, Bush pastor, 1940-2003

In the same week R.M.Williams died, another R. Williams, an indigenous bush pastor, also died. About 800 people packed the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra, to say goodbye to Pastor (uncle) Ron Williams, one of the best-known and respected Aboriginal leaders in Australia.

The tributes and the eulogies delivered spoke of his winsome smile, his gentle disposition, his disarming personality and his ability to touch the lives of all, from diplomats to drunks, junkies to jetsetters, abused women, prisoners and those who had lost hope. Above all, they acknowledged his unswerving Christian faith.

Born in 1940 in Albany, Western Australia, and never knowing his father, Ron was brought up by his grandparents, Jo and Grace Williams. This was a time when injustice, legislative discrimination and racism were entrenched in Australia's psyche. Ron was initially barred from attending school, and suffered the taunts of "nigger". Many of his relatives were to become members of the stolen generations.

Only six years earlier, the Mosley royal commission had heard evidence that the only way to get rid of the "Aboriginal problem" was to breed out the colour. Comments such as "Aborigines today are no bloody good. Years ago you could beat 'em with a stockwhip" were still heard in the mining towns and on the pastoral frontiers.

When grandfather Jo was killed in a fight and his body found on the rubbish dump, Williams blamed himself. Like many of his kinsfolk, dysfunctional and in and out of prison, he turned to alcohol for consolation.

During a chance meeting with a friend, Ron was handed a Bible and a picture of Jesus holding a lamb. To Ron, the lamb symbolised his helplessness and fanned a spark which changed his life.

He became a "bushie" pastor, traversing thousands of kilometres around the back blocks of Australia, stopping at Aboriginal camps, visiting prisoners and others in adversity. He didn't always receive the support he deserved from white Christians.

Ron's Aboriginal wife eventually died after a long illness and he married Diana, a white American corporate executive who had left her affluent life to work among Australian Aborigines. They married at Skull Creek in Laverton, WA, raising many eyebrows, black and white. The marriage also brought censure from the mission organisation for which Ron had laboured for 20 years.

Diana, too, endured criticism from her colleagues, not only because she was a divorcee, but also because they believed the cultural gap was too wide. On this latter point, they came close to being proved right.

The union was not without its tensions and required huge adjustments on both sides, beginning with the first night of the honeymoon - spending it in a cave on top of Mount Margaret wasn't exactly Diana's idea of romance.

For Diana, a product of the Chase Manhattan Bank, efficiency and timing were imperatives. For Ron, Noongar time was flexible, to put it mildly. To Diana, money was necessary to have an ordered existence. For Williams, it was something you gave away to those who needed it more that you did.

Many a blunder was made as Diana attempted to accommodate Aboriginal cultural norms. These conflicts are illustrated in a story in Horizon:Where Heaven and Earth Meet, a recently published book in which she describes their journeying.

In 1988, Diana, following the reversal of a tubal ligation, had given birth to Lydia, their first child. The three of them were in their four-wheel-drive on the coast road between Adelaide and Melbourne when their vehicle stopped with oil pouring from the engine. While Ron went to get help, Diana, Lydia and their dog waited in the vehicle.

After what seemed hours, and with the sun setting below the horizon, Diana was becoming anxious. Where was Ron? What if someone had kidnapped him and beaten him up. Why hadn't he returned to let them know what was happening?

In the gathering twilight, Lydia happened to look out the window. "Isn't that Dad over there?"

In the long grass off the highway, they could just make out Ron beating the grass with a stick. When he finally got back to the car, the temperature was anything but cool.

"What on earth were you doing?" bellowed Diana. "Oh, I just saw some rabbits. I thought I might get one for our dinner."

Despite the continuing need for cultural adjustment, they achieved what many thought impossible and spent 20 years roughing it round Australia - in tents, in the back of four-wheel-drives and, on the rare occasions when they could afford it, in a motel.

Their possessions consisted of what they could cram into the back of the vehicle. Ron refused to go on the dole so for most of this time they existed on what supporters offered them, supplemented by what Diana was able to earn from occasional teaching jobs.

Everywhere they travelled they left a legacy of hope. People's lives were transformed; reconciliation - divorced from its political emasculation - became a matter of the heart; Christianity, often perceived as a "whitefella religion", became personal for many Aboriginal people, and small, struggling Aboriginal congregations were strengthened.

Ron and Diana didn't denigrate Aboriginal culture. Where culture was morally neutral, they endorsed it. Where it clearly offended Christian values (payback, for example) they simply expounded "a more excellent way".

In 1999, they felt a call to change direction. After much soul-searching and tears for those they were leaving behind, they made the move to Canberra where Diana lectures at the Christian Missionary and Alliance College and from where Ron, until his death from cancer, continued to take his message to the far-flung corners of Australia.

Tom Mayne


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