Holly bank Forest is a great place to walk the selection of trees are a delight and the ferns a joy.

 

From Perth to Tasmania episode 1

Our latest venture was to travel from Perth Western Australia to Launceston in Tasmania. We sold our house in Perth and bought in Launceston.

We seemed to travel for ever to get out of Western Australia, hour after hour towing our small caravan with car and van overloaded with last minute things.

At Meckeing we stopped for our first camp, a West Australian wheat town with one of its its paddocks seen here






Travelling with a caravan is not a fast way to go, but we had a couple of months to use up before the settlement of our new house, so it seemed an adventure worth the taking, had we known the stressful events that overtook us later may be we would have planned things differently.

However looking back on our adventure we now have a very different picture of Australia. Every region is very different, the dry deserts of the west and centre are in complete contrast with the verdant lushness of the east coast of New South Wales. The mountains and forests of Victoria with bell birds and lyre birds are a whole new wonder.



Finally at Eucla and the last stop in WA. Here you see over the coastal plane from the camp site.


Travelling across Australia one is moved by the size of this island continent.






The plane is vast and stretches as far as the eye can see with low trees and scrub.

Driving on straight roads, and on one instance for a hundred kilometres without a bend, is awesome at least. Thunder clouds rolling across the vast horizon and the occasional road house for meat pies and fuel.

One road house has a time zone all of its own.


Penong was the first experience of civilization after entering South Australia, a dry place with windmills to advertise its dependence upon artesian water. It took us four days to get out of WA and a further couple of days to reach Penong, known for its windmills, and there we stopped to camp.

The South Australian towns with vast wheat bins met us from here onward, and this one to the left actually had wheat bins that stretched the full length of the town.



There is much more to this journey which brought us through three breakdown experiences and finally to our destination. I will post the next stage of this story later. It was a journey that made us appreciate our pioneer heritage and for us it was a journey of considerable adventure and stress. But the Lord brought us through and now that we are in our home we can assess our experience and praise the Lord that in all our challenges we came through in faith and trust.

Seddon in the Awatera valley

 New Zealand is a very special place,but it is also a place where every home has an earthquake survival plan.

A couple of years ago when Sylvia and I traveled extensively in the South Island for some three months we were impressed by the way people shared their pain and needs and responded to our offer of prayer in the name of Jesus. More recently I have been most encouraged with the openness of people to the Gospel.

We trained 30 people to share their faith in Blenheim in 2 churches of different denominations. The response to our efforts in the local market were most encouraging. 

Perhaps it is because people are aware of the natural dangers that people are so responsive. In Western Australia we have had responses, but not as positive. The hardness of people in the West is most evident, and yet people are otherwise so very similar in culture and outlook.

 These two shots of a vineyard in Seddon are the same, shot but processed differently, Black and white images always show the composition elements so well.

This difference is like the difference in the people across the 'ditch' and across this island continent.

Some of the differences that are immediately noticeable are those of language and I am not just talking about dialect, in NZ people are accustomed to use Maori words in every day speech and the 'Wh" present in so many words is pronounced as an 'F' sound.

A journey to Molesworth Station, Marlborough, New Zealand 

 From Seddon one turns up the Awatere valley on the road that soon becomes a gravel track.

We took the Taylor pass over the Wither Hills to join the Molesworth road, The picture to the left shows the valley as it appears once joining the road.

Taylor Pass is the roughest part of the journey from Blenheim to Molesworth, one has to watch the ruts and the gravel on a winding mountain track. The gravel road to Molesworth is much the better.

Few tourists ever take this journey, for one thing, hire cars are not permitted on unsealed roads so this is very much a journey for locals. From Molesworth you can drive through to Hanmer Springs, but the road is only open during the Summer months.

Driving though this part of New Zealand is an awe inspiring experience and we found it easy to praise God for His creative handiwork.

Sadly in our world of naturalism this viewpoint is submerged in the minds of many people. We live in an age when everything has to have a scientific answer and God does not come into consideration.

People who are 'God conscious' will be moved by such scenery, it is quite unique, and speaks of God who invites us to see every aspect of His world as unique and every person and creature in it.

Sylvia and I have had the privilege of ministering in St Christopher's Anglican church Blenheim South for three months where I was the locum minister. However this was not all that we were up to and our main focus was to train people to share their faith in Jesus Christ. We had twenty-five people in our training.

People in New Zealand seem to be more open to the Good News of Jesus than here in Western Australia where we actually have our home.

Maybe it is because NZ is a grand country that lifts a person's vision higher than the world of material being, or perhaps it is because in NZ people are very conscious of the ephemeral nature of life, living as people do in an earthquake prone land.

In Western Australia people seem to be more materialistic and closed in on their world of things and success. In Perth most people live on the wide sand plane upon which the city sits, houses are excessively large and close together. People do not look outwardly upon God's creation but inwardly, bound by their modern homes. In the South Island of NZ most homes that we have visited have views of hills and mountains, they are inescapable vistas.

 I sometimes wonder whether the modern enclosed home acts as a psychological enclosure that has no room for God.

Traveling up the Ataware

The river can be a 'fearsome beast' as someone called it,but this was a dry season and rain was much needed so the river was low.

Some hundred and twenty kilometres later and we had passed through towering mountains across a swing bridge and along the side of  the river gorge.  finally we emerged in Molesworth Station the largest station in NZ.

The white capped mountains were no longer on some distant horizon they were all about us as we came to the station.







Heaven must be even more wonderful than this. We who know the Lord look forward to an eternity in the most glorious new creation that ever could be imagined.

Many years ago we did a locum in Norway and with our young son, we went up the side of a fiord and ventured into a meadow of soft green grass and buttercups and surveyed the water in the fiord stretching out beyond a quaint wooden farm house. I remember thinking that heaven must be like that scene and it has remained imprinted on my mind ever since.

People who live in their closed-in world where the vista is the one of the games room, the entertainment room, the family room and the fence outside, miss so much.

Yet this is what the modern mind aspires to and preferably with access to a beach where people can hardly ever venture since the mortgage is so high and demands much attention to work.

 Venturing up the valley the river disappears into pools, of course in a wet season it would be very different.

The life of he Christian Church in the Western World is like this river in a dry season, it lacks any energy to achieve anything. In much of the developing world the story is very different.

I have read that the life of the church in Nigeria is like a  river in flood by comparison. How sad it is to see the world of western materialism going no where and missing out on eternity with our Lord.

What is more if you are filled with the Spirit of the living God you will feel the urgency of the times that demands attention to the Gospel

The old homestead in Molesworth is a symbol of a world that is very different. A place of struggle and effort that reminds us that there is no 'cheap grace' in our faith.

Have you thought of venturing into the world of the Spirit?

Heaven, an eternal relationship with God in Christ, is a free gift, that cannot be earned nor deserved, such a gift can only be received.

Yet once we have received it we belong to Christ Jesus who is Lord of our lives. What! you may exclaim, are we to be subjects to Jesus? well you are already subject to this world, no one is a fee agent no matter how she or he may think. To be subject to Christ is perfect freedom as the collect in the Book of Common Prayer puts it.

 In the evening I walked up the Wither Hills behind Blenheim, the Sun was setting and the mist creeping up the valley from the sea.

The soft light turning the mist to a gentle orange hue gave me a photographers delight.

However I rejoice in that this is God's world. We are so attacked by warnings of global warming and pollution that here in Marlborough where vast areas are covered with vines all seems so peaceful and as far away from anywhere as possible.

I reminded people on Sunday in my message that we are promised a new heaven and a new earth. While we agree to much symbolism in the Revelations of St John, the point is that as Christians we are people of a different world, while being called to demonstrate responsible dominion over this one.

 Our Evangelism training is progressing
We have 17 people in training here to share their faith and we do it gently and yet positively.

In evangelism is is essential to avoid any sort of aggressive push, we are not selling God only telling people of the good news of eternal salvation. We can do this only when the Holy Spirit of God warms people to receive our message.

The joy is that as we pray for people about us miracles happen and people are indeed open to our message of the free gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ received by faith.

 Sheep with a view of Blenheim and the town spreading in the valley below.

Mist rising to the mountains on the other side of the valley.

 We are now in Marlborough I am serving as locum in St Christopher's church in Blenheim. The area is known for its wine and vineyards stretch for vast distances in all directions.

We are in God's vineyard and teaching people to share their faith. It is a wonderful privilege to be in such a beautiful part of the world and to serve the Lord and His people at the same time.

 It was in this bay that we saw one of the native pigeons, they are resident at this time of year and then disappear for a season.

One of the exciting things for us is to have 21 people in training, the church is alive when the Lord leads us to share our faith gently and creatively with people in His season.

New Zealand has young mountains unlike the old hard rock basalt mountains in Tasmania. the mountains in the Marlborough region are clad with clay that slips when wet creating great scars in the velvet green slopes. and the rivers are actively carving out the country.

Sharing one's faith must never leave scars in the lives of people, Evangelists have been too harsh in the past. We teach people to ask the Holy Spirit to lead them to people already seeking the Lord. Faith has to be shared in relationship and ministered to seekers with the gentleness and love of God.

 We left Tasmania for New Zealand with a feeling that once again we had discovered a very special part of God's creation and with new friends back in Launceston we feel we must surely return soon.

Queenstown in Tasmania is a mining community, but there is a very special beauty even in this industrial landscape