The Justification of Joseph Tice Gellibrand: A Thesis

A return to the Frontier History of colonial Victoria, with a focus on cultural understanding and relationship.

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Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

I am a 4th-to-6th generation Australian of Silesian (Prusso-Polish), Welsh, Schwabian-Württemberg German, yeoman English, Scots, & Cornish stock; all free settlers who emigrated between 1848-1893 as colonial pioneers. I am the 2nd of 7 brothers and a sister raised on the income off 23 acres. I therefore belong to an Australian Peasantry which historians claim doesn't exist. I began to have outbreaks of poetry in 1975 when training for a Diploma of Mission Theology in Melbourne. I've since done a BA in Literature and Professional Writing and Post-graduate Honours in Australian History. My poem chapbook 'Compost of Dreams' was published in 1994. I have built a house of trees and mud-bricks, worked forests, lived as a new-pioneer, fathered-n-raised two sons and a daughter, and am now a proud grandfather. I have worked as truck fresh-food farmer, a freelance foliage-provider, been a member of a travelling Christian Arts troupe, worked as duty officer and conflict resolutionist with homeless alcoholic men, been editor/publisher of a Journal of Literature for Christian Pilgrimage, a frontier researcher, done poetry in performance seminars in schools and public events.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

PART ONE: Active Material and Spiritual Freedom

PART ONE: Active Material and Spiritual Freedom

Gellibrand, with an ecumenical fluidity in his spiritual formation and the vigour of the broad dynamics of his Christian upraising[1]; and Batman, with the faith he personally had under the electric Parramatta influence of journeyman hot-Gospeller and fighting Christian, Samuel Marsden, would likely have known the words of the church father: ‘Love, and do what you will’[2]. This is usually interpreted as, the right to learn by possibly making mistakes, carrying an implied ‘Love God and do what you like’; a statement of the paradox of the Christian law of inner scruples in its freedoms and growths to be achieved by active pilgrim venturing. Bunyan’s well-known ‘Pilgrims Progress’ [which can be seen as source book of the likelihood of tracks right-or-wrong often taken in the paths and border-crossings that lead to where a ‘building’-in goodness, love and the holy- can put down foundations of the ‘Kingdom of God’ (or Celestial City) coming to be on this earth as it is in heaven,[3]] would have been incorporated by that time, (for them both), into their mainly England-sourced Christianity. And then, in the round of books, sermons and advanced Sunday school lessons in their Protestant milieu they would have come across the semi-forbidden excitement of Luther’s: ‘sin boldly’[4], which means a similar and related thing to Augustine - that spiritual deceit (or self-deceit) is at the heart of sin and that no act is beyond the spiritual frontier in God’s forgiveness or abandonment. And, that brings us to the uttermost ends of the earth, in which trans-Englishmen felt they were, whether at Dutigalla or in Van Diemens Land, a place long seen by the Psalmist as a locality beyond and beneath mere monochrome definitions of good and evil.[5] These notions are of an activism taken to be at the heart of a spiritual Christianity evident in Gellibrand’s, as in Batman’s, former history. There is also a surety of them knowing the concept of Abandonment to Providence heard in many a colonial-period tale of venture: whether over the edge of the world, into the unknowns, toward an ultima thule, across the borders, or on a raft of shipwreck. Gellibrand wrote: ‘Taking one bottle of water and trusting to Providence for further supplies’[6] This is an activist (as against a quietist) way of interpreting; the faithful taking of historical and ontological risks in real time and place, that has its definition and epitome in the work of a hundred odd years beforehand, in ‘Self-abandonment to Divine Providence.[7]

The motive courage, faith and hope behind their historical risks, into the cultural out-of-depths and unknowns, which each of them ventured to, come to their end results, in what are tragedies for them both, leaves us with paradoxes that suggest to me that these mostly unasked questions may have answers, not just in the realm of human cupidity and avarice, [just land-grabbing as they are accused], but in realms of the journeying daily mix of human motives: to better themselves yes!, but to better themselves and their aboriginal or other fellows, towards a new foundation in better material and spiritual freedom. Histories of Gellibrand and Batman, as supporters of the culturally-extemporaneous reflex-wits in Buckley, cannot be understood without understanding spiritual brinkmanship in their Christian mindset, out on the borders of becoming-Australian places. Imbued with a Divine humanism, they applied this, the frontier in The Frontiers - an economic, legal, social and political entrepreneurialism.


[1] ‘Whether as Independents, Anglicans, Presbyterians -or in the case of the Gellibrands at an earlier period - as Roman Catholics (denomination seemed to matter little) most members of the Jennings-Gellibrand -Parsons group were informed, believing Christians, brought up in the tradition of religious practice.’ P.L.Brown ~ Commentary, Editor: Clyde Co. Papers Vol. 2. OUP 1952 pp 427

[2] Augustine

[3] Jesus’ words from ‘The Lord’s Prayer” Gospel

[4] Martin Luther

[5] Note: There is a God’s-eye view of human consciousness in the global scope of cosmic depths long-broached as part of Judeo-Christian understanding. Psalm 139:7-12 ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend into heaven thou art there: if I make my bed in hell thou art there. If I take wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; [or more pertinently: Earth! (cf. Psalm 33:13-15; Psalm 65:8; Psalm 72:1-8)] Even there thy hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.’ AV ~ Many frontiersmen saw themselves at such an uttermost place, such a Ultima Thule!

[6] p 10 J.T.Gellibrand - in Thomas Francis Bride, Letters to Victoria Pioneers 1898 Melbourne Repub. 1969 South Yarra

[7] Jean-Pierre de Caussade( 1675-1751) S.J., Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy, Collins, Glasgow 1933 Reprinted 1977 Translation by Fr. P.H. Ramiere, S.J. Ed Fr John Joyce, S.J.

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