All would be well in the end! Marjorie and I had work to do, at a time when others were less fortunate. Mother had many friends and a few relatives, and the care of a small child. She managed bravely, directing Kathleen and Jean as she could, while I found new interest in my work and in the many new friends of the Tent family I had learnt to appreciate.
Meantime, my friends of old drew me into the sport of tennis and sometimes ventured with me to the meetings in the Tent, always with an uneasy sensitivity and lack of response. Jean accompanied me just once; she was probably ten years of age, with long, fair, plaited pigtails. She was pretty, and I was proud of her. She listened attentively to the evening discourse, not understanding it, but noting the appeal solo at the close of the meeting. She questioned me about it. “Why did they set the rabbits free?” Who can ever understand the thoughts of a child? The song was based in an incident in the trial of Christ, when the Roman Pontius Pilate had asked the avenging mob, “Shall we crucify King Jesus and set Barabbas free?” Such a question was strange to a child, but we all knew that rabbits were a destructive pest in the agricultural areas throughout Australia. Rabbit-proof fences had been strung across the length and breadth of the land, poisons and traps set everywhere in a futile effort to eliminate the pests. It was to little avail. If ever they were caught – they would never be set free. How could a 10‑year old girl, unversed in the multitude of Bible stories understand so vague a question? I also had much to learn, not only in Bible stories, but how to answer my own uncertainties in many simple questions.
One day the missioner and his young helper dismantled the Tent on Varden Street, packed their belongings and were off to the Port of Albany on the southern coast of Australia. We were told that another preacher would welcome us to the little Church in Cheetham Street each Saturday and he would answer more of his listener’s questions, delivering a message similar to that we had enjoyed so much in the Tent. This new arrangement presented an immediate problem for me for I was at work each Saturday morning in my office, enjoying my work and forever learning more facts and foibles of human nature.
Indeed, I had talked to Tasman Williams of my current interest in the unfolding of Scriptures, but he concluded it was a passing obsession, and countered my every argument, lawyer–wise. Even though I was unimpressed, I was unable to answer his persuasive rhetoric. He had unsettled me, shattering for a time the faith I had accepted in the Scriptures, and in the people of the Tent, whose friendship I had sought and valued so much. He found fault with so many of their restrictive ideas; their adherence to the Jewish Sabbath, (one point in which I felt I had countered his every argument); their dietary fads. I knew I was half-tutored, and not yet captive to every new-fangled proposition such as those practiced by the little-known Church community, vegetarianism, for instance. They were at odds with the world – at odds with what we had always known at home, that one must eat a daily portion of good red meat to be strong and healthy. Then, how rigid they were on theater-going, on gambling, even smoking, which I did not practice. Putting all such trifling matters together, I tested my reactions in a childish experiment, perhaps unworthy of a place in memory, and certainly not deserving of place in my life history. I’d indulge in some minor gambling! The mildest form of gambling! In fact, I wasn’t convinced it really WAS gambling. I purchased a sweepstake ticket in the up and coming Kalgoorlie Cup, the climax of the Goldfields Racing.
On Kalgoorlie Race Day, perhaps 1923, I purchased a sweepstakes ticket under the nom‑de‑plume of “Vegetarian”! My horse, “Warpath”, did NOT win the sweepstakes and the hoped‑for large prize! Showing my then valueless sweepstakes ticket to the ever-ready law clerk, he said, “Vegetarian? Why did you call it that? IT WOULD NOT WIN. No vegetarian ever carries off the stakes!”
Too ashamed to explain anything, I tried to forget how stupid, how infantile I had been. Surely I had poised sufficient to settle my doubts and uncertainties, and commenced faith enough to believe that “The entrance of Thy Word bringeth light.”
For many months I did not visit the little Church in Cheetham Street, but spent time with my old friends of other days. However I had made many new friends whom I visited on occasions, and had a sense of fulfillment and confidence gained throughout the Tent mission experience, the study of the Scriptures, and the friendship of a devoted group of people who had discovered a Faith by which to live.
Despite Kalgoorlie’s falling fortunes, the district was a factor to be reckoned with. That year the town prepared for a visit of Royalty in the person of Edward, Prince of Wales, Heir Apparent to the Throne of England. Nothing is more calculated …..the colonial fervor than a touch with Royalty.
There was active promotion – British automobiles were to seen along the new macadamized streets of the cities of Australia, the Morris Cowleys, Morris Oxfords, the Austins, even at times, the top-liner the Rolls-Royce. But could those British cars keep pace with the new assembly-line Fords and Dodges, advertised in the “Kalgoorlie Miner” of those times for one hundred and sixty pounds ten schillings for the Ford and the latest Dodge with five balloon tires at three hundred and forty-five pounds? In the light of today’s automotive world an enigmatic smile is the most appropriate response.
However the Goldfields were not behind in world affairs. Our main streets were now macadamized, but horses and carriages could still be seen beside hitching posts and troughs along the side streets. A year or so earlier the first aeroplane to be built in Western Australia a strutted bi‑plane with Gnome engine that had been put together at the Kalgoorlie School of Mines, took off from Kalgoorlie Racecourse. Piloted by a local man, it circled the Golden Mile in a twelve‑minute flight.
As for me, my first close-range view of a lighter-than-air machine occurred on a Sunday afternoon walking jaunt with my friend Ida Giles. Anchored securely to the lawns of the Kalgoorlie Racecourse and piloted by a wartime flying ace, Norman Brearly, it was a frail-looking bi‑plane which Ida caught in the lens of her box camera Kodak. The resultant prints, was some of a more personal snapshots of girls in wheelbarrows, are linked to those days. Such snaps are a frozen capsule of Time, choice moments of life immortalized on sensitive paper, to be recovered at the whim of a moment.
Since the mission Tent had been dismantled I had occasionally attended the traditional galvanized-iron Church on Cheetham Street, always for a Youth program on Saturday afternoons. There I kept desultory contact with those I had learned to respect, and, in particular the then minister, one Pastor Britten, who with his talented wife, carried on the earlier program of worship. His home was open to visitors, and I often shared their friendship and hospitality.
To reach their home, I crossed the railway line still serving the functioning towns in the North. Gone was the golden glow which had brightened the earlier years. I had cause to pass by the Open Cut goldmine still known as Hannan’s Reward, where gold had been first spotted in the year 1893. Beside the road were thinly-covered shafts, piles of rubble, and here and there idle overhead mine workings, sad relics of a day long gone. There in Kalgoorlie lay bare the frustrated efforts of many a miner, for the passing world to see – and consider.
One night Pastor Britten told me that he was leaving the district, and that a younger man would come to step into his shoes. His name was Roy Brandstater. Ah! That was better. He was young enough to tolerate my unstable attitudes; to face up to my questionings – if he had sufficient patience.
With the departure of the Britten family I felt a strange sense of loss. Mother and sisters were then occupied in their varying interests, patient with my unaccountable preferences, and my continued interested in the little Church. I still retained my friendship with those I had known from my school days, and shared some activities with them when I could.
I felt strangely like the fictional character who jumped on his horse and galloped off in all directions. I knew I must face up to life’s realities eventually. Perhaps I should gallop back to the Church, and meet the young man who was filling the gap in the Church pulpit. That I did.
I found him friendly, noticeably ambitious as he made his entry into his chosen field of service, public evangelism. He early announced that he would be commencing a series of meetings in the Boulder Church on Sunday evenings, and invited his congregation to support him by their presence.
For me that was stalemate. Boulder was probably four miles from my home, served by the rather slow moving trams. My friend Ida Giles, had no wish to accompany me and I tarried awhile. However, I eventually enlisted the interest and support of my old friend and neighbor, Isadore Masel, feeling his Jewish background had conditioned him to be receptive to the words of the ancient Hebrew scribes and the fearsome visions of Daniel the Prophet.
By the close of the first evening’s lecture in the Boulder Adventist Church I felt it was the first occasion my Jewish friend had ever entered a Christian sanctuary, and certainly the first time he had read the story of the horned, non-descript creatures portrayed so vividly. Isadore decided he had no wish to attend further meetings, but my own interest had been awakened and despite the distance, I often was to be found seated on one of the hard pews.
At the close of the series of meetings I met the young minister, generally in the home of mutual friends. He had a fine tenor voice, and was an expert on his silver trumpet-model Conn cornet. He had graduated from a College in New South Wales, and offered his estimate of its worth to him in words of unstinting praise, well worth remembering. “Avondale made my life. It gave me purpose and incentive. It opened doors into the future, and showed me how to live and serve.”
Wasn’t that just what I myself was seeking. I watched him, noting his interest in the young self-satisfied members of the Church, endeavoring to help them attain satisfying careers of their own. I liked that. I knew I could also reach beyond myself if I just stuck around.
This, then, is the simple story of how I met the man who was to become my husband, and of the convoluted course by which we had met.
I knew why he had chosen the profession of a preacher, devoting his life and talents to a program of public evangelism and pastoral ministry, and the less than ideal conditions. His background had prepared him in advance of the need.
However, there were few opportunities for us to discuss any personal interests. We always met in a general gathering, or in the Church or hall, always with due reserve, as from the stilted arena of a counselor to a learner. There was watchful restraint on his part, which was relaxed when we met at a Watch Night service in the Anglican Church on New Year’s Eve, 1924.
For years past I had attended that mid-night service, listening to a brief topical exhortation from the pulpit, then the joyous ringing of the Old Year, and the exultant chimes of the untried New Year. It was always a time of traditional celebrations, of making new resolutions.
That night, 1924, was different. My friend, Dorothy Gray, had asked to accompany me, and whether or not the new minister knew our plans, we saw him wheel his bicycle to a safe parking spot and enter the Church. Then he sat down beside us. We learnt it was his first-ever Watch Night service and he agreed it was a delightful and fitting way to welcome the New Year, which he hoped would be full of promise.
He walked us both home, Dorothy to her front gate, and a few blocks further on, to the corner of my street, his uncomplaining bicycle measuring out the extra distance. It was the first of many occasions we met to talk and walk together.
At my request he told me of his background, so totally different from my own. It took on the nature of a magnificent pioneering adventure. That he has now written his own memoires from material from existing family records should not hinder me from recounting in utmost brevity the sketchy outlines as I know them.
The Brandstadter (original spelling) odyssey commenced in or near Konigsberg, somewhere in the land of ever-changing borders twixt Germany, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Of German origin, Grandfather Emanuel Brandstater, age thirty-seven years, his wife Caroline, thirty‑one, and their three children, Emanuel Junior, Gustav Adolf, Carolina and Herman, joined a shipload of emigrants in Hamburg, Germany, and sailed from their native homeland in October, 1871. After five months of indifferent conditions in the sailing barque, “Eugenie”, we tied up on the deep‑sea harbor of Hobart, Tasmania.
From that time onward through the years, the Brandstater family fended for themselves, increasing in numbers, and carving out homes in virgin forested hills some twelve miles beyond their port of entry.
According to a contract now in the Archives Department of the Tasmanian Government, Emanuel Brandstater, Senior built the first State School in the town of Bismarck in the year 1877 for the sum of one hundred and ninety pounds. His children grew up young Australians, yet preserving the national heritage in ways of life and culture. Emanuel Junior appears to have spent much of his life in the heavily forested hills country, where he married and eventually became the father of eight children. Roy Brandstater was the youngest child of that marriage, attending the country schoolhouse originally built by his grandfather.
Possibly it was an average story of migrant settlers, but to me it became a heroic saga of resourcefulness and ingenuity, a story of stalwart Protestant faith and eventual conversion to the Seventh‑day Adventist persuasion. In the year 1889 the family and friends became the prime movers and builders of a Seventh-day Adventist Church on a large section of land, a gift of the maternal grandfather.
With such a background it is not surprising that when Roy’s primary education was completed in the little Bismarck schoolhouse, he would join his older brother in the denominational College, Avondale, in New South Wales, where they could advance their education and fill their chosen calling.
The friendship between Roy and me was never the same after that special New Year Watch Night service. We found opportunities to meet together, to walk the quiet sections of the town, he with his inevitable bicycle by his side. There were things with which we did not see eye to eye, and much in which we both agreed. We reviewed the period since I had met with the Church; the interest I had shown; the convictions with which I had wrestled; but between us was always my lack of total commitment to the Church which he served.
He told of an up-coming Camp Meeting and Conference Session which demanded his presence, and to which all members of the Church were freely invited. Several large marquees would be erected to provide suitable speaking accommodation for visiting preachers coming from other States and overseas, and hundreds of spacious dwelling tents as comfortable as one cared to make them. He posed the obvious question, “Why not make it? Why not tent with your available friend, Dorothy Gray?”.
I was interested, approaching Tasman Williams for ten days’ vacation in Perth, which was granted without further questioning, which I was not anxious that he indulged. I talked the matter over with mother, which added to her conviction that there was no end to the novelty ideas that the Adventist Church practiced!
I know it would have surprised had I told of my blossoming friendship with the young minister. We were then in love, and though our relationship seemed sincere and rewarding, no question of a definite engagement had been discussed. That was wise, for our relationship/friendship could never climax in a lifetime together unless/until I was prepared to surrender my life to Christ, and share the service to which Roy was committed.
I had not at that time invited Roy to our home, which I now know, was palpably unfair. However, mother had been influenced by unworthy criticism of the Church by none other than the Anglican Archdeacon. That was his privilege, for he was about watching over the interest of his flock, of which I was one by confirmation. Such a petty matter seemed inconsequential to me, but I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and I would wait a more convenient season before introducing “that Mr. Brandstater” to our home.
The well-organized Camp Meeting proved a wonderful success story, if such be judged by the responses of two Goldfields young women. Dorothy Gray joined the Church in company with her mother and sister; I much appreciated her companionship.
With hessian (burlap) wire-stapled to the ground, two wire-mattress beds, a table and chairs, and a couple of petrol boxes for food and incidentals, we were able to revel in the camp life with a degree of kindred comforts.
Rising bell at 6:00 in the morning prepared us for a day of diversified programs on a wide variety of subjects, offering a choice to every-one. The evening meetings provided the main thrust of the Camp, and were generally conducted by visiting speakers. Food was available, and little was left to chance. Without doubt, it was a time for making new friends of my own age, all happy and well adjusted in the faith to which they belonged.
The subjects I had heard before. The appeals to my heart, and the conviction of my good judgment, convinced me it was time to make a break with my past routine which had so long resisted change. I agonized with myself, and finally decided to join with a Movement which was destined to make its way in a needy world. I would approach Mr. Williams, to whom I was accountable in most things, and tell him frankly of my convictions. If deemed advisable I would leave home and make a new way for myself in another environment. I had gained a new purpose, a consciousness that there was “no limit to the usefulness of one, who, putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit in the life”, as one dedicated writer has said. I had been converted under the divine influence; where it would lead I did not know.
It was a small move I was making but it was the most momentous I would ever make. It changed my life. It took me to the ends of the earth in time, in distance, in consequences and to the ultimate in happiness.
“There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.”
