PERCY FROM THE PEWS
Sectors of the Anglican Church in Tasmania are making a concerted push to cater for youth – yet there’s a paradox that the church leadership wants to get rid of an important, valued youth facility: Mission Afloat at Montgomery Park, Coningham.
This camp originated from the church realising it needed to help youth. Many people worked hard to achieve the goal, and the church provided the money needed for the buildings. They were destroyed by the 1967 bushfires, but rose from the ashes to become the significant campus of today giving nautical training to the young.
Yet the church now plans to sell the park. One wonders what the many who helped the camp become a reality – and the many more who have enjoyed the benefit of the training there over the years – think of that action.
Turn the clock back to 1946, with Tasmania struggling to emerge from the impact of World War Two. Tough times, and the then Church of England recognising something had to be done for its youth, facing as they were the pressures of other influences.
There was a church Diocesan Youth Committee putting new emphasis on youth, particularly adolescent 12 to 20-year-olds. There was an awareness that if something wasn’t done others would capture the young – and were doing so, by buying camp sites.
Meeting in April, 1946, committee members were told that three free churches (basically the Protestant denominations) had already obtained such camp sites that year.
But there was a further reason for Anglican apprehension where the young might be heading – towards red ideology: “We should also be alive to implications of the sponsoring of the Eureka Youth League by the Communist Party in several centres of the North.”
This league was at its most influential in the 1940s and 1950s, with camps, carnivals and sporting activities on its agenda.
And there was an additional concern about the possibility of the state government taking full responsibility for youth work, along the lines of what was the British Service of Youth, the committee seeing such a step as having “dire effects” on Anglican youth efforts.
The committee emphasised: “The Church of England cannot continue to borrow or hire other people’s sites, or worse still fail to run such camps and courses owing to a lack of any site at all, as is at present the case.”
It urged church synod members to do “everything in their power” to make a site available for youth activities. So the effort began to make a camp a reality. But it took time – there was first the essential matter of a suitable site.
Enter Hedley Allen, farmer of Snug, and provider of what was needed. The committee recorded, in October, 1947, his offer of a block of land at Little Snug. The church found it ideal for its purposes.
(Church records mention him initially giving two and a half acres, but in the final official transfer of the land’s title to the church trustees in January, 1949, the area was three-plus acres – in a location which then, as now, gave a fine marine outlook over North West Bay).
The camp project had stimulated enthusiasm, and not only in church circles. In September, 1948, the committee noted the Town Planning Commissioner showing an interest and offering to take the church youth organiser on a site inspection tour.
The actual building work was to be in stages, and achieving the whole scheme took some years. It wasn’t until mid-1954 that Montgomery Park was opened and dedicated. There had been at times, as in 1952, some hiatus in funding, and sourcing building materials. In the need for timber one idea was that a pine tree in the grounds of Hobart’s Bishopscourt (long the residence of bishops but now sold by the church) be cut down and milled for construction at the camp, but the wood was deemed unsuitable.
Yet despite difficulties, the records show a steadfast determination to see the park fully operational. This is evidenced by the church Diocesan Council over the years providing a series of financial loans, several of them substantial, for the cause. There were five parishes weighing in with help. There were assurances of “wholehearted interest and support” from Hobart youth organisations. And much more from volunteers willing to pitch in and help.
There was fund-raisers – a debutante ball, poster competition, 1,500 money boxes sent out to youth groups and Sunday schools, with an attached message: “My gift to Montgomery Park.”
It would have been a terrible blow to all involved to see their camp razed by the Black Tuesday bushfires of February 7, 1967. But through more determination Montgomery Park was renewed and improved – only for it to now face another threat to survival.
In previous writing on this subject I covered appreciation shown by some of the many schools which have had children on Mission Afloat courses. I add the following from an officer involved in distance education after large groups had been there:
“Everyone involved put in 100%-plus to facilitate the best possible program for those students and for that I’m extremely appreciative. These students will remember the camps as one of the highlights of their school life. Where else could they have fished for flounder at night, experienced life in a life raft, snorkelled with sea horses, sailed in a fair breeze, played games together, gained an understanding of the tides, wind power, navigation, and interacted with caring and concerned adults in a safe and happy environment. You made that happen!”
