“Absolutely not, we are not going to Cairns!” Within 24 hours of my uttering those silly words we, of course, had plane tickets and reservations to this tropical city of 120,000 in the north-east corner of Australia. I find it very difficult to say no and back it up when Catherine and my daughters gang up on me. They visited Cairns when they had toured Australia in November 2001 and absolutely loved it. As soon as we landed in Sydney on this trip and started plotting our various side trips they campaigned for a Cairns encore. I protested the idea given that Australia is huge and it seemed silly, given our limitations of time, for them to return to Cairns even if it would be a first visit for James, Alex and me.

Fortunately, I followed Catherine’s instincts rather than mine since we had a fabulous weekend visiting rain forests, wandering around Cairns, and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. But the unexpected highlight was a worship service that James and I attended early Sunday morning in the aboriginal village of Yarrabah. How we found ourselves there is a story in itself.

The tragic history of the Aboriginal peoples in Australia is well known and documented. When the British landed in Botany Bay in 1788, anywhere from 300,000 to 1,000,000 Aboriginal people populated the continent. Similar to the fates of other indigenous peoples when cultures collided, disease and hostile action pretty much wiped them out. By the beginning of the 20th century, around 60,000 remained. They now constitute about 2% of Australia’s population of 22 million. The Australian government set up the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in the 1980’s to assist Aboriginal communities in economic development. The Australian government under Prime Minister John Howard recently announced that ATSIC was to be disbanded for reasons that I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to comment on.

I wanted to film elements of Aboriginal culture, and not knowing where to start, contacted the media office of ATSIC in Canberra. After explaining that we planned to visit Cairns, I was introduced to Alistair Harris, an ATSIC employee in Cairns. Despite the fact that he had much bigger issues to deal with such as the fact that ATSIC and his organization was being dismantled, Alistair went out of his way to help me in Cairns. He provided introductions so that I could film a youth Australian Rules Football tournament that involved many Aboriginal players. Despite my interest in filming dance, he correctly intuited that I would not be interested in filming at the local tourist-focused cultural centers and instead gave me the phone number of Leslie Baird, a minister of an Anglican Church in the Aboriginal community of Yarrabah.

After calling Reverend Baird’s number a few times and leaving messages, I got a call back Saturday night while we eating dinner in Cairns from someone at the Church. After patiently giving me directions to the Church they mentioned the service started at 8:00 am the next morning. Having no transportation, I grabbed a cab to the airport barely in time to find a car rental counter before it closed. With the rental car, James and I headed out of Cairns at 6:30am the next morning to find this church in Yarrabah. Yarrabah may be literally across the river estuary from Cairns, but figuratively it is the other side of the train tracks. Despite being only a few miles away as the crow flies, one has to drive 45 minutes south to cross the tidal flats and back up to the beautiful sheltered valley housing this community of 3,000. From the upscale tourist world of Cairns, one enters a very different world in Yarrabah. Anyone who has been in Native American towns on reservations in the U.S. would recognize the environment in Yarrabah.

We quickly found the open tin building that would serve as the church. Reverend Baird welcomed us and went out of his way to make us feel welcome. In fact, the reception we received at this church was the warmest, nicest, most open reception I have received at any first-time visit to a church - ever. Many churches open services by having people greet and welcome those around you. In this church, people got up and greeted every single person in the congregation. Worshipers don’t stop until they offer the “Peace of Christ” to each of the other 60 or so other worshipers.

Although ostensibly an Anglican Church, the services seemed to owe more to a Pentecostal tradition than what I have previously experienced in more formal Anglican services. The services also combined Christian worship traditions with elements of Aboriginal culture such as Aboriginal dancers. Some conservative worship traditions may look down their nose at the inclusion of Aboriginal dances and some cultural purists may decry the watering-down of Aboriginal cultural elements into Western religious services, but I thought it was beautiful. Here was a group of people worshiping God in their own way.

Without meaning to sound disrespectful, I have always been uncomfortable with American Pentecostal worship traditions with their speaking in “tongues” or frequent references to their interpretations of Revelations “end times”. In this culture, however, with their reliance on “visions” and “dreaming”, such references seemed much more natural. People spoke openly and freely throughout the services of their dreams and visions and how they were related to the sermon, the scripture reading, and even the visit by James and me!

Their closing hymn seemed very appropriate for the setting of this village and these people:

I, the Lord of Sea and Sky,
I have heard my people cry:
All who dwell in dark and sin
My hand will save.
I the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people’s pain;
I have wept for love of them-
They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
I will speak my word to them.
Who shall I send?

Here I am, Lord
Is it I, Lord
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go Lord,
If you lead me;
I will hold your people in my heart.

Incredibly, this beautiful hymn that so elegantly captures the situation of this Aboriginal community is a hymn sung often at the Congregational Church of Mercer Island (CCMI), my home church an ocean away. Hearing it sung in the setting of this church and community was touching.