Street Preacher

Well tonight's story offers some qualified hope as we meet people coming to terms with their past.

Col Davies : Hey brother, how you going?

Col Davies : So, I said : what can I do for you? And he said: Street ministry.

Col Davies: So, when he said : street ministry, I said: thank you very much. Now, I had all that power in me then to say I had authority from Jesus to go and do his work.

Col Davies: My name's Colin Davis and I'm here for six months. I'm from Batemans Bay and I come up here for six months to be the caretaker for Crossroads. Friends asked me to do it and I said at the same time the Lord asked me, so I said, yeah, with both hands.

Col Davies: G'day sister, how're going?..... the lights caught us!

Col Davies: Street Ministry? I go and talk to people. I just say hello brother, hello sister, how are you going? And they say to me, how am I going? And I say, oh good. How are you going?

Man: Now that I don't drink or gamble I can now pay, give her money for food, bills, and stuff, you know. Whereas before....

Col Davies: And then that's when they tell me. So I gotta sit down for 2 hours, 2½ hours, sometimes 3 hours, sometimes 1½ hours. I'll be listening to their story. And when I listen to their story, I find it very rewarding today to them.

Man: If it wasn't for these people I wouldn't have nowhere to go.... I would have not even a life to look forward to .... Without my uncle Col, thank you... Best people ...Amen to that one... and the Lord will look after anyone.

Col Davies: See you brother

Col Davies: I was taken away when I was nine years old. One morning the welfare cars pulled up, and just put us all in cars and took us boys to KBH, Kinchela Boys Home. In Kempsey.

Kinchela Boys Home, it was a home where you were locked away from your family, from your friends that you were used to, and from your school, from everybody, you were just locked away, and you had to make do to survive. But I didn't know that was our main aim. But we stayed alive and we put up with it, and we come out very angry boys.

Col Davies: This is Matty, and I went in the Boys home with him from Cowra, and there's me, Matt and Dinks, we're the three brothers that went in like the Three Stooges. And I've found out he's Matty Perry, I thought he was my brother, and when we come out we found we were cousins. But when we went in the boys home we were all brothers and sisters. Well, three girls, or two girls?

Matty : Well, put it this way, all the boys who've done time in Kinchela Boys Home, they was ill treated. The lot of them. You know what I mean? If you don't do anything you get a cane. Like that, straight across your bum.

Col Davies: And not only that, the cane would wrap around, sometimes it would hit you here in your private parts, you'd be going, oh, and you wouldn't be able to walk for a sec.

Matty: First time I've talked about it. But what I've seen in there was terrible. I went there about five. They was about six or seven, the two brothers. But I thought they was my brothers, but they're not.

Col Davies: So we're heading down towards the Block now.

Col Davies: G'day

Col Davies: The Block is where aboriginal people live on the Block here.

Col Davies: G'day, how you's going ... Bruce, how you going? Here we are again.

Col Davies: They belong here, this is their land. This is the only land they can claim that is something of theirs.

Col Davies: This is Pastor Bill's house, and this is where I come most of the time because I'm his right hand man. So I come here to help him and see what I can do for him and the ministry that he does here on the Block.

Col Davies: So this is what Pastor Bill's house is, it's number six, so we'll go and say hallo to him. Let's hope he's got his make-up on. (laugh at door, shake hands). Pastor Bill, how ya goin?

There's happening up there, and I just wanted to see how you are and I was going to tell you about it....

Col Davies: Main thing is, Pastor Bill is my pastor now. He's on the Block now, in Redfern, and I'm just so pleased to be part of it.

Pastor Bill: Yes, we actually grew up together in Kinchella. That's at KBH, the Kinchella Boys Home. We could talk all day for the things that are unforgiven, that happened in our lives. For instance, we've lost our culture. We've lost our mothers, we've lost our fathers. We've lost our integrity, we've lost just about everything. When the white man taken us away.

Most of the guys there when they were growing up they sort of tended to blame their family, to blame their Mums and their Dads when the welfare came in and they were taken away. I know in my case I cried out to my mother, from my heart for me and my three little brothers. Very, very small, for them to come and help us because two police officers and a welfare officer grabbed us and put us in the car. I cried out for Mum, because the mothers are more or less our protectors, looked after us and all that. But when I cried out to Mum she turned around and she walked away and went inside and closed the door. And sort of that straightaway rejection got into my spirit and I felt rejected. Just about half my life while I was in the home growing up. I felt that rejection there and that's a common thing with a lot of our brothers.

Pastor Bill: I know now as I've grown up that it wasn't mum's fault. Mum had no control over the situation at the time. But that's happened to a lot of us who all blame our parents for it. It wasn't their fault. I know that mum couldn't bear to see us children being taken from her.

Col Davies: When you find human beings, men belting you, hitting you, it changes the rules straight away, as soon as you get belted by a man with the palm on the ear, your whole life changed from then on, you become an animal. Because he just hit you and he got away with it. Which you went to the manager and told the manager, and the manager just hit you again. And so then it becomes a real hard game. So I became violent because that's the way to survive. You gotta survive. You've got to be on top, or on the bottom.

Pastor Bill: Spaghetti Bolognese if you like. Something like that I suppose.

Hopefully, I think it's in Matthew 25, 26, 27, 28, where Jesus is speaking to his disciples and he said, "when I was in prison did you come and visit? When I was naked did you clothe me? When I was hungry did you feed me? And when I was in prison did you come and visit me?" So we're just doing what our master is telling us to do, is to feed the needy. Even though, you only have to look out the window, right out the front of my door here, and you can see the needy. They just come down here for a meal. Colin and myself have been called into this part of the vineyard here where we need to do what the word of God says to do. To be the word instead of preaching and talking about it, we've actually got to be it, by feeding the needy.

Rita: We'll actually have to get a frying pan with a handle, Pastor Bill

Pastor Bill: I spent three years in jail, nine years in a boys home. I had a pretty rough time. I used to get into the drug business. Mixed up with the wrong crowd. In '79 I was about with some boys, making some contacts and things like that. What I had was a bit of an acid trip. My skin started turning yellow, demon spirits started coming out of the wall, sweat's pouring out of me. One minute I'm freezing cold, the next, I grabbed this bible and put it on my chest and cried out to my grandmother for help. Nan was a Christian. I didn't know about god or Jesus or anything else. But I knew Nan was a beautiful person, so I cried out to her for help, even though she'd died. Of course nothing happened.

And then I thought well if Nan was a Christian maybe god is real. Maybe there is a Jesus Christ. So I turned around and asked Jesus for help. Bang! In one split second three addictions were broken out of my life. Drinking, gambling and smoking. Just went splitzzz, like that. And that's 27 years ago. And you know since then I've spent five years in prison as an Assistant Chaplin. As an assistant to the Chaplin.

Pastor Bill: When I go in to prisons or jails and that I don't go preaching to people and all that. All I do is just tell them my conversion, how Christ helped me. And I leave it with them. They can make up their own minds if they want to, give their lives to Christ.

Man: Well, who else does this? No-one ... When I'm upset I'll come and talk to them, tell them my problems. Yeah I feel real good after speaking to someone about it. I don't like sharing what I think and all that... but you got to get it off your chest, eh.

Col Davies: Hello sister Pat .... Quite a while since we met .... Come in

Sr Pat: Come and sit down and we'll catch up with each other

SR PAT: He came, first I met him, when I first came on to the block, he used to call in here now and again. He came in and wanted to talk about all sorts of problems that he had. Which of course I understand to be related to his experiences as a young boy in the homes.

Because their family relationships were destroyed at a very young age, so many of these people haven't had the nurturing that they had a right to as children.

And so there are often abrasive relationships. It can happen. And they resort often to substance abuse in any form. And that is why people need to understand that the origin of the substance abuse. And of course in turn that effects the family relationships. So it's like a vicious circle. And the best thing I think that happens is when there's a group of people and they start talking with each other and sharing.

Joe: You understand what I'm talking about, Sister Pat?

Pat : Yes. Do you think that was a good thing for you? Or was it a bad thing?

Joe : No, it did me a bit of good, know what I mean.

Pat : Would have been better if you'd been with your family, probably.

Joe : But now I'm an alcoholic

Pat : Now you're alcoholic

Joe : I just come here for a drink and be merry. Enjoy my friends. My people. They are my people. Blood relations too, mate, aren't they.

Rita: We met at an AMS meeting, Aboriginal Medical Service meeting. It was in '71. He just wouldn't let me go. Yes, he was a very bad gambler. Compulsive gambler

Col Davies: So we'd go to pubs, and play pool, and hustle for money. And we'd win, most of the times.

Rita: Oh, there were all sorts of serious times. Marriage breakdowns? Oh, yes, we had lots of marriage breakdowns. Cos he was never with us, me and the kids. Oh yes we've been through the domestic violence. He's hit me twice, I had him charged both times ...

... but he doesn't admit to the first time, he says he still never done it. So, my word against his.

Col Davies: Well, I was the one that got sentenced. I got caught, in court, twelve months.

Rita : That was the second time.

Col Davies : Was it? Well, cos I don't believe that I hit her, cos when I hit someone I'll knock you well.

Rita: He backhanded me. Split my lip. Yeah.

Col Davies: When we was in the homes, when we give a mouthful cheek back, we'd get belted too. So when it comes to a woman giving us a mouthful and we don't think we've done wrong, then it's pretty heavy to take, so it's just instant. We just react and where we become the manager, the boys home caretaker who belts us. Well, we do the same to our wives or our girlfriends, that's why half of us, I mean, I threw Rita away seven times, didn't I.

Rita: Colin was very cruel.

And Colin just punished our eldest daughter Stanlene, I don't know what the circumstances were, but he had put an iron bar iron pipe into a hose and he'd flog her with it from her head to her toe. Yeah.

Rita: Thank the Lord, Colin

Col Davies: Oh! Thank you lord for this food we're about to receive ...

Rita: It was a communication breakdown, I think. A lot to do with Colin was his boys home, Kinchella Boys home damaged him because, looking back, when I was rearing the kids, he was really like rearing one of the kids. He was there as a husband in a man's form, but he was still a little boy

Col Davies: And I went home seven times, couldn't make it seven times and my wife chucked me out seven times. So I realised now it must be me with the boys home stuff that I get chucked out. So I said, ok.

Well then when I had a fight with a lad that touched our kids and I ended up doing the wrong thing, trying to kill him.

I was talking to him, but he got smart with me and he moved first, and the wrong thing he done was move. And when he moved I moved faster and got him.

But, you know yourself when you, when somebody just, you kick them and they don't move. That's it. They're gone. And then I got sentenced, and when I got sentenced I got sentenced which I was looking at 26 years. I was in court. And next minute we lost the court case and I get three months....

Col Davies: ....That's when I know there's no human being can do that. No human being can give you that sentence. It's got to be Jesus.

Michael Finnane: He was in serious trouble, he came up to see me, late at night. He was bare-foot, his clothes were dishevelled. And he told me he'd murdered somebody. And I came to act for him. We went down to court in Wollongong. The man had been admitted to intensive care in the brain unit at Canberra Hospital. He was a second grade rugby league player, but he recovered. Colin was convinced he was dead.

Col Davies: Yes, well, when we fight, we fight to kill, and he was in a pool of blood that much, in the dust. Mate, you don't lose that much blood and still stay alive. That's what we were trained to do, kill.

Michael Finnane: And of course if he had been, I've little doubt he would have been charged with murder or manslaughter, or something very serious

Col Davies: Well, it had to be Jesus who brought him back alive. And I went to jail. I said to myself, ah, I've got to ask you for help. Somehow, somewhere along the line I tried to commit suicide and that's when the Lord come to me personally.

Like, when you're first dealing with him it's a shock. I mean I call a freak out. When he talks to you the first couple of times you go, oh wow, man, peachy, are you talking to me, I'm a sinner, I'm this, I'm everything here, and you want to talk to me. He said, but Col, what you do is you ask me for forgiveness of all your sins, like you're asking me to forgive you the sin with your tongue, your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, your mind, your attitude.

Oh it's incredible. I don't know how to explain it really. Because when he talks to you, he talks to you. And I can't sort of say, is it all. I just know that his voice, you know his voice when you hear his voice.

So I said, thank you very much. What can I do for you? And that's when he told me, Street Ministry.

SR Pat: Col is a very spiritual, deeply spiritual man, and his faith is strong. He believes that god loves him and guides him. And that is expressed in words. You know, he says things like: oh God told me to do this, you know. It's an intuitive thing, mainly an intuitive thing. ...

Col Davies: OK, God bless you, have a good day. I just do this street ministry wherever I go.

Sr Pat: And in one certain way you can say, well God did tell him. He tells us. Tells in inverted commas, what our next step is going to be. It's often used in other terms, it's used as intuition. We sort of know. And Aboriginal people are very, very sensitive to that sort of thing.

Pr Bill: You can get yourself cleaned up today brothers and sisters. By getting rid of that gorilla that you've been carrying around. And this is not the message that I had today. But God has changed it. There are people who have come here to this meeting now who are sitting down here looking at me who have got gorillas on their back. Who have got gorillas on their back. It's a load, it's burden, it's weighing you down. Those that need prayer, come on out, and we'll pray for you.

Bill: Well I believe that Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, God on the cross, Calvary, he was the Son of God and that he paid the price of sin and death for me. Now, no way in the world did I see in 2000 years ago do that. But by faith, and it's only by faith that anybody is going to get anything from God. And if they believe that, bang! That's their foot in the door.

Quentin: Walking down here from the station, very angry, very confused, knowing that I was coming to buy drugs and that, praying for some sign, something to help me not do this, you know. And sure enough I walked down the road here and I heard the music and I was uplifted straight away. It was a sign that God is very much in my life and he's here for me.

Pastor Bill: This is the Kinchella Boys Home Office in Redfern.

Pastor Bill: We meet here three or four times a week to meet one another and get our brothers here involved here and other families so we talk about our families and what the needs are for our families. Visit our children, lots of them are in jail, hospitals, things like that, and this is where we all come here to meet.

Des: I see the people here every day, I'm part of it, I talk to all of them, I enjoy it with them you know. They're my family, you see, they're more close to me and I'm close to them

Cecil: That fella there is supposed to be me. We all know what everybody went through, and we understand each other pretty well, but it's pretty hard to talk about, you know.

Buddy: See, Kinchella Boys, it will always be with us. But, see, we're all grown men now. We'd like to put that phase behind us. Because, if we dwell on that, this is my opinion, if we dwell on that, how we were treated, we will hurt more, within ourselves, sitting around here as grown men. And a lot of us would rather be violent because of how we were brought up, and we just like to go round here, have a few beers, and say, well, oh, right-o.

Pr Ray Monaghan: We did not know anything about Kinchella, I particularly did not know anything about Kinchella Boys Home until Bill walked through the door, and then he started bringing all the men in, and out of that we started a program, the first healing programs and then other programs and then developed a project to take the men back to Kinchella last year in September

Pr Ray: Kinchella Boys Home to me is the, well not just the Kinchella Men but the also the Cootamundra, all the Stolen Generation, is the most critical issue that we have to resolve here in this country. It is the heart of the pain of the struggle of our people. Because here you've got a group of people who have got no access to Native Title, who have had their culture, their language, their family relationships, their land relationships, their spiritual affiliations, all of that has been stolen.

We have failed the children of the Stolen Generation.

The challenge for the church here, it's completely failed the Aboriginal people in this country. And the evidence here in Sydney is we don't have very many Aboriginal Churches.

You can't find Aboriginal Congregations that are fostered by the major denominations.

Where as If you were to follow these denominations in their missionary activities in other countries you would see great developments, but here in their own backyard they have completely failed us. The is the greatest criminal act of this church towards indigenous peoples and they have been a party to the stolen generation and although there have been a lot of commitment there in rhetoric, what we don't see is the that commitment in the reality of providing the resources necessary for these men to get their lives back together again.

Cecil: I'm divorced. She divorced me cause I was doing too much gaol.

Buddy: I've got kids everywhere, I got 13 daughters 13 different mothers spread from Adelaide to Brisbane.

Man: But I'm still here but that doesn't mean to say that because she's not with me, because I still love her the way that she is, and she's with the children and I love the children too.

Col Davies: We do, we all do have trouble communicating with our wives and our families. Because we're all still little boy. We are little boys trying to fit in, in a family life, and we haven't been in a family life. We've been in a family life that's all the boys, and when you come out and all of a sudden this other family's on your door step and you go, oh, well what do I do with this?

Rita: I spose it was a slow process, but we had a prophecy prayed over us, the Lord said he would repair our marriage, and he has and he still is. Thirty years next month.

Col Davies (singing): When no-one else can understand me, When everything I do is wrong, You give me hope and consolation, you give me strength to carry on ...

Col Davies: The Lord told me to do karaoke, that is part of my street ministry. When you get up to sing, you're expressing yourself from your heart, how you feel. And so you pick out songs how you feel, and that's why it's very important for me to get them up there to sing

Karaoke Woman : ... Let's hear it for Bruce....

Bruce : If you're going to San Francisco ....

Col Davies: They start off with the sad, sorry stuff, but they're trying to tell people, hey, I'm hurting. So, we need to be heard, and the only way they get heard is when they get up at karaoke. And then the people feel it out in the audience

Once they get up and sing, like Bruce is a good example. Bruce is getting up there, and then all of a sudden he sang a song, and dedicated it to his wife. And she was just grinning like a big tissue cat.

We go out to have a good time because that's what we want. We've missed out on the good times earlier, but now we're making up for it. We're just going out together and having a ball. And the other guys see it and they think it's like a man from Mars.

Bruce : Well, that's love, ain't it. It's nice to see people from the boys home who have found a relationship with people....

Col Davies: Thank you Bruce

Bruce : No, but see, I didn't do that. I married a lovely woman, but because I had no love in the boys home, except for the boys themselves, eh, we loved each other, so how can we show love to our ladies or our kids, cos we were flogged every second day, eh?

Col Davies: That's right, exactly brother.

Col Davies: They say, Gee, you look beautiful together. We dance beautiful, in time, in beat. And we go, oh, we didn't realise we were blessing them so much by just being together.

Bruce: I said to him I'm proud of what you've done for her. Cos, you know, the women, we need their back-up, eh?

Col Davies: You know, cos you said, if I'd spent that bit of quality time with my wife than we'd be still together. That's what you said. And you made me cry then, eh?

The END