For the locals of Woomargama, caring for a little old church is central to their spiritual and community life.
Words Julie Gibbs
Photography Lean Timms
DURING prayers at a service for the catastrophic 2020 bushfires, Julie Adams, the verger and “queen bee” of Woomargama’s St Mark’s Anglican Church, felt compelled to get up and discreetly turn around a prayer cushion so the zip would no longer show to the congregation.
This was no fusty, musty cushion but a beautifully upholstered rectangular piped example commissioned by Perth interior designer Kim Pearson. How does a little, nearly-forgotten wooden church in country New South Wales come to have such pedigreed soft furnishings?
Churchgoers often need to navigate their way through a mob of sheep at the front steps. Walking into this white weatherboard church made of Murray pine feels like a reassuring embrace. The walls of horizontal natural timber panels emit a friendly, approachable warmth. Vases are full of roses, loquats and leaves foraged from gardens in the district and arranged by Adams. The wooden pews are dressed with long cushions of traditional floral fabric, backed with rich velvet. (They’re turned over for alternate services, so they wear evenly.)
Clare Cannon is the current custodian of Woomargama Station at the edge of the Great Dividing Range, near the New South Wales-Victoria border. Her parents, Gordon and Margaret Darling, bought the station in 1965 and Cannon has been farming cattle and sheep on it for the past 12 years. The little town of Woomargama has traditionally existed as home for the community of workers that has supported the station since it was founded in 1838. Cannon takes her leadership role in the community very seriously and is passionate about the compact local church, built in 1888. In the wider district, these churches are vulnerable to demolition or being converted into houses.
Cannon animatedly recounts a royal visit in 1983, when Charles and Diana, then Prince and Princess of Wales, and their baby William made Woomargama their base during their Australian tour. (A cot was made specially for Prince William in Wagga Wagga.) They arrived in March in torrential rain and their visit will forever be remembered by the locals for the breaking of a drought. The royals didn’t attend the little wooden church in Woomargama, fondly referred to by the locals as “the cathedral”. They worshipped at the larger church in Holbrook so the wider district could also participate.
Members of the local community paint and take care of the church. In 2012, the town was compensated for the Hume Highway bypass and, along with tree planting and streetscaping, money was allocated to fix the church footings. A neglected leadlight window was restored and reinstated. Cannon donated new carpet and, together with Kim Pearson, she embarked on the soft furnishings project to make the pews inviting and comfortable. They chose traditional, quality fabrics and the cushions were made by an upholsterer in Melbourne, with a special one for the minister’s chair.
Clare Cannon (left) with Julie and Bert Adams; traditional florals for the pew cushions; a hub of celebration; the church is a place for remembrance and deep prayer during long droughts and bushfires. Photography by Lean Timms.
The church is close to Cannon’s heart – she and her husband, Andrew, were married here, with hay bales placed out the front as extra pews.
A Sunday service is held once a month and an ex-headmaster of the local school plays the old pianola. There is an aged pump organ out the back, which Cannon hopes to have reinstated.
There are occasional weddings, funerals, christenings and even black-tie music recitals held here. It is a place of deep prayer during long droughts and bushfires - these events bring people together and this little chapel still has much spiritual comfort to offer.
At the edge of the churchyard is an elm tree more than 200 years old known as the Meeting Tree, a shady place for children to play, for lovers to “bump into” each other, and worshippers to tether horses ridden to church. It was where the Woomargama Station workers would assemble each morning to receive their orders of the day, rung through from HQ to the overseer who lived nearby and had the only telephone in the village.
Julie Adams’s husband, Bert, is a shearer and they are his sheep by the front door, kept on the grounds to mow the grass. Autumn, the alpaca, guards the flock. Bert also has an abiding affection for St Mark’s. “You are with God straight away on entering the church,” he says.
