St Barnabas Kalamunda in Kalamunda, Western Australia, Australia | Church

St Barnabas Kalamunda

Locality: Kalamunda, Western Australia, Australia

Phone: +61 400 452 426

Address: 40 Railway Road 6076 Kalamunda, WA, Australia

Website: kalamunda.perth.anglican.org/index.html

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24.01.2022 Lent Squared Art Exhibition closed today with a check for $3000 being handed to David Stewart of the Kalamunda Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade. Pictures are in new homes and Graeme Quartley’s Stations of the Cross are rehung.

16.01.2022 A story about James Noble d1941 as recounted by Peter Harrison from his time at Oombulgurrie twenty years after the death of James Noble. This entry is also emb...ellished by the notes of Charles Sherlock in ‘Australian Anglicans Remember’(2015) and photos from The Guardian. Yesterday in A Prayer Book for Australia (1995) we commemorate the Aboriginal saint and hero James Noble who died in 1941. He was the first Australian Aboriginal clergyperson, ordained in Perth in 1925 to continue his missionary work at Forrest River. Here, at what is now reclaimed as Oombulgurrie, Jame’s wife Angelina treated the sick, taught the children, baked the bread and cooked for the staff as well as raising her family of six children. One wonders which one of the two was the ‘saint and hero’. James Noble re-built the mission buildings with his hand-made sun dried bricks. He worked as missionary and a gifted speaker alongside Ernest Gribble amongst the 170 residents and 800 regular visitors to the mission which was established at their ceremonial grounds. A year after James’ ordination the mission was the centre of police reprisals against a traditional owner who had killed a pastoralist living on the ancestral land who was said to have raped the Aborigine’s wife (and a lot of other Aboriginal women according to the stories told). It was a massacre designed to wipe out the entire community. It was denied. James Noble used his tracking skills to uncover the coverup. He found stone ovens and returned to the mission with teeth and bones that led to the arrest and charging of the police who had led the massacre (which never went to trial). Reports of the extent of this 1926 Forrest River Massacre range from 16 to several hundred murders. James Noble’s wife Angelina spoke 5 languages and interpreted for the inquiry. I wonder what we would know if she had been writing the history? Thirty five years after the massacre its memory was still strong in the stories of the Forrest River mission, when a young engineering student Peter Harrison spent his summer holidays there installing 110 volt DC electric power and lighting systems and tinkered with the water and sewerage works. A lanky lad, Peter hung around the kitchens and community garden listening to the old Aboriginal women. They has been kids at the time of the massacre and had escaped into the bush. Peter remembers their stories of the massacre. Two old Aboriginal women could still recount every person who was massacred in that raid. They didn’t name their names after their death. They used nick-names in their remembering. They told their story and could place all the dead in their familial relationship to their ancestors and to the ongoing community. Peter counted 115 Aborigines who these women recounted in their story. When Peter worked on the Forrest River mission in 1961, the community that had survived the massacre by going bush would commemorate the deaths. There was an iron cross erected at the site of one of the stone massacre ovens. Peter joined them on All Souls Day as the community gathered around the cross at the site to commemorate their killed and burned ancestors from the 1926 massacre. He saw the community visit the site often. It had become part of their remembrance. Some of the dancing ceremonies were joyful but other ceremonies were very sad. Due to the decimating effects of this inter generational trauma, Peter Collier, WA government minister, had the site closed, the people evicted and the buildings destroyed in 2014. He had the site cleared of any vestige of Aboriginal or mission history, the remaining mud brick cottages that had been built by Rev James Noble, the consecrated open-air chapel ‘The Chapel of St Michael and All Angels’ , the old people’s shelters and the ceremonial grounds, all obliterated. But the work of James and Angelina Noble in bringing the truth to light, and the role of those survivors in telling the truth of what white Australia did to the Aborigines can not be obliterated so summarily. All of us who live on Australian land live with this legacy. Truth telling needs to be upheld so that healing and a new future can be fostered for all Australians. Burning the massacred bodies is the first coverup. Obliterating the community that survived and lived with that trauma is another coverup. When will we open and clean the wound of this way of relating? How will we hold those who live with this inter generational trauma? How can the traditional owners live on their land with the dignity they had before the whitfellas in 1926 and 2014 tried to obliterate them and claim their lands? As we commemorate the life of James Noble all these questions stand before us, unanswered.

16.01.2022 Here begins our Jesse Tree adventure

14.01.2022 Vintage Fair. Take 2

13.01.2022 Well, imagine that!

13.01.2022 The services prepared by Peregrin for our All Hallows Triduum are now available on the St Barnabas YouTube channel. All Hallows Eve Eucharist - 6.00pm Saturday 31 October https://youtu.be/ns50C1aK6P8... All Saints Eucharist - 9.00am Sunday 1 November https://youtu.be/HEqmOsT0vVE All Souls Evensong - 6.00pm Sunday 1 November https://youtu.be/9xNrcmFthhk

12.01.2022 Jesse Tree 2. A family resemblance

08.01.2022 Congratulations to Bron and everyone involved with the Vintage Fair and Glenda with the Book Sale. We raised $5000.

07.01.2022 Matthew Paul Miller, known by his Hebrew and stage name Matisyahu, is an American Jewish reggae singer. This most recent orchestration in Haifa asked 3,000 Musl...ims and Jews (none of whom had met before) to come together and learn the song One Day by Matisyahu in under an hour. Not only that, but they learned how to sing and harmonize the lyrics in three different languages. The resulting concert, which was made in collaboration with Beit HaGefen, the Haifa Municipality, and the Port of Haifa, is a breathtaking display of unity and beauty. See more