by John Algate
Like all the Williamson children Jessie attended the Greenvale Primary School, a one room school where each class had their own row of desks. There was one teacher and always around 20 pupils. The older members of the Williamson family, Olive, born in 1921, James, Marjorie, Jean, Joyce and Gordon, didn’t have the opportunity for a secondary education, because of a lack of transport.
The next born, Vera, was the first to attend Essendon High School following a government initiative to provide a country school bus service, but left after just one year to work at the local Post Office. Thelma, Jessie and Pamela, the last born in 1941, all attended Essendon High School for four years to gain an Intermediate Certificate.
A little surprisingly it was through school, not church, that Jessie’s interest in Christianity developed. She later wrote of her personal ‘road to Damascus’ experience.
We went to high school by bus. At high school I joined the Inter School Christian Fellowship, (run by Stella Lesley, who remained a lifelong friend, mentor and supporter). For the first time I was told that the Bible said I was a sinner. I was not too impressed as I always thought that if I went to church and didn’t kill anyone - that was all that God expected from me.
One day as I was coming home from school it was as if God said to me: ‘Jessie you have been sitting on the fence for too long [me?]. You have to either accept me or reject me.’ That night I knelt by my bedside and asked Jesus to come into my heart and forgive my sin and I wanted to become part of his family. Then I knew that I belonged to Him and He had a plan and purpose for my life as He does for each one of us. Not long after that decision my father had a heart attack and passed away. We had to sell the farm and moved into the city.
Hugh Williamson was just 56 years when he passed away on 7 August 1953 and the family moved to the Melbourne suburb of Essendon. Three years later, on 15 May 1956, Bertha, also aged 56, died of aplastic anaemia, an illness similar to leukaemia that was caused through medical neglect – a failure to check on a side effect of a new antibiotic.
After finishing school Jess worked for a short time in a legal firm until she was old enough to go nursing. She was, from all accounts, an excellent nurse. She won a ‘surgical prize’ at Footscray District Hospital, now known as Western Hospital Footscray. She gained her second certificate in midwifery at The Queen Victoria Hospital, followed by a third certificate in infant welfare and finally a short course in dentistry. Thus she was highly qualified, particularly for the time.
I had always wanted to become a nurse but because I have a hearing disability I thought it would never happen, however the Lord overruled and I was able to get my general training and midwifery.
Jessie’s hearing problems probably began when she was about eight years of age. Thelma recalls a specific childhood incident which Jessie believed triggered the hearing loss.
‘We were up in a pepper tree playing horses with an old saddle when we decided to have stirrups and attached some old metal stirrups to a rope and threw it over the branch. Jess put her foot in the stirrup to swing up over the saddle but of course with nothing to anchor it the other stirrup flew back over the branch with great force and whacked her in her ear. I think her hearing loss was gradual but certainly all her adult life she was totally deaf in that ear. She did seek specialist opinions but it appears there was never anything they could do to help. It was a miracle they ever accepted her to do nursing. She never had any sort of hearing aid. I am sure Jess would have had difficulty at times hearing in a nursing class situation, using a stethoscope and the like. She was very determined, although at times a little hesitant to ask you to repeat something if she couldn’t hear.’
Jessie grew up in a rustic but loving home. While there was a world of difference between the farm life of her childhood in Australia and the third world realities of life in the remote highlands of West Papua, Thelma astutely observes that there were also some unexpected links between Jessie’s two worlds.
‘Looking back on Jessie’s childhood she was in many ways well acquainted with what would be required of her in later years in a more primitive setting. Not many girls would be unfazed at having to pack a fuel stove onto a ship as part of her job requirements and what’s more, know how to use it.’
5. Called to a hard life
I felt missionaries needed to be special people with all kinds of gifting and I couldn’t even sing in tune. I felt far too inadequate for that kind of work.
Jessie Williamson was an evangelical Christian. She firmly believed that God called her to be a missionary nurse and do his work among stone-age tribal people in West Papua, a dangerous and inhospitable place. Where others might see coincidence, Jessie and her colleagues invariably saw God’s guiding hand. She called him the God of the Impossible, accepted his wisdom even at the most baffling of times, and maintained her faith through all the dangers and difficulties of life.
It wasn’t that she was unquestioning – all people question sometimes – but she was unwavering in her faith. We could easily edit God out of Jessie’s memoirs. It would still be a fascinating story – but it wouldn’t be Jessie’s story any more than we could write an honest account of Albert Schweizer without reference to his theology, or Mother Teresa without understanding her faith and what drew her to the back streets of Calcutta.
All mainstream Christian denominations believe the Bible is the word of God, setting out God’s blueprint for how we should live our lives and how Christians should express and share their faith. Jesus is seen also as a great teacher and healer who called on his followers to do likewise, serve the poor, heal the sick and spread God’s message throughout the world so all could be ‘saved’ and have eternal life. Thus believers who devote their lives to Christian endeavour often talk of being called to service. This call can be very personal – God to them. It is God’s call and God’s decision, no matter how difficult, inconvenient or illogical that decision may appear at the time.
In her later years Jessie recounted her call to missionary service and how she felt ‘challenged’ to attend Bible College. She was in her mid-twenties and had worked hard to become a nurse. Despite the ‘challenge’ she was tired of study and reluctant to begin another demanding course. As so often happened in her life, inspiration came from the Bible, this time from 2 Timothy 2:15: study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Overcoming her earlier misgivings Jessie enrolled in a two-year course at the Melbourne Bible Institute in 1963. The College was founded in 1920 specifically to train missionaries to serve with the China Inland Mission. Its founder was a colourful, intelligent, capable, but occasionally wayward former Anglican cleric, Reverend Clifford Nash. Still, he left a significant legacy because the Institute he founded, now known as the Melbourne School of Theology, has since trained some 5000 missionaries, including Jessie.
As I got near the end of my training I was praying that the Lord would show me what next!! I was challenged about going overseas but I said no way Lord I am too ordinary. I felt far too inadequate for that kind of work.
Despite such personal misgivings Jess applied to RBMU to work in Indonesia.
The mission accepted me but said that Indonesia at that time was a closed country as they had not been able to get a visa for four years.
Jessie could be head strong, particularly when she found Biblical inspiration to support her view. She felt called to serve in Indonesia and found scriptural solace for her determined stance in a verse from Revelations 3 that says: ‘I have set before you an open door and no man can close it.’ I needed that encouragement. As time went on people kept saying that they thought I had my wires crossed because it was taking so long and I should go to Africa.
But Jessie was patient. Instead of rushing into an alternative posting she spent her time building skills she would need later in West Papua.
Some friends said to me: ‘Jessie, if you are going to a third world country you should be able to pull
teeth.’ Ugh. I applied to the Dental Hospital for a short course in pulling teeth. If you came to the Dental Hospital at that time you could have had your tooth pulled by Jessie for 20 cents.
During her last term of training Jessie shared a bedroom with Norma Stephenson who became another life-long friend and supporter. Norma recalls the final term as something of a blur with final exams looming and all the normal busyness of young lives.
It isn’t clear how Jessie supported herself during her two full-time years of study, or in the period after she completed her study and awaited her first posting. No one in the family was in a position to offer much financial support during those years and her siblings assume she supported herself from her savings and by occasional relief work as a nurse, a practice she continued in later years to supplement her missionary stipend. Thelma recalls that:
‘Sometimes when Jessie was home on furlough (from West Papua) and needed some cash she would fill in for the matron at Gisborne Hospital who was delighted to find someone who could cope with what was known as a ‘bush hospital’. This allowed her to go on holiday.’
Jess’s sisters, Marj Bradley and Joyce Taylor lived in Gisborne, 55 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, and would have known the matron of the Hospital, so Jessie may have also worked there during the long delay between Bible College and her posting to Indonesia.
‘Mention of Gisborne rang a very faint bell somewhere way at the back of my mind, so she might well have been working there until her visa was through,’ suggested Norma Stephenson who had moved to Adelaide soon after graduating from Bible College.
‘When I was in Adelaide, we were in constant mail contact and I used the money I earned buying clothes etc. for Jessie’s ‘kit’. I had all her sizes with me, and I can assure you, the sizes for assorted garments I purchased, were somewhat different from what she would have worn later on. But we were all skinny in those days!’
As for Jessie:
Time was marching along and again people were wondering about my visa. We had applied but things go slowly in Indonesia. The first lot of application papers were lost in the mail and then after we had sent the next lot we got a letter from our Jakarta office to say not to apply for any more visas because it was causing trouble for them with the immigration office. Then on the same day, written by the same man we received a letter saying, ‘Tell Jessie to go ahead with her application’. Wow. The Lord wonderfully gave me a visa much to the amazement of everybody except God.
More earthly forces may also have been in play. It is estimated that more than 500,000 Indonesians were slaughtered in brutal reprisals following a failed communist coup on 30 September 1965. Most of those massacred were Abangan Muslim communists. The Abangan faith mixed Islam with other religions and religious practices and following the coup, many Abangans were pressured to dissociate themselves from communism by converting to other religions like Hinduism and Christianity so Christianity was again, if only temporarily, in favour in Indonesia.
This is consistent with Norma Stephenson’s recollection of the times. She recalls that the ‘door to Indonesia was closed until after the Communist coup. Once that was dealt with by the government, they opened the door to Christian missions in an attempt to prevent further spread of communism’s influence.’
Whatever the cause, the visa approval, the good news Jess had long anticipated and planned for, had finally come through and her missionary adventure could begin.
6. Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF)
Calling Karubaga – Calling Karubaga. This is the way our day begins when the MAF radio call comes through at 7 am each day.
Trekking and moving goods and supplies from the coast to the highlands was a near impossible task. There were no roads and barely a network of useable tracks to move from one village to another or one valley to the next. There were no modern settlements, supply routes or supply chains to support the pioneering missionaries; just kilometre after kilometre of crocodile and snake infested malarial swamp with a near impenetrable barrier of tangled jungle and rainforest and that was before you reached the wet, windy, wild and treacherous mountain slopes with their seemingly endless lines of knife-edge ridges and ravines.
No wonder then that the first evangelists from the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) looked to the sky to help establish their first base in the highlands. On April 20 1954 the mission’s Irish-built amphibious aircraft, The Gospel Messenger, lifted off from the Paniai Lakes area. It flew due east with seven people on board. A couple of hours later The Gospel Messenger landed on a wide stretch of the Baliem River and its passengers disembarked to set up camp and live out a long-held dream of bringing Christianity to the mountains.
Soon a series of regular flights were bringing more mission workers and supplies to the valley. In its first year The Gospel Messenger made more than 160 round trips to the Baliem Valley, carried more than 200 passengers and delivered 175,000 pounds (80,000 kilos) of equipment and supplies. It was a precious lifeline which set the benchmark for future operations.
Flying in the highlands was demanding and dangerous work. Just how dangerous became all too clear on 29 April 1955 when word came through that pioneering pilot Al Lewis and The Gospel Messenger had gone missing in remote country during a routine flight. Twenty-nine days passed before the plane’s wreckage was spotted on a ridge east of the Baliem Pass though it would be a further four years before a ground party finally reached the crash site, found and buried the aviator’s remains.
While the C&MA immediately ordered a new 180 Cessna the days of individual missions providing their own airplanes was near an end. That role was soon taken over by the the specialist MAF, a joint Australia-U.S. operation which had begun flying out of Madang in 1951 to service missionaries in the Australian mandated Territory of Papua and New Guinea. In 1955 they expanded into West Papua where they continue to serve evangelical missions operating in the province. Thus it was the MAF that first flew Jessie Williamson to join her fellow RBMU missionaries at her new home at Karubaga in May 1966.
Fans of the popular 1970’s television series M.A.S.H. would recall how the sound of a distant chopper would trigger urgent activity at the surgical hospital. Similar scenes were regularly played out in Karubaga.
Suddenly, a drone from the sky. Looking up we can see the flash of the wings of the Cessna coming to land. Unscheduled flight. Who can it be? All sorts of things go through one’s mind, but uppermost – a medical emergency. Waiting at the airstrip to greet the Cessna is Dr. Jack Leng. ‘Yes Jessie – theatre ready as soon as possible please.’ (August 1966)
The whirring of a plane overhead can very quickly dispel the very best laid plans for an afternoon. Just yesterday, one pilot brought in a plane load of patients from an area where they have been fighting. Another pilot called up to say he was at a station and a man had broken his arm, would he bring him in? Yet another pilot called to say he couldn’t get through because of bad weather and had on board a missionary’s child who had fallen from a tree and broken his arm. No ambulances or police siren to sound a warning but a busy two-way radio is a good substitute. (January 1968)
Flying the highlands with its strong winds, variable weather, dense forests and rugged landscapes was always a dangerous occupation.
‘Naltja calling Sentani. Naltja calling Sentani’ was the call we heard one Saturday afternoon. MAF Cessna MPK called to say he would be here in 10 minutes and that was half-an-hour ago. This call triggered a full scale search by MAF personnel to try and locate the missing aircraft. Hampered by bad weather for two days very little was accomplished. On the third day a man ran into an outstation and reported that a plane had crashed two-day’s walk away. With the help of two helicopters from a nearby mining company the plane was soon found. The pilot had been killed on impact. He had apparently run into bad weather, the clouds had settled around him and he couldn’t see where he was going.
Do continue to pray for the MAF pilots as the weather pattern changes so rapidly and they are
often in dangerous situations. MAF is our only life line to the outside world from the interior. (July 1971)
The network of airstrips built under mission guidance and employing large teams of local labourers was forever expanding.
This last week there has been much rejoicing in the Holowon Valley as the long awaited day ‘arrived’ for the opening of the new airstrip. The plane landed without any problems and this will now save the people waiting so long for visits. It takes a full day to trek from Ninia to Holowon and about five to 10 minutes by plane. (February 1972)
Later in the year Jessie reported an unexpected backlash from the single minded focus on building the new airstrip.
Just this last week Bruno de Leeuw and John Wilson flew into the new airstrip. They were very much upset to find that the people there were hungry and without a good supply of potatoes. The reason they gave was that they had worked so hard and so long on the airstrip that they hadn’t planted their gardens when they should have done so. Those not interested in listening to the Gospel were blaming the coming of the Gospel for the famine. Bruno is planning to send in some rice to help them. (October 1972)
