Rodolphe Samuel SCHENK

SCHENK, RODOLPHE SAMUEL (b. Macorna, Vic, 29 Oct 1888; d. Esperance, WA, 7 Aug 1969). Missionary to Aborigines.

Third son in a family of 10 children, Rodolphe Schenk left school at 14 and worked in the Moran & Cato grocery chain, sending home weekly financial help. He loved football and lived a wild life until converted in Charlton, Vic. He then trained and became a missionary with AIM in Walgett NSW 1918-20. He began corresponding with Mysie Johnston whom he had met at the first Keswick Convention meetings, Upwey, Vic. They were m. 14 Oct 1922.

Schenk read in Missionary Tidings about the hopeless plight of Aborigines in WA, so desperate that they were plundering, fighting begging and stealing, and interpreted it as a trumpet call from God Himself to take them the gospel, arriving in Laverton 22 May 1921. He served in the region till 1953 under UAM auspices. He found a people despised dispossessed of their hunting grounds, a six year drought causing hungry, starving people to steal and fight the whites of the district. He found a powerful mining and pastoral lobby unsympathetic toward the Aborigines' welfare.

Evangelism was difficult. There were language obstacles, people of no fixed address screaming for food and rejecting the gospel. He read James 2:15 and determined that although he felt like a drop in a bucket in the midst of such need, he would 'look after his drop'. He then daily took medicines, bread and tea, and told them of Jesus, learning respect for their intellect by the questions they asked. One said 'I didn't know who he was, but he liked me'.

Rod Schenk's commitment to 'The Three E's' evolved: Evangelisation, Education, Environment (a solution for a people who were in the minority in their own country, with no control over their destiny. Mt Margaret town grazing common on the Eastern Goldfields was secured through the premier's office, after losing a lease application to local authorities for the Laverton common. This common land at Mt Margaret became a home for Aborigines where no police could whip them out of town, where medical help was available, work for food obtainable, self-respect attainable, education possible; a place of survival. All finance was prayed for in faith to God. Christians around Australia responded, during depression and war. No government funds were provided. On 'Glory Day' 28 Oct 1928, the first Christians among the local Aboriginal community declared themselves; fifteen baptisms followed. Spiritual battles were hard-won but believers experienced the living God in mustering camps in a 200-mile radius of sheep stations.

Schenk was in the vanguard of human rights for Aborigines in an era when no one cared: a constant prick to the Christian conscience, and a continual contributor to the press. He regularly challenged actions of the WA Protector/Commissioner of Aborigines whose statutory powers over the everyday lives of Aborigines were extensive. He protested against removal of young part-white children from their mothers to be sent to a government settlement near Perth. He feared that the government hope that full-blood Aborigines would die out would be fulfilled, helped along by deliberate government action.

Aware that though Aborigines paid taxes they had no vote and no control over where they lived, and that they saw the police 'protectors' as their prosecutors, Schenk resisted the popular attitude of doing nothing about it. To this argument he applied the Saviour's Golden Rule—do to others as you would they do to you—in terms of access to the gospel, justice, education and living conditions. When the government and the public saw Aborigines as on the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder, it was Christian compassion that saw them as souls for whom Christ died, and reached a helping hand to touch the whole man. From 1953 until his death, Rod was a council member of Wongutha Mission Training Farm, Esperance, founded by his son Roderick.

Margaret Morgan, A Drop in a Bucket (Lawson, 1988); John Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990); Peter Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens (St Lucia, 1973)

MARGARET RUTH MORGAN