John THOMPSON

THOMPSON, JOHN (b. Sydney, NSW, 15 June 1858; d. Pialba, Qld, 31 March 1945). Sawmiller, missionary.

Formerly a Roman Catholic, Thompson forsook that faith at 13, when he was baptised and joined the Church of Christ in Sydney, then meeting in the Christian chapel in Elizabeth St. When he was 15 his father died and he left for Qld. Thompson, who gained some training with a view to becoming a medical missionary, eventually settled in sugar cane country near the Burnett River. While working at a saw bench in Bundaberg he began sharing the gospel with both whites and the Melanesian Islanders working on the cane farms in Qld. When he met a Mr Johnson who was associated with Florence Young (q.v.), who had also been working among the Melanesians in what was called the Queensland Kanaka Mission, he was impressed by what she was doing and adopted similar methods. Thompson described his work as the Kanaka Mission, which was sometimes confused with Young's Queensland Kanaka Mission.

Initially, Thompson ministered voluntarily after work. In the first year 40 Islanders were won to Christ, despite their initial suspicion of him because of the way they had been brutalised by other whites. After visiting churches in the southern colonies, the Foreign Mission Committee of the Churches of Christ, from 1893, provided a living wage so that he could devote all of his effort to work with the Islanders. He moved to a newly opened district near Childers, locating his work at a place some still call 'Missionary Thompson's Hill'. Other churches were established at Doolbi and the Gregory. More than 200 Islanders were converted through the Kanaka Mission. In the context of his work, Thompson put his limited medical training to good use, being described by a later resident as 'the doctor before we had a doctor'.

Like Florence Young, Thompson trained Melanesians as assistant teachers and evangelists. The Foreign Mission Committee paid for the materials for a two room weatherboard mission house and chapel, but the Islanders did the building. They also made outstations from sugar cane leaves. From their meagre wages they gave generous offerings and sent money, bibles and hymn books to churches that were being established on the Melanesian islands.

In 1900 the Queensland government gave Thompson permission to employ one of the Melanesians as his assistant and the Foreign Mission Committee provided a house for Tabimancon. On several occasions, when Thompson was sick or on deputation, Tabimancon and Mrs Thompson ran the mission. Many returned Melanesian laborers were keen to have Thompson to assist them establish their faith in their homeland. Led by Tabimancon, they continued on as best they could, erecting a school house in anticipation of Thompson's arrival. He arrived in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1903, but malaria forced him home after several months. However, during this short stay, 58 people were baptised and 500 enrolled at schools in Ranwadi, Naroowa and Lalbeck.

D G M Hammer, 'John Thompson: The Birth of Churches of Christ Mission Work in the New Hebrides', Pamphlet Club/Digest of the Australian Churches of Christ Historical Society 73, July 1981; R N Hawkins, John Thompson: Apostle to the Kanakas (Melbourne, 1988)

GRAEME CHAPMAN