An Anglican Clergyman on the Frontier: Benjamin Glennie on the Darling Downs 1848–1860

Abstract

bs_bs_banner physical environment, poor personal health, and an extraordinary amount of travel throughout the year. It also demonstrates an eye for posterity, as he has made significant amendments after the original entries.This article examines Glennie's experience as a clergyman on Queensland's Darling Downs, in particular how he attempted to overcome the tendency towards religious ambivalence on the frontier. It argues that he did so in two ways. Firstly, through a tireless and continual progress through towns and stations, drumming up church attendance and enlisting the aid of the Downs' squatting elite. Secondly, he undertook a programme of vigorous fundraising and land acquisition with the goal of establishing a physical presence for the Church of England. As squatters sought to make the Darling Downs economically significant, bringing it into the pastoral and economic orbit of New South Wales, Glennie attempted to invest that frontier with religious significance, bringing it into the ecclesiastical orbit of the Church of England. 2 Glennie's diary offers an insight into how religion was fostered in a frontier society, and of the complications and frustrations a clergyman could face. Glennie's experience suggests that in frontier societies, the status of religion and the extent of religious observance depended very much on the energy of individual clergymen. Interest in religion had to be stimulated. Left to their own devices, people were ambivalent to religion. Prior to Glennie's arrival in Moreton Bay and subsequently on the Darling Downs, organised religion played at best a peripheral role in frontier life. Prior to 1848 an Anglican clergyman, John Gregor, made only occasional visits to the Downs. It was only through Glennie's indefatigable efforts that religion established a place on the frontier. Glennie is of course only one clergyman, and the conclusions drawn from his ministry must be tentative. Nevertheless, his diary is a meticulous record of his Downs' ministry, and provides prima facie evidence of the significance or otherwise of religion in frontier societies.There is a gap both in the historiography of religion and the historiography of frontiers. Australian histories of the frontier have largely focused on themes of possession and dispossession, frontier conflict, and the expansion of British "civilisation," usually without its religious forms. In the works of Henry Reynolds, Lyndall Ryan, and others, race relations have been the primary object of analysis. 3 Gender has also received considerable attention in frontier studies. 4 However, historians have not really sought to examine the role of 2. The Darling Downs is a pastoral and agricultural region approximately 100 kilometres west of Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland, Australia.