Rocky Cape Christian Community

We, the families and single residents of the Rocky Cape Christian Community, come from various places around the world. Some of us live here on a permanent basis, others are here for a time. Some of us grew up in Christian homes, others did not.

Together we form an Anabaptist (Hutterite) community, baptising believers on confession of faith, holding our goods in common, and choosing non-violence as followers of Christ.

While we have close and direct links to other Anabaptist communities like ours, we seek fellowship with all serious believers regardless of their background or credentials—that know Christ and follow him. We accept the baptism, church order, and witness of other groups beside our own.

A number of us at Rocky Cape belong to families that fled for their faith from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany during the 1500s. From there, we found our way through Eastern Europe to America and Australia. But this is only one detail of a much more involving story that began with . . .

A Strange Assignment Long Ago

“You will receive power,” Jesus told a small group of friends that followed him to sunny heights above Galilee, “when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Then he was taken up before their eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight.

 The little group stood and stared.

 Only a short while before this Jesus had told them the secret of the Kingdom of God (Mark 4:11). They had just begun to know what that kingdom included and who would belong to it. But of the “ends of the earth” they knew nothing—nor how to get there. Much less of the people or a place on the other side of the world called . . .

Tangdimmaa

On bare feet, swift but sure, the first people at Tangdimmaa clambered up the rocks to caves high above the surf. Watchful mothers that lived in the caves loved their children—lithe woolly-haired boys and girls that romped about them with quick wide smiles—on foraging trips to the sea. But to feed them posed a daily challenge, and for this they depended on the men and grown boys at Tangdimmaa.

 All winter long, after short-tailed shearwaters had flown, and storms drove the waves in night-long thunder onto rocks below, the men of Tangdimmaa hunted possums and kangaroo. Far into the dripping bush they followed cushioned trails under tea trees and towering gums. Raucous birds told them where berries had turned ripe. Young men, eager for the chase, pushed their way further inland than those with wrinkled faces and whitening curls. But all cared for one another. All took what they needed and shared what they had.   

The people of Tangdimmaa did not disturb the patterns of nature on their island home. For thousands of years its wildlife, its lush greenery, and untold numbers of musical birds flourished within and about their community. Unlike people living on the Australian mainland, they owned no weapons to harm or kill others. Instead, they shared their beach with other family groups of the island coast. Fathers and mothers stayed together, while children kept parents and grandparents with them as long as they lived. Everyone filled an important place in the community to which everyone at Tangdimmaa belonged.

But thorns grew on prickly mo trees around the caves. Icy winds roared in from the southwest, and those at Tangdimmaa lived in fear of dark powers they could not control and knew little about.

Rocky Cape

“We shall call it Rocky Cape,” announced Matthew Flinders, tow-headed, twenty-four-year-old Englishman, when he sighted Tangdimmaa just before sundown on 5 December 1798. By candlelight in the cabin of his ship he sketched its rugged shoreline, and marked the reef that protruded from its furthest point, spelling danger for all that would sail into the bay behind it. Danger, no doubt, but the reef at Tangdimmaa (Rocky Cape) posed a very small danger compared to the one that came with Matthew Flinders and the rough men on sailing vessels that followed him.

They came to catch whales and seals. But they brought disease, violence and destruction to the community at Tangdimmaa. White-skinned English-speaking sailors—Christians they called themselves—captured the women of Tangdimmaa for slaves and mutilated or shot the men. Terrified children fled and perished. With fire-spitting weapons the invaders decimated the wildlife and scared off the birds. Then, in their wake, came families with sheep and potatoes to start clearing the land and building houses at Rocky Cape (Tangdimmaa) on the island they called . . .

Van Diemen's Land

With his royal signature and the seal of Great Britain, King George IV of England, granted 250,000 acres of land “beyond the ramparts of the unknown” to a group of investors in 1825. The “Van Diemen's Land Company” they called themselves and set out at once to establish vast sheep stations along the island's north-western coast.

Using the labour of convicts brought in chains from England the VDL Company built stone bridges, roads, and buildings. On Wilson's Creek, near Rocky Cape, they built a stock yard for the cattle and sheep they drove from Circular Head to Emu Bay.

At first, the black people that had lived in the caves of Tangdimmaa (with no concept of “private property”) thought the VDL Company would share its sheep, vegetable plots and imported provisions. Because they could not speak the company's language they helped themselves to what they found, just like the company had helped itself to the bounty of their island home. But they soon discovered such sharing of goods would not work. White settlers placed man-traps around their store houses, and when a group of black hunters caught and ate a sheep, west of Rocky Cape, VDL stockmen pursued them with guns, driving all that escaped their bullets over a cliff to perish in the sea.  

At the same time, convicts working for the VDL Company led wretched unhappy lives that—like the black people they hunted down and shot—aroused the compassion of . . .

George W. Walker

Born the twenty-first child of a saddle-maker in England, George Walker did not have an easy childhood. After his mother died and his father left for France, his grandmother raised him the best she could. But already as a fourteen-year-old he had to fend for himself and found work with a linen draper.   

From his new employer (a plain living Christian) George heard for the first time of Jesus' way of peace. Of goodwill to animals, plants, and people of every race and tongue. At the same time he discovered within himself the light that guides into all truth and he confessed his belief in Jesus at a meeting of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. 

For several years George found delight in the Society of Friends. The reality of Jesus’ Kingdom on earth, here and now, fired his imagination. Nothing became more important to him than to open the eyes of all men and women to the “secret of the Kingdom” within them. But one thing troubled George. Every month fresh reports of violence and corruption in British colonies filtered back to England—tales of shocking deception and abuse. Was it really that bad? With a fellow-believer George set out in September 1831 to see for himself.

No sooner did the two plainly-dressed men arrive at Hobart in Van Diemen's land (a six month journey from England) than they began to visit from house to house, calling people to silent reflection, to a change of heart, and a new way of life through Jesus' transforming power. They spoke in public meetings. They spoke to convicts in chain and road gangs, and to the men that controlled them. Wherever they went they sought out the scattered survivors of indigenous communities like the one that had lived at Tangdimmaa.   

By the time George and his friend reached Rocky Cape and the headquarters of the VDL company (at Stanley), they knew very well why Jesus had called them to Van Diemen’s Land. Everywhere they found sick or injured people in need of medical attention. Using letter cards they taught the unlearned how to read the Bibles they distributed. Of the wildlife and plants of the area they took hundreds of pages of notes, and gave instruction on how to care for them. But far beyond that, with the power of Jesus working through them, they helped many break free from the chains of vice (liquor and prostitution), while the oppressed found mercy at their hands. Even the managers of the VDL Company, thanks to their published reports, began to treat convict labourers and the surviving black people more kindly. But George and his friend could not stay on the northwest coast for long. When they left to make their way throughout the rest of Australia, Mauritius and South Africa, much work for the Kingdom remained undone, and sat waiting for . . .

Edwin Blackwell

Arriving as a child in Van Diemen’s Land—just renamed “Tasmania”—with his mother, his grandmother, and other family members in 1857, Edwin Blackwell’s immediate future seemed secure. Two years earlier, his father and older brother had come from England to prepare a home for the family, and by the age of twelve Edwin knew how to run the family flour mill near Longford. But to make a living in Tasmania did not prove easy, and a series of disasters befell the Blackwell family.    

After several dry years business slacked off at the mill until his father needed to close it and buy land a day’s travel west, near Table Cape. In 1860 Edwin’s oldest brother, George, just turned eighteen, drowned while fording the Inglis River at Wynyard. Several years later his next oldest brother, Thomas, drowned while chasing a calf through the river at the same place. His father, overcome with grief, died a week later, leaving Edwin — only seventeen years old — to care for the farm and provide for the rest of the family.  

Edwin rose to the challenge. Attending meetings with a handful of other believers at the Grove Chapel (Primitive Methodist) on Tollymore Road, he had given his heart to Jesus and looked to him for direction in all he did. As an eighteen-year-old Edwin married a believing girl, Mary Dean, from an adjoining farm. Working with all his might he earned twice an ordinary man’s wage by cutting double the amount of wheat in a day. But his gift did not lie only in physical strength. Never having attended school, he taught himself to read from the Bible and studied much. He designed a plough and a pea harvester. He invented a treadle sewing machine and became a dentist (setting up his business in a farm shed). A fine horseman, he trained many frisky colts for use in the buggy or around the farm, and when tin mining began in Tasmania’s rugged interior he built a mill and hauled wagon loads of flour 80 km inland to feed the workers. Going and coming the journey on treacherous muddy tracks up the hills took him four days.   

In 1876 a visitor, a converted steam engine builder from England, showed up at the Grove Chapel. Named Harrison Ord, this man preached fiery messages, calling all believers back to the way of Jesus and his disciples—to a simple life in harmony with God and the Bible, and to meetings in people’s homes where they broke bread and drank wine in joyful fellowship together.

Edwin and his young wife Mary became enthusiastic supporters of the new “Christian Brethren” movement that developed out of Harrison Ord’s work. In the Flowerdale River they sealed their commitment to Jesus with baptism on confession of faith, and before long James and Annie Dean (Mary’s brother, Edwin’s sister) and many others joined them. But disaster continued to strike, and with everything that happened Edwin and Mary drew closer to God.

In 1877 Edwin’s sister Caroline died after catching pneumonia from driving cattle through wet grass. That same year his and Mary’s two children, Herbert and Arthur, both died after turning violently sick on Herbert’s fourth birthday. They may have eaten poisonous mushrooms.

Edwin, convinced by now of the brevity and uncertainty of life, dropped his work at the mill every day at noon to stand before the Commercial Hotel in Wynyard, preaching the Gospel without fear at lunch hour. On Lord’s Day afternoons he hitched up his horse to ride with his brother-in-law up and down the rough coastal trail from Ulverstone to Stanley in an open buggy, calling on people to get their hearts right with God. Everywhere they went, from Boat Harbour to Sister’s Creek, Rocky Cape, the Detention River and beyond, they led earnest hearts to God, baptising them in creeks or farm ponds.  

Edwin’s grandchildren remember him as a dignified man, white haired with a fresh clear complexion and a neat, square-cut beard. His build was stocky and compact, his manner sedate and his speech measured. Inventive, independent, strong-willed, perhaps even hard, and physically strong, he was both respected and loved.

Edwin lived a full life until his death in 1932 at the age of eighty years. A fortnight before he died he rode his bicycle to Stanley to check on some land.

That was 25 years before the VDL Company sold their stockyards on Wilson’s Creek—where Edwin so often stopped in the shade to water and rest his horse—to Stan Joyce and a group of local believers who turned it into the . . .    

Araluen Bible Camp

By the late 1950s those whom the Spirit of Jesus had awakened along Tasmania’s Northwest Coast realised their children needed help. The flame of earlier revivals had long died down. Two world wars had left their mark on Australian society, exposing new generations to previously undreamed of “liberties”—fashions that shocked their elders, and a crumbling morality. Radio and commercial television were beginning to affect all levels of society while formerly close-knit families and even rural communities began to show signs of disintegration.

To halt the trend and provide their young people with inspiring fellowship, church leaders from Smithton to Burnie united forces during the 1950s to rent and later buy the VDL stockyards for a Bible Camp. Two railroad cars on the site provided lodging for the first year until a caretaker’s cottage could be built, followed by a kitchen and dining hall, four bunk houses and a large gymnasium during the 1960s and 70s.

Young people from far and wide attended Bible classes and spent their vacations together at what became known as the Araluen Bible Camp. Married couples from the area volunteered as “parent cooks” and youth leaders. During the late 1980s Bevin Newman, a believing furniture dealer from Wynyard, became instrumental in moving a four-apartment housing unit from the mining operation at Savage River onto the campground. But conditions during the last decade of the twentieth century were changing. Less and less young people of the Northwest Coast chose to spend time at Araluen and maintenance costs escalated until the camp was sold to Tim and Karleen Gray from Smithton.

One of the eight sons and three daughters of John and Phyllis Gray—Christian Brethren—who landed at Fremantle on Christmas Day, 1966 after a month’s voyage from England, Tim knew hard work and did not find the maintenance of the Araluen Camp intimidating. For several years the Grays poured themselves into the project, cleaning, painting, and getting everything ready (fully furnished and equipped, all of the camp’s 79 beds made up, its pantries stocked, new washers in the laundry, swings and playground equipment in order, trails cleared through the bush, towels in the showers, potted plants and a piano in the dining hall, even an assortment of spice jars on the kitchen’s racks) to turn the place over to . . .

New Faces, New Life at Rocky Cape

In the spring of 2004, Willi and Erna Martens, Russian believers with an Anabaptist background, arrived in Tasmania from Adelaide, SA, where they had lived for many years. With them came their parents Johann and Katherina Martens, converted during the Khrushchev era in a mining camp for exiles at Vorkuta on Russia’s Arctic coast. The Martens bought a place near what had been Edwin Blackwell’s farm east of the Sister’s Hills, and continued to maintain contact with believers in Europe and North America. Some of those people—from the Elmendorf and Altona communities in Minnesota—visited them from time to time and eventually came to live with them.

So it happened that in February, 2006, two young Anabaptist men, Hank Wurtz and Conrad Wollman established contact with Tim Gray at what had been the Araluen Bible Camp (formerly the VDL stockyards) on Wilson’s Creek. The Lord Jesus worked out all the details. The camp passed hands and with the integration of other Australian believers it became the nucleus and meeting place for what is now the . . .

Rocky Cape Christian Community

From the beginning, the new community at Rocky Cape “continued to meet together, breaking bread in their homes, eating together and praising God, while the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

The first baptism took place in the Detention River on 15 June 2006. Along with new faces, more and more new hands appeared to help with building a Christian community from what had been the hunting ground of the families at Tangdimmaa. The Savage River house, as well as the “Casa Rosada” filled up, while the brothers set up a chicken shed, a welding and woodworking shop. Brush land turned into an orchard, a berry patch and veggie beds.    

Children of our community receive their education at home, with joint classes held in the community meeting room. With the coming of a young brother from France we have benefited from music lessons. Another brother, an expert chef from Queensland, has been giving cooking classes while the sisters take turns teaching sewing and practical skills. Every day at noon and sometimes in the evenings we eat together. Daily prayers (Gebetsstunden) draw everyone to common worship before the evening meal where we “admonish one another daily” as we live out the reality of the Kingdom of God in our “common work, common table and common purse” environment.    

Now it is our turn. With Jesus’ help we want to the make the most of our opportunities here at Rocky Cape, using whatever wisdom and resources have come to us from those that lived here before us—the example of peaceful sharing in the first community at Tangdimmaa, the impartial observation of the Quaker visitors, the energy and zeal of the early Brethren, the results of the hard work of everyone that helped build up the Araluen Camp, and finally the participation and friendly support of all our cheerful neighbours!

We thank God and others for all that has come to us and pray that our witness here, at the “ends of the earth” may be just what Jesus had in mind when he stood, speaking to his disciples, on the sunny heights of Galilee. Then, when he comes to restore all things in new heavens and a new earth, we hope to share his blessing with all that contributed to building this church community. 

May his Kingdom come!