Every Australia Day is a time when families and friends get together and celebrate the wonder and enjoyment of living in this remarkable country with its history, democracy and freedom.
Much of this history can be directed at the wonderful parents we as a nation have been blessed – our parents and their parents and their parents ... down through the century. I play a CD of my parents, uncles and aunties and my grand-ma speaking out the early days over a cuppa. I often play it when driving. Their voices and personalities are as if they are in the vehicle with me.
Those with Christian parents have been doubly blessed and those children who have engaged in Christian ministry, they can look to their parents from their early years of life right the way through into ministry. Parents are particularly influential and somehow the Spirit of the Lord touches such relationships.
This provides me an opportunity to say a few brief words about my parents, the late Seymour Tronson and and late Joan Tronson.
Seymour
Seymour was raised on a dairy near Tewantin (Noosa) and prior to his marriage to Joan in 1947, he established his dairy at Crediton (Eungella, Mackay) in 1938. His knick name was "Trust to the Wind" for when clearing, he'd partially axe a row of trees down a gully and wait for the wind.
His brother Davis came for stints to help and for two years he ate and slept in his make-shift humpy. His parents Walter & Jessie helped construct the dairy infrastructure. Walter was a keen photographer, and we have many photographs of this early period.
Seymour planted grass seed and his dairy of this period speaks of his ingenuity in finding water, how he worked for other farmers and road contractors to keep the money rolling over without ever borrowing. Walter his father gave him 20 heifers from his Tewantin dairy and Seymour rode with them and slept from Coroy to Netherdale (the bottom of the Eungella range) in the cattle wagon collecting fresh grass for them at rail sidings.
The Livestock Bulletin magazine ran a story of this journey. Seymour had them trucked to the top of the range and then walked them the 13 miles to his plateau farm. He named each heifer. Raised on a dairy & with a God-given knack, he could talk "horse" and "cow". It was astonishing to see! This can be read in the Livestock Bulletin.
Seymour was the first Crediton dairyman to have milking machines, he owned a motor car and upon the advice of his parents Walter and Jessie, brought an old shop building at Sarina, unpicked it, numbered each board, trucked it to his farm and re-erected it on hard-wood stilts "Queenslander style". The side of the house sported an advertising sign "Kinkara Tea". He was the first Crediton dairy farmer to have a septic toilet. After the war his sister Illma & husband Wally (ex serviceman) came to Crediton allowing him to go on a working holiday "to find a wife"!
Joan
Joan Wynne in pre-war Sydney attended Central Baptist under the Ministry of the Rev Wilf Jarvis, a great Baptist preacher. It was here that Joan's Christian faith became passionately evangelical. Her most quoted passages were associated with those whom the Lord especially loves, the widow and the orphan. At Central Baptist, Joan developed life long friendships.
Joan and her friends Jean and Joyce joined the Land Army at the start of WWII and for the next 5 years were land girls. It was Joan who selected to make the speech on behalf of the Land Army Girls in Tumut / Batlow when saying farewell to the Land Army.
Joan met Seymour who was fruit picking at Batlow and sensed God's hand on this meek man. He held in his heart that he'd marry a little English girl, indeed Joan was just such a woman. Meanwhile in an age of sectarianism, from Gympie his grand-father T B Tronson (Irish Protestant) dramatised the Protestant martyrs to his children and grand-children. His won Walter (Seymour's father) sparred his children the dramatics. Yet Seymour's heart was stirred.
They married in Sydney Easter 1947 and moved to his farm at Crediton. In 1954 Seymour's horse fell in a cyclone on the Crediton farm braking his left leg in three places necessitating moving with their three children into Mackay. Every night we three children were read Bible stories, we were given an evangelical philosophy, we were much loved, and our parents were founding members of the Mackay Baptist Church.
We were given a Protestant work ethic and in that era, they had a passion to provide their children the education they were not afforded, hence the moving to Canberra in 1960 to give their children the educational opportunities they did not get. Our childhood was great fun. Seymour's steadiness was something else. As my elder brother Kim said at dad's funeral, they were parents on whose shoulders we could stand.
Parents
Such stories can be told over and again throughout Australia. Christians with Christian parents can celebrate their parents in a special way, and on Australia Day it is certainly a time to recall such bountiful blessings.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html
