Early missionaries to Australia

Early Australian colonists were heavily influenced by 19th century attitudes that regarded Indigenous people as inferior. Newspapers and journals of the time contain ample evidence of this.

In the following excerpts taken form his book, One Blood ^[1], John Harris uses original sources to reveal with brutal honesty the story of the first Aboriginal Christian missions in Australia, and the people they sought to engage. Harris allows the official records, articles and diaries to speak for themselves, exposing the stories of the early missions and the challenging context in which they operated.

Whilst Harris admits that “It is hard to sum up the early missions with any word other than failure” (pg. 125), he also notes that, “...however unwittingly, however imperfectly, however inadequately, (the missionaries) did carry the knowledge of Christ to these shores” (pg.18).