Alice Springs and the smaller Central Australian communities of Harts Range and Santa Teresa rolled out their warmest welcome mats recently to cheer on Roby Curtis, from Brisbane’s Emmanuel City Mission, as he completed his epic walking pilgrimage from Brisbane.
Roby walked 2500km over nine weeks with his friend and colleague Jeff Hoffard, raising just over $1 million for people in Brisbane experiencing homelessness and helping to celebrate the 40th anniversary of St John Paul II’s landmark address to First Nations peoples in Alice Springs.
After making it to Alice Springs, where he was welcomed by the local Catholic community, Roby and his team continued on another 85km to the official finish line at Santa Teresa.
In each of those places, the Emmanuel City Mission (ECM) team held a Bush Rally, sharing praise and worship music, a simple meal, and powerful testimonies of faith with members of the local community.
At Harts Range, some members of the small, remote community welcomed Roby, Jeff, and their support crew by going out to meet them and walk into town with them. The whole community then enjoyed a special fellowship gathering and BBQ.
“It was a wonderful blessing to come together in prayer, praise, and fellowship,” said Fr Niran Veigas SVD, of the Aboriginal Catholic Chaplaincy Central Australia.
“The evening provided an opportunity for community members to strengthen their faith, share friendship, and celebrate God's presence among us.
“It was truly a special and grace-filled occasion for the Harts Range community.”
Fr Prakash Menezes SVD, Parish Priest of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs, said the parish community really got behind Roby and Jeff’s pilgrimage to the heart of Australia.
“They arrived in Alice Springs on Thursday the 18th of June and with some of our parishioners, we joined them for the final 2km of the walk,” he said.
“We walked into Blatherskite Park, where Pope John Paul II made his speech in 1986, and ceremonially concluded the walk there. Then, on the Saturday, they went on to Santa Teresa and finished up the walk there.”
While in Alice Springs, the ECM team held a Bush Rally on the Friday evening at St Joseph’s Flexible Learning Centre where Roby shared the story behind his pilgrimage and the work of ECM.
Roby said the idea to walk from Brisbane to Alice Springs first came to him from God in 2011, but he had no idea how that would become a reality.
“I thought, I wonder what it’d be like to actually pilgrimage to the centre of this country, to walk out there and honour and affirm and all the things that pilgrimage does in the way of being a prolonged journey to sacred destinations,” he said after the conclusion of the walk.
“But I couldn’t see a way. We had four little kids at the time, but I remember lying on the floor of my sons’ bedroom and having this overwhelming sense that it was going to happen. I just couldn’t see when or how until years later.”
The 40th anniversary year of Pope John Paul II’s address to Australia’s First Nations peoples in Alice Springs presented the perfect opportunity to make the vision a reality, while also raising funds for the ECM.
“The Emmanuel City Mission is where I’ve been engaged most days of my life since 2010, supporting people experiencing homelessness, those in our community coming and out of our correctional centres, those really struggling with addiction,” he said. “And about 35 per cent of those people on any day are First Nations people.
“So, the idea for the pilgrimage was really a continuum of mission and a sense of responsibility and relationship, which is where it all comes to a head for me.”
Over nine weeks, the pair walked about 50km per day across the vastness of western Queensland and into the Northern Territory. They worked out a rhythm of running 25km in the morning followed by 15km of walking and praying the Rosary and other prayers and then a final section of running to finish the day.
Along the way they stopped in on various parish communities, including at Longreach in Rockhampton Diocese, where they were welcomed by the parish community and parish priest Fr Bang Nguyen SVD.
The Divine Word Missionaries also have the pastoral care of communities in Alice Springs, Santa Teresa and Hart’s Range and Roby said the support of the SVD priests and their parishioners along the way added extra depth to the sense of mission and shared hospitality.
“I don’t know if we could have achieved what we did without the grace that’s on those particular priests, and their heart for and knowledge of who their people are. They really know the people that they are caring pastorally for, shepherding, accompanying, and sharing the faith with,” he said.
“So, when you come out there as a visiting group, you come into this beautiful environment of relationship and that can be rare to find.”
Roby said it was hard to describe his feelings as he approached the finish line in Santa Teresa, with the road into town lined with community members urging him and his team on.
“It was unbelievable. The kids had put streamers out in the colours of their footy club as a finish line. They had the smoking ceremony ready to go and the ladies from the community were all standing there in arc and other people I know were there, all cheering us on.
“Some of them were walking with the big John Paul II flag that we made up to celebrate the 40 years. It was overwhelming, really. I’m still processing it all in its fullness.”
The Bush Rally and shared meal of burgers in Santa Teresa on Saturday night took place in front of the community’s distinctive white church, which was illuminated with a colourful light show.
The following day, parish priest, Fr Afonsus Nahak SVD, facilitated prayer in the church and there was the opportunity for reconciliation. The visit concluded with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church on Monday morning with the community.
Roby said the pilgrimage was just one expression of mission which brings to life the vision of Pope John Paul II for Australia’s First Nations peoples’ place in the Church.
“As a non-Aboriginal Australian myself, I don’t feel for a second that I am the Church and they need to be received,” he said. “I feel that they are the Church as much as I’m the Church and together, we’ve got to receive one another. And I think for me, I’m just trying to work out what my role is in that.
“What I’ve learned in all that we do is that the common denominator is relationship.
“This wasn’t about our Emmanuel City Mission team just coming in and putting on an event for a remote indigenous community. We did it together. It was a real community event. They were welcoming us as much as we were coming to meet them. It was real community sharing and it’s hard to capture how beautiful that was.”
Fr Prakash said the pilgrimage was a great lead-in to NAIDOC Week (July 5-12) and National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday on July 5, which this year takes the theme ‘Walking Together in Christ’.
“We are also working towards the big celebration of the 40th anniversary of St John Paul II’s speech in Alice Springs on November 29, which, under the organisation of NATSICC and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, will be celebrated in the Catholic Church Australia-wide, but in a special way here in Alice Springs.
“This pilgrimage has been a great way to help us prepare in our hearts for that special anniversary event.”
PHOTOS
TOP RIGHT: Roby Curtis and Jeff Hoffard (left and right of the banner) with locals including Fr Prakash Menezes SVD and Fr Niran Veigas SVD, the Missionaries of Charity and parishioners at Blatherskite Park in Alice Springs at the conclusion of their epic walk from Brisbane. This was the same place that St John Paul II gave his landmark address to First Nations peoples in 1986.
TOP LEFT: Darwin Bishop Charles Gauci with Fr Prakash and parishioners at the Alice Springs Bush Rally.
MIDDLE RIGHT: On their way to Alice Springs, Roby, Jeff and their support crew passed through many rural communities, including Longreach, where they attended Mass with Fr Bang Nguyen SVD and the local community.
MIDDLE LEFT: The Bush Rally in the small, remote Aboriginal community of Harts Range in Central Australia.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Many local people joined Roby, Jeff and their supporters on the way into town as the pilgrimage concluded at Santa Teresa.
BOTTOM LEFT: Roby (second from left) and Jeff (second from right) with their support crew at Santa Teresa.
FAR BOTTOM RIGHT: The distinctive white church at Santa Teresa was lit up for the Bush Rally.