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of Melbourne. He graduated from the University as Bachelor of Arts in 1940. In 1947 he received the degree of
Bachelor of Divinity from the Melbourne College of Divinity.
Bucknall came from a pioneering Victorian family. His Bucknall great-grandparents arrived in Melbourne on
14 September 1843. Six months later they and their children set off with a bullock wagon and drays travelling from
station to station until they reached the banks of the Tullaroop Creek in central Victoria. There they erected a bark
hut and a large tent, where his great-grandmother gave birth to her seventh child. Bucknall himself grew up in what
he later remembered as a ‘very isolated bush community’ on the lower Glenelg River. He rarely saw anyone other
than his parents and widowed grandmother. The river and marshland birds, the kangaroos, possums and other birds
and animals became embedded into his childhood memory. He could imitate the sounds of animals and birds long
before he could use human language. He was over four years old before his district acquired a public telephone
service and the nearest doctor was over two days’ journey away.
Between 1939 and 1959 he served as a Presbyterian parish minister in various parts of Victoria. He was at Orbost
between 1939 and 1942, Clifton Hill from 1943 until 1947 and West Hawthorn from 1948 until 1959. In 1960
he was appointed Director of the Department of Home Missions for the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, a post he
held until 1970. He was widely recognised as an inspiring speaker and sound administrator which resulted in him
serving as Vice-Convenor of the Board of the Australian Inland Mission between 1962 and 1970 and Moderator
of the Presbyterian Church in Victoria from 1966 to 1967. He married Jean, daughter of George and Elizabeth
Williamson, on 15 January 1938 in the Brunswick Presbyterian Church, Melbourne. Jean proved to be an ideal
partner and their marriage was consistently happy. They had five children. It was a close family and even when its
members sometimes later lived in very isolated parts of Australia all kept in touch with one another.
In 1970 Graeme and Jean Bucknall moved to Darwin in the Northern Territory when he took up appointment
as the first Executive Officer of the United Church in North Australia, a position he occupied until 1974. It was in
the Northern Territory that his childhood experience of what he described as ‘spatial isolation’ proved particularly
useful. He was conscious of following in the footsteps of that great Presbyterian leader the Reverend John Flynn,
the famous ‘Flynn of the Inland’, and was especially interested in developing further Flynn’s concept of a ‘mantle
of safety’ for those people of various races who lived in north Australia’s most isolated areas and developing links
with some of the Protestant churches in nearby eastern Indonesia. He regretted in 1974, however, that there was a
‘culture/language barrier between cattleman and urban man in the Northern Territory. On the rare occasions when
the station people are in town they neither feel at home in church nor understand the language’. More positively,
he was able to look back on ‘the phenomenal development in the relaxed and shared relationships between black
and white members of the United Church during the last four years... We are on the exciting journey to a truly
indigenous Church.’
Between 1975 and 1979 he was the Uniting Church Patrol Padre for the Centralian Patrol, based in Alice Springs.
He frequently visited cattle stations, providing their residents with both spiritual and practical guidance and forming
enduring friendships with many of them. Bucknall later reflected that his patrol experience led him, ‘as it were,
full circle and enabled me to discern the meaning of that strange experience on the evening of [the] first day of
January 1932 when I experienced the compulsion to train for the Ministry. Theology is not merely an academic
exercise on which the Church builds its structures and disciplines but must relate, without retraction, to living
situations in the total life of every community.’
He ‘retired’ in 1980 but remained in Alice Springs, living at the Uniting Church’s Old Timers’ Home, for another
five years before returning to Melbourne. In this period he continued his extensive outback travels and took many
superb photographs of the Central Australian region. He also developed a keen interest in history; undertaking
detailed research on various aspects of Central Australia’s past, including the story of the Old South Road, a
compilation of early pastoral lease information and the lives of some of the region’s pioneers. His publications
included articles in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography
and booklets on historic buildings, such as the Stuart Town Gaol and Adelaide House in Alice Springs. With
sociologist Dr Robert Guthrie he worked on a major study, ‘The Conquest of Distance: A Reflection on Centralian
Spatial and Social Isolation’, which they completed in 1994. With his sister, the historian Dr Lorna McDonald, he
compiled Letters of an Australian Pioneer Family 1827–1880 a collection of letters of their Bucknall ancestors,
which was published in 1984. While in Alice Springs he served as Chairman of the McDouall Stuart Branch of the
National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory) and was also a member of the Trust’s Territory Council. He was
prominent in the Trust’s public education activities and its campaign to save important historic structures. He was
also closely involved in the restoration of the Uniting Church building known as Adelaide House in Alice Springs,
designed by John Flynn as Central Australia’s first hospital. Bucknall’s other interests were wide ranging. He studied
Indonesian language and culture and kept up with the latest developments in Christian theology. He corresponded
with people involved in church activities in many parts of the world. In 1982 he was made a Member of the Order
of the British Empire (MBE).
After returning to Melbourne Bucknall continued his historical writing and research. He also wrote an
autobiography. Despite growing ill health, he and Jean regularly revisited the Territory, particularly their son Ruary
and his family who lived in Darwin. He died in Melbourne on 6 November 1995, survived by his wife, children
and grandchildren.
Graeme Bucknall’s career owed much to his pioneering Western District origins. He tried both spiritually and
in other ways to help ‘pioneers’ of his own era. His interest in his family’s history widened into more general
historical concerns and resulted in some invaluable work.
G Bucknall, ‘A Time to Keep’, unpublished manuscript, 1994, ‘John Flynn’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 8, 1981, Flynn’s Mantle
of Safety, 1984, ‘Lewis Alexander Bloomfield’, and ‘William Hayes’ in Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography, vol 1, 1990, ‘Edward