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secondary school in Tonga. His success in this post led directly to his secondment as Director of Education for
Tonga (1943–1946). He established the first teacher training college in Tonga (1944).
After the war Gribble was appointed Assistant General Secretary of the Mission Board and Principal of
George Brown College in Sydney (later All Saints College of the Uniting Church) to direct the training of mission
workers for service in Australia and overseas, with Mrs Gribble serving as matron. He was also appointed Editor
of the Missionary Review and served for 27 years. Gribble became General Secretary of the Methodist Overseas
Missions in 1949, a post he held for 23 years.
Gribble’s appointment coincided with post-war Commonwealth Government initiatives to provide more
generous funding to the missions in the Territory, primarily to improve educational and health services, a
development signalled by the convening of a conference with the missions in August 1948 in Darwin. As General
Secretary Gribble made regular visits to the Methodist missions in Arnhem Land and attended the annual
Missions-Administration conferences in Darwin at which policies in Aboriginal affairs, and in particular on the
funding of mission work, were discussed. His training and his experience as an educator in Tonga equipped him
well to manage the mission organisation in the years of rapid expansion of staff and services in the Arnhem Land
communities. When Gribble started work the Board received an annual grant of just 750 Pounds to support the
work at Goulburn Island, Milingimbi, Elcho Island and Yirrkala: when he retired in 1972 the Government was
providing $3 million each year.
New arrangements were made for the recruitment and training of field staff, with an Appointments and Training
Committee which carefully selected applicants for mission work. Six months’ training at the college at Haberfield,
Sydney, included courses provided at the University of Sydney in linguistics and anthropology and in tropical
medicine. Gribble was quick to encourage interested field staff, notably Beulah Lowe at Milingimbi and Heather
Hinch at Goulburn Island, to make a systematic study of the local languages and to teach in the vernacular in
the early years of schooling, as well as teaching English. He also supported local initiatives to encourage the
development of outstations or ‘homeland centres’ in eastern Arnhem Land, served from 1951 by the Reverend
Harold Shepherdson.
Gribble was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1958 in recognition of his work
for the church and the missions. In the 1960s he took on additional responsibilities; he served as chairman of the
Division of Missions of the Australian Council of Churches (1965–1968); as chairman of the Board of the United
Church of North Australia and the Territories (1963–1966), and as Secretary General (1965–1969) and President
General of the Methodist Conference of Australasia (1966–69), all tasks that entailed more travel overseas and in
Australia.
In the 1960s Gribble had to weather the public controversy and political strife that followed Commonwealth
Government decisions to permit the mining of the Gove bauxite deposits near Yirrkala and to excise a substantial
area from the Arnhem Land reserve for that purpose. These decisions led to a parliamentary inquiry and eventually
to the hearing of the Gove land rights claim in the Northern Territory Supreme Court. Later he took part in the
negotiations that led to the successful joint establishment of Nungalinya College, Darwin, by the Uniting Church
and the Church Missionary Society (1970).
When Gribble retired at 70 he could look back with some satisfaction on the progress made in the Arnhem
Land communities in preparing the people there to ‘make their own moral and spiritual judgments’ about the
problems they face, though not without misgivings about the effects of contact and acculturation. He regarded the
establishment of the United Church of North Australia and the Territories many years before the Uniting Church
in Australia was formed, as ‘perhaps the most successful ecumenical experiment in the history of the church in
Australia’.
The death of their five-year-old son, Robert, in Tonga in May 1941 had deepened the attachment the Gribbles
felt for Tonga and its people. In 1964 they took long service leave there and Gribble was invited to assist at
the coronation in July 1967 of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, who had earlier been Minister for Education. After
Isabel Gribble died suddenly on 23 July 1985, Tongan friends gave generously so that her ashes could be buried
there next to her son. Her husband, a son Geoffrey and daughter Katherine, survived her. Gribble was again invited
to Tonga for the 1992 silver jubilee of the King’s coronation and in 1994 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
founding of the teacher training college. He died suddenly on 29 September 1995 in Taiwan, while visiting his son,
who took his ashes back to Tonga.
National Library of Australia, Oral History TRC2731; ‘Profile of the President-General’, Missionary Review 74, 12, June 1966; Who’s Who in
Australia 1965, 1980.
JEREMY LONG, Vol 3.
GRIBBON, EILEEN MARJORY: see FITZER, EILEEN MARJORY
GRIFFITH, STUART DE BURGH (STURT) (1905–1976), Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officer, patent
attorney and motoring writer, was born on 15 August 1905 at Manly, New South Wales, the son of Irish-born
Arthur Hall Griffith, teacher, politician and patent attorney. His interest in services life began when he joined
the Senior Cadets (Army) in 1920, progressing to the rank of Corporal with the Citizen Military Forces (CMF),
1923–25. He gained his Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical and Electrical) at the University of Sydney and
joined the RAAF as an air cadet on 14 December 1925. Griffith gained a ‘distinguished pass’ in his flying training
at Point Cook and from 1926 to 1933 was active in No 3 Squadron, Citizen Air Force. He went to the reserve list