>> Go Back - page 0 - >> List of Entriess
on her son. Partridge grew up in the small rural community of Bulga developing a great love of the bush and the
ways of country people. He became a first-class horseman. He attended primary school at Bulga and Singleton
but when he was in his teens the family moved to Sydney to enable him to undertake further education. His father
wanted him apprenticed as a cabinet-maker but his mother had her heart set on him entering the ministry of the
Presbyterian Church. She ensured that he matriculated and attended the University of Sydney where he graduated
Bachelor of Arts with Honours in history in 1913. He was awarded his Master of Arts in 1915. He attended the St
Andrew’s Theological College and was awarded a Travelling Fellowship for overseas postgraduate studies, but
because of the First World War and other developments affecting his life he never took up the Fellowship.
In 1913 at a Student Christian Movement Conference at Brown’s River in Tasmania, Partridge met John Flynn,
then beginning to establish the Australian Inland Mission (AIM). That meeting had a determining effect on Partridge’s
future. On the completion of his theological studies, he was ordained and settled in the parish of Lake Macquarie,
New South Wales, on 14 November 1916. He was released on 31 July 1917 to enable him to undertake work with
John Flynn in Central Australia. He travelled by train to Oodnadatta arriving there in September 1917. There he
took over the camels and camel ‘boy’, Dick Gillen, from Bruce Plowman, a lay missionary who had pioneered a
patrol ministry under the direction of Flynn, using camels as the sole means of transport. The patrol extended as far
north as Tennant Creek and Partridge did two major patrols north in 1917 and 1918 as well as shorter patrols south
and west of Oodnadatta. It was during this period that he began to formulate a philosophy of the church’s role in
the bush and to understand the problems caused by isolation and distance. He considered that ministry should be
expressed in practical terms and transcend denominational boundaries. During this period, he conducted the first
funeral at Hatches Creek and assumed the role of coroner. He was in Alice Springs when the Armistice was signed
in November 1918 and shared in the relief the news brought. He established a close relationship with stockmen,
miners, overland telegraph staff and the police, which was to prove of tremendous value in future years.
This period was followed by a short but successful ministry in Scone, New South Wales (1919–23), but he
then returned to the family farm at Bulga until Flynn again presented him with the challenge of the inland that
he answered in 1930. Flynn had him go first to Western Australia where he was to deal with some problems,
particularly at Carnarvon, and in the AIM hospitals at Port Hedland and Marble Bar. He intended to continue
to Darwin and then travel south to Alice Springs. The Wet, with flooded roads, made this idea unworkable so
Partridge returned to Perth and after an adventurous flight to Adelaide was provided with a motor car and other
supplies to patrol through the area he had known in 1917–18.
Partridge was a reserved self-effacing man usually content to stand in John Flynn’s shadow. However, this
quality appealed to the people of the bush who were down-to-earth, practical people and made a shrewd assessment
of newcomers. Partridge did not readily permit people to use his Christian name. His ministerial brethren knew
him as Kingsley while his immediate family called him Foster. It is not clear when or how he became known far
and wide within his huge patrol and beyond as ‘Skipper’, but this was an appellation which he permitted and
welcomed.
While he was in Western Australia he had renewed an acquaintance with the widow of a former New South
Wales colleague, the Reverend Arthur Torrens and thus he met their daughter Gertrude Rose who was working in
the taxation office in Perth. A romance blossomed and the two married in Adelaide on 23 March 1933. His mother
had not wanted him to marry at all and this had been a matter of tension, but John Flynn also tried to dissuade the
couple, thinking that marriage would lead to the loss of a valuable inland padre. The couple paid no heed, especially
as Flynn himself had married a few months earlier. Flynn need not have worried for ‘Gertie’, as Skipper’s wife was
a tremendous asset, giving her time and talent to the growing number of women living in the Centre, and helping
out in the AIM nursing homes within the area. Even after the birth of their daughter Grace in 1936 she and the baby
travelled with him on the track.
On patrol, Partridge combined his work as minister providing pastoral care, regardless of denominational
background, with other duties not generally associated with the clergy. He took staff members of the Royal
Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) with him to install or service transceivers. He surveyed the need for the strategic
location of transceivers to ensure the widest coverage of the outback. One example was the siting of a set at
Coober Pedy, thus providing communication in the only place between the east-west railway and Alice Springs at
that time. Between 1932 and 1939, the radio medical service of the RFDS was based in Cloncurry, Queensland.
Partridge took Alfred Traeger from Farina in South Australia into the southwest corner of Queensland, down
the Birdsville track to Maree, then to Mount Eba, Oodnadatta and on to Hermannsburg. Servicing and installing
transceivers they travelled north through Tennant Creek, Rockhampton Downs to Borroloola and Victoria River
Downs. The following year (1933), again with Traegar, they covered sonic of the same ground but also provided
sets at Elkedra and then the first break in the silence at Groote Eylandt. Following the visit to Groote, they were
in Cloncurry when a first part of a message telling of the ambush of police at Woodah Island and the death of
Constable McColl came through. However, the transmitter at Groote Eylandt broke down leaving a vital part of
the message out Knowing the folk at Groote would be able to hear, advice was given on the probable cause of the
trouble until after some hours they were successful in restoring communication and the significance of the tragedy
was revealed.
It was while on patrol with Traegar that Partridge came to see the value to him of radio on the track with the result
that he secured the first licence for a portable wireless ever issued. In later years, he did similar extensive patrols,
not only with Traegar but also with Maurie Anderson who installed and opened the RFDS base at Alice Springs in
1939 and later with Graham Pitts of that base.