- page -
http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdupress
Go Back >> List of Entries
willingness displayed by the aborigines under my leadership in loading, unloading, and carrying munitions of war,
and their faithfulness in the smaller services they rendered to the air force men during their stay with us’.
Following a brief appointment at Otford, New South Wales, where the ‘half-caste’ children from the Methodists’
Croker Island Home were housed during the war, he was from 1944 until 1946 in charge of the fledgling Yirrkala
station.
Not content to remain a lay missionary, Kolinio Saukuru found time to study for the ministry, and was ordained
in 1945. He carried with him to Northern Australia many of the prejudices of a fundamentalist mission—and of the
non-Aboriginal population in general—concerning the ‘degradation’ of Aboriginal people. His sense of Christian
mission meant by definition that much comprising the lives and traditions of Aborigines had to be reformed as
their souls were saved. However, the Fijian, sooner than most of his European colleagues, learned to respect the
Aboriginal people amongst whom he worked. He witnessed enough of the foibles of the so-called ‘superior’ races
to be able to put Aboriginal customs in a sensible perspective.
His own apparently lowly status within the mission, however, was a cause of eventual regret. Having established
himself as an ordained minister in his own right, in charge of a station with white staff, having become fluent in the
language, trained a male Aboriginal choir of some renown, and helped transform the Yirrkala station, he learned
he was to be transferred to a subordinate position at another station. This followed a period of intensive work
on a short-staffed station that was said to have caused his health and efficiency to suffer. Not long before, an air
force officer based at Gove observed: ‘This good man cares for 400 natives, 150 of whom are fine fat children;
he clothes, feeds, educates and acts as general father confessor and King Solomon to the natives who are extremely
fond of him; he has a man-sized job and is doing the work of half a dozen men’. Saukuru protested about the
transfer as passionately as his natural decency allowed, but to no avail. Long overdue for furlough, and ill, he was
sent south to recuperate and undertake deputation work.
He never returned to the north. He and his family returned home to a parish in Fiji in 1949 mainly because he
could not afford to send the older of his four children to boarding school in Australia on the low stipend paid to
Pacific Island staff: the mission would not assist.
He died in 1970. A fitting tribute to his work was paid by Reverend Dr JW Burton, the great MOM administrator
who, ironically, had done much in his early missionary days to create the mission’s mythical hierarchy of races:
‘I have never known a better Christian, white or brown, than Kolinio, nor anyone quite so unselfish and Christlike’.
As early as 1939, following a visit, Burton had described the big Fijian as ‘Capable, ever cheerful, unselfish,
considerate and yet firm when the need arises... [who] has won the respect, confidence and affection of the whole
European staff and of the native people’. He had done the mission proud but, in the end, was poorly served in
return.
Rev H Chambers, ‘A Brown Knight of the Cross’, The Missionary Review, vol 58, 1950; J Kadiba, ‘An Account of the Fijian Missionaries
in Arnhem Land 1916–1988’, typescript, 1992; M McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land, 1976; Mitchell Library, Methodist Overseas
Mission Collection: MOM 451, North Australia correspondence and papers 1929–1947; Northern Territory Archives Service, NTRS 37–63;
K N Saukuru, ‘My Life in Arnhem Land, North Australia’, Journal of Northern Territory History, no 2, 1991.
TONY AUSTIN, Vol 3.
SCANLAN, MARY: see COSTELLO, MARY
SCHERGER, (Sir) FREDERICK RUDOLPH WILLIAM (1904–1984), Air Force officer and company
director, was born at Ararat, Victoria, on 18 May 1904, son of Frederick Herman Scherger and Sarah Jane Scherger,
nee Chamberlain.
After education at local schools, he entered the Royal Military College Duntroon on 17 February 1921 and
graduated on 11 December 1924 having been awarded the King’s Medal. Although trained as an Army officer he
was seconded to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and his formal appointment to that Service dated from
21 January 1925. He was an outstanding pilot and flying instructor who served at most of the Australian training
stations. Between 1934 and 1936, he undertook further training in England. He received regular promotion and
by October 1941 when he was appointed to command the RAAF station, Darwin, he held the rank of Group
Captain. He took over from Group Captain Eaton in December 1941 and then handed over that post to Wing
Commander Griffith in January 1942 on his appointment as Senior Air Staff Officer, North Western Area, which
had its headquarters in Darwin. Scherger took over in the north when there was considerable animosity between
the heads of the various services and with neither the RAAF base in Darwin complete nor the advanced operational
bases in good condition.
On 19 February 1942, the Japanese bombed Darwin. Because of Darwin’s apparent ill-preparedness Scherger
and his RAAF colleagues, together with his peers in the other services, became the subject of a humiliating Royal
Commission chaired by Justice Lowe. As he was afterwards to recall: ‘As a result of that raid the three Service
commanders, Wilson and myself, and the two senior Army people, and the two senior Navy people, were removed
and I was unemployed for one month, which isn’t very encouraging in the middle of a war’. Although the Lowe
report was very critical of the Darwin defences generally, Scherger was highly praised by the Commission which
noted that he had ‘acted with great courage and energy’ and whose ‘conduct [was] deserving of the highest praise’.
Asked to comment on the alleged civilian panic after the first raid in his evidence to the Royal Commission,
Scherger said: ‘I didn’t find it unusual at all. It happened everywhere else in the world and it is still happening
today. The civilian population knows nothing of what is about to happen... will be shocked beyond belief when
it does happen and the first principle they work on is that absence of body is a lot better than presence of mind’.