The first two of the Wellington Anglican priests who’ve offered to help in flood-ravaged South-West Queensland will fly to Brisbane on Thursday.

Another Waikato-based clergywoman expects to fly out to Queensland this week, while at least five more Anglican clergy from Wellington and Waikato are ready to leave at short notice.

The Revs Jean Malcolm and Winton Davies, who are both from the Diocese of Wellington, will be flying out on Thursday.

They’ll be based in Ipswich, just west of Brisbane, and they’ll be ministering in Ipswich and in the Lockyer Valley, where flash floods claimed many of the 20 known victims, and where hundreds of soldiers and police are still searching for 13 missing people.

Another Anglican priest, the Rev Lois Symes, who was the Archdeacon of Piako in the Diocese of Waikato, is also expected to fly out to Queensland this week.

Bishop Rob Nolan, who is responsible for the Western Region of the Diocese of Brisbane, has asked her to work in Chinchilla, a small town in the Darling Downs, about 300km north-west of Brisbane, and to help the town’s archdeacon in ministering to the district’s grief.

Bishop Nolan has 38 parishes within his care – and he's told Rev Symes that 31 of these parishes have been hit by the flooding, some two or three times.

Four more Wellington-based priests are on standby, and will go to Queensland as and when needed by Bishop Nolan.

Meanwhile, the Dean of Hamilton’s Anglican Cathedral, the Very Rev Jan Joustra – who grew up in Tasmania and began his ministry in Victoria – is also preparing to head to Queensland.

The Bishop of Wellington, Dr Tom Brown, says Rev Jean Malcolm – who is a priest at St James, Lower Hutt – will be working out of an Ipswich hotel for two weeks.

Her colleague, the Rev Winton Davies, who is a retired senior police chaplain and hospital chaplain, will also be based there, and he's able to stay on longer, if that's needed.

“It’ll certainly be front-line ministry,” say Dr Brown.

“They’ll each have the use of a car so they can minister in Ipswich and in the Lockyer Valley – which, as we know, was particularly hard-hit.

“They’ll be giving spiritual and pastoral care to those in mourning, as well as to people who’ve been traumatised by the event, who’ve lost their homes, everything in some cases.”

The four other Wellington-based priests ready to leave at a moment’s notice are: The Rev Dr Chris Carey-Smith, who is the co-Vicar of St Matthews, Palmerston North; the Rev John Hughes, Vicar of Karori; The Rev Kevin Tarrey, who is a priest at Wanganui, and Dean Frank Nelson, from the Cathedral of St Paul in Wellington.

For some time now the Diocese of Wellington has been linked to the Diocese of Brisbane in a companion-diocese relationship, and Bishop Tom Brown is, during this crisis, in daily email contact with his Brisbane counterparts.

And he says the gratitude with which Wellington’s offer to send clergy has been taken up underlines the value of those relationships.

“I’ve come to know Archbishop Phillip Aspinall (leader of the Anglican Church in Australia and Bishop of Brisbane) and his regional bishops well, and we’ve often had clergy from each other’s dioceses come to each other's annual clergy conferences.”

Meanwhile, messages of Anglican support continue to flow into Brisbane from all over the world.

“At a time like this,” says Archbishop Aspinall, “we discover what it means to belong to the worldwide Anglican family, and how valuable and important that is, ” he said.

“I've been sharing those messages with clergy on the ground. It means so much to them to know that people around the world are thinking of them and praying for them and want to do what they can to support them. ”

NZ appeal launched

The Diocese of Wellington has launched an appeal fund through the North End branch of the ANZ bank. The name of the account is “ARCHBISHOP’S ERF APPEAL QLD” and the account number is 01 0535 0089638-28.

ENDS

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