On his return to the ruins of Killalpaninna Mission Station, in 1964, Pastor Proeve
was told that 'Old Sandy' the Rainmaker, who for many years had camped near the
ruins, had recently died. On an early visit Sandy had said to Proeve, 'You know me,
I am Sandy, me make rain.' And when Proeve had responded with 'God makes
rain,' Sandy replied, 'Me believe in God, too. God and me make rain.' Many years
earlier Sandy had run away from the mission school; ' Too much stick at school,' he
had said. Another old Aborigine, who was camped with Sandy, when referring to
one of Killalpaninna's missionaries, had declared to Proeve, ' that fella must have
been all wrong that Jesus had been here. I have looked everywhere and not found
his tracks...'
                                                                     Christine Stevens, White Man's Dreaming.

here     the stretch of a season can number decades

transforming water and land from a sanctuary

ripened with craspedia     snow pea and spongiosa

into the barrenness of a parched and burning sand

where few manifestations can stand     like an old coolabah - tree

with its dipping branches     or quartzite hills scoured

by the wind’s relentless hand

here    in 1886 the lutherans came with bibles

top-hats and tails     to impose a white man’s mythos

on the black     to pit their frail christ against the dreaming

through heat and sand they raised their mission

by a lake     its tower seen from the birdsville track

crowned with a little wooden cross     around which

every day at twilight a lantern was lit and bound

and every sunday morning its bell would sound

summoning the diyari from their dreaming

burnished like black marble     naked as the full moon

the men     with boomerangs and mulga spears

ochre smeared     fierce  and  proud    the women  

with  box-gum vessels and digging sticks     their hair platted

and cascading with daisies     fire bush and twigs

but prayers and sermons could not impress

what a culture out of its dreaming had never dreamt

and as time passed     fewer chose to be baptised

or venture in     living outside in mia-mias covered

with fragments of paper and tin     the men in top hats

the women     awkwardly pressed into european gowns

until the season imploded to a drought     not even

a kunkie with his rain bundle could beat     or white

man’s prayer moisten with its atmosphere: 22,000 sheep

dying of hunger    as one by one the lights of the mission

went out    

              below the canopies of a beating sun

starlight and a desert flower     over broken pews

and splintered rafters     where japanese tourists

snap around the crumbling of a bell-less tower