J. B. Gribble

John Brown Gribble (1 September 1847 – 3 June 1893) was an Australian minister of religion, noted for his missionary work among Aboriginal people in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland. His appointment in Western Australia was cancelled within a year due to hostility from squatters and others who had Aboriginal employees.

History

Gribble was born at Redruth, Cornwall, a son of miner Benjamin Gribble (1810–1866) and Mary Gribble, née Brown (1808 – 20 January 1887), and as a young man emigrated with his parents to Victoria, Australia. He was devoutly religious, and early chose the life of a Congregational Minister, serving in Rutherglen around 1876, and in 1878 moved to Jerilderie, so was there at the time of the Kelly gang's occupation of the town (February 1879). According to one account, Kelly admonished Steve Hart for taking Gribble's watch, on the grounds it was an inferior make, also that Gribble interceded with Kelly on behalf of a girl, whose riding horse the gang had appropriated.

Warangesda

Gribble was concerned at the number of local Aboriginal girls and women who had cohabited with white men, to be abandoned when they became pregnant. He determined on setting up a refuge where these women and their children were cared for, away from degrading influences, especially of alcohol. He lamented the fact that Victoria, with one tenth the Aboriginal population of New South Wales, had many Church and State missions, yet the larger colony had none, with the exception of the Maloga Aboriginal Mission School, run as a private philanthropy by Daniel Matthews and his brothers.

Thanks to Gribble's efforts, and supported by the people of Darlington Point, an area was set aside by government as an Aboriginal reserve, dubbed Warangesda, a portmanteau of an Aboriginal word and "Bethesda", to mean "house of healing" or "house of mercy", and superintended by Gribble, who with his friend J. J. Lloyd and a handful of Aboriginal men performed the construction work.

His church at Jerilderie was Presbyterian, and at Rutherglen he regularly officiated at a church of that denomination, but he maintained membership of the Congregational Union of Victoria, and in any case, the mission had to be non-denominational to receive aid from the New South Wales Government.