When the funeral was over, the three Young siblings, still grieving their father’s sudden death, discussed what to do next. Ernest felt it was time to go to Australia and help with the plantation. Constance was happy and secure in England among her extended family and decided to stay on there. Florence agonized over what she should do. She enjoyed England but could not imagine spending the rest of her life there; she was far too much of a colonial girl for that. But the idea of living on a sugar plantation did not appeal to her either. It was a man’s world, and she knew she would be lonely on the plantation. There was one other option. Perhaps she could live in Sydney with Emily and John. There were eight children in the family now, and Florence was almost certain that Emily would welcome her help.
Florence and Ernest left England in early December 1881. Florence hoped she would find a permanent home with her older sister. She had no idea of the adventures that awaited her in Australia.
Chapter 5
Kanakas
Six months later things were going better than Florence could have imagined. She was now a part of the Deck household in Sydney, where she tutored some of the children and helped Emily with the enormous amount of laundry eleven people produced.
Florence kept in close contact with her brothers through letters. They had finished the house at Fairymead, as they called the plantation, and Ernest began urging Florence to come and visit the place in September 1882. Three days before she was due to leave for Fairymead, one of Emily’s friends came to visit. Mrs. Brown was a fellow member of the Plymouth Brethren and an earnest Christian worker. She was well acquainted with the Bundaberg area where the plantation was located. In fact, her husband had once owned the land that was now Fairymead.
Florence, Emily, and Mrs. Brown enjoyed a pleasant visit together. After two hours of conversation, Mrs. Brown announced that it was time for her to go. “Before I leave,” she said, “I think we should pray together, don’t you?”
Florence and Emily agreed, and the three women knelt to pray. Mrs. Brown prayed first, asking that God would watch over Florence during her visit to Fairymead and make her a blessing to all she met there.
Emily prayed next, and when she finished her prayer Florence began to stand up. As she did so, she felt an arm around her waist. “No, dear, wait a moment,” she heard Mrs. Brown say. “You need to pray too.”
Florence froze. She had never prayed out loud in front of anyone before. The silence seemed endless as a tug-of-war raged inside Florence. Part of her wanted to pray aloud, but another part of her knew that she would make a fool of herself if she did. Emily and Mrs. Brown waited quietly. Two minutes passed, and then three, before Florence summoned her courage and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She tried again, and this time she managed to say a few words, but she was too nervous to finish her prayer. This time Mrs. Brown squeezed Florence’s hand and finished the prayer for her. As the women opened their eyes and stood up, Florence wished she could sink through the floor. She hoped she would never be asked to pray in that way again.
Three days later Florence and her ten-year-old nephew Harry were on their way up the east coast of Australia in a steamer. Florence planned to spend six months in Bundaberg with her brothers before returning to Sydney. It took a week to travel up the coast, and before arriving at Bundaberg, the steamer stopped in the ports of Brisbane and Maryborough. As they traveled north, the weather became increasingly hot and humid.
Fairymead was a five-mile buggy ride from Bundaberg. The road was really a sandy track, and Harry counted five gates that needed to be opened and shut along the way so the buggy could pass. They also had to cross the Burnett River by punt. The buggy ride took two and a half hours, and Florence arrived at the plantation dusty and exhausted. But she was delighted to be once again reunited with her three brothers and see the progress they had made at Fairymead. Everyone was working long days in preparation for the first sugarcane harvest. The juice-extracting machinery that Mr. Young had ordered in Edinburgh before his death had finally arrived and was being assembled. Storage sheds were half built, and there was a vegetable garden that seemed to need constant attention.
Florence found plenty to keep her busy, but she could not seem to forget the words of Mrs. Brown’s prayer about being a blessing to all she met. Growing in Florence’s heart was the desire to give others the freedom and change she had experience when she became a Christian. But how?
The housekeeper at the plantation lived in a tiny cottage next to the main house. She had four children, and Florence decided they would be her mission field. She gathered the children together and read them Bible stories. Florence even led them in prayers. As she did so, she discovered that she was not nearly as nervous praying in front of children as she had been in front of adults.
Everything was going along well when a realization hit Florence with a force that sent her world spinning. There were eighty indentured laborers living and working at Fairymead. These indentured laborers were known in Australia as Kanakas. They were not native Australians but were natives of the islands of the South Pacific, mainly the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands. Eighty people, Florence told herself, and not one of them has ever heard of the Christian God. Nor is anyone doing anything to reach them with the gospel message. It seemed a dreadful state of affairs to Florence, and she could not understand why someone was not doing something about it.
As the days went by, Florence became convinced that if no one else was interested in the Kanaka people, she would have to do something for them herself. Yet the more she learned about the laborers, the more impossible the task seemed. The Kanaka workers spoke many different languages, and the only language they had in common was a smattering of pidgin English—just enough so that their overseers could tell them what to do. In addition, the men came from islands where murder and cannibalism were common, and most of them spent their wages on gambling and drinking. Florence was nervous at the idea of even being in the same room with them. But she fought back her fear and pressed ahead. She asked the head overseer to find out for her whether any of the workers would be interested in a Bible class.
The next Sunday Florence prayed hard as she walked to the old hut where the Bible class was to be held. Her heart was thumping fast as she strolled by a gum tree. There, hanging from a twig, was a chrysalis that sparked an idea. “Thank You, God,” she said as she pulled off the twig with the chrysalis on it.
As she neared the hut, Florence counted ten men and a house girl waiting for her. She took a deep breath and stepped inside. “Thank you for coming,” she said slowly.
The men stared at her, and Florence realized that this was probably the first time that a white woman had spoken to any of them before. She smiled and held up the chrysalis. “Do you know what’s in here?” she asked.
No one spoke.
“A caterpillar made this and got inside it,” she continued. “And soon a butterfly will come out. The caterpillar will turn into a butterfly. The Bible tells us that one day, when we die, we will come alive again, and if we know God, we will go to be with Him.”
She looked around for any sign of recognition. It was impossible to tell whether or not anyone understood what she had said. Florence decided it was time for a hymn, but none of the Kanakas could read a hymnbook, so instead she sang a chorus and invited the group to sing it line by line after her. This seemed to be more interesting to them than her words about the chrysalis. Florence was amazed at the way they harmonized. When the chorus was finished, she said a prayer, and the meeting was over.
That night Florence thought about how her Bible class had gone. It had not gone very well, she concluded. She doubted that the Kanakas had taken in much of what she said. She knew that it would be so much better if they could read the Bible for themselves. Much to her surprise, Florence found that she did not want to give up trying to reach these people. Instead, her mind whirled with ways to help them. She recalled a set of colored pictures of important Bible stories she had seen in a store in Sydney. She wrote to Emily and asked her to buy the pictures and send them to her as soon as possible. Then Florence tackled the idea of reading. She wanted to teach the Kanakas to read so that they could read the Bible for themselves. Florence did not know whether anyone had ever attempted to teach them to read before, but she was determined to try. She decided to teach them to read directly from the Bible. On a large sheet of paper she wrote out the verse John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
The next Sunday Florence hung the verse on the wall of the hut and pointed to the first word, “God.” She said it aloud, and the eleven class members in attendance repeated it after her. Then she moved on to “so” and “loved.” Florence spent the rest of the class going over these three words.
That week she went into Bundaberg and purchased twenty large-type New Testaments. She made bookmarks for them all and underlined John 3:16 in red ink. Those in attendance at the Bible class the next Sunday were surprised when she presented each person with a Bible. They all proudly showed each other how they could read some of the words in the underlined verse.
The next Sunday new faces appeared at the Bible class. The students had been busily showing their coworkers the underlined words in the New Testament and how they could pronounce them, and most of the new participants had learned to read the words themselves. It was time to go on to the next verse. As Florence taught more verses to the people, she tried her best to explain their meaning to them. She despaired, though, that the Kanakas would ever understand, because the pidgin English she had taught herself in an attempt to communicate better with them was so limited. So it was a surprise to her when one Sunday Jimmie Aoba, one of the Kanaka laborers who had faithfully attended the Bible class, stayed behind to talk to her.
“What do you want, Jimmie?” Florence asked as she studied his anxious face.
“Missis, me want!”
“What do you want?”
“Me want to belong God!” Jimmie replied with great earnestness.
“Wonderful,” Florence said. “Keep coming to Bible class and you will learn how to belong God.”
But Jimmie shook his head. “Missis, me come along school along Sunday, and then me lose’im six day. Me want to learn quick.”
Florence stared at the man in front of her. After all of her hard work, someone was showing an interest in the gospel message. She could hardly believe it.
“You come every night and I teach’im you,” Florence replied.
And so Florence began a nightly Bible study with Jimmie and some of his friends. Because they had no permanent meeting place, they met in the washhouse or on the veranda or anywhere else they could find a quiet spot.
Florence was delighted with Jimmie’s progress. Jimmie seemed to really understand what he was being taught. Two months later, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, his faith did not waiver. He prayed for the other men from his island until the day he died. Although Jimmie’s death saddened Florence, it also made her more determined than ever to keep reaching out to the Kanakas. If Jimmie could understand the message so clearly, she told herself, so could the others.
Florence’s brother Horace was planning to marry Ellen Thorne in Sydney at the end of November. The whole Young clan, except for Constance, planned to attend the wedding, and Florence knew that she had a major decision to make before then. Should she return to live with Emily and John, or should she make her home at Fairymead? Eleven months before, as she was planning to leave England for Australia, Florence could never have imagined herself working among the South Sea islanders. But now, as she thought about the decision before her, she realized that her heart was in working among the Kanakas.
