A new UCA President
Six weeks after being interviewed in Sydney for an accountant position at the UCA’s Northern
Synod, Stuart McMillan found himself standing alone with his swag on the edge of a dirt airstrip at
Ramingining, 560 km east of Darwin. No one got the message that he was coming. No one knew
who he was, and more practically, no one was there to pick him up. So he hitched a ride into the
community with some locals.
The year was 1982. Stuart McMillan was 27 years old. He and his wife Ros, a behavioural
scientist, had made the big decision to leave their comfortable community in Sydney’s suburban
northwest to move to Darwin with their young family. For some time, Stuart and Ros had known
that they wanted to do something in their lives that would make a difference in the world and to
live out the values of their shared Christian faith.
He will be one of three lay people to serve as UCA President. Sir Ronald Wilson and Dr Jill Tabart
were the others. His path to the presidency has been uniquely informed by the lives of Australia’s
First Peoples, particularly the Aboriginal people of northern Australia and members of the Uniting
Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.
Image and words from the UCA assembly Website, where the full story can be read:
https://assembly.uca.org.au/news/item/1720-travelling-north-profiling-the-new-president
Congratulations to Alice Short, who became the latest nonagenarian
associated with St Margaret’s recently. That makes a total of five now three men and two women. Alice is one of three of them who live at
Goodwin Retirement Village in Ainslie.
St Margaret’s News
11
July 2015