to go down to the pub and have a few beers.” But that was the life Michael Chamberlain had decided for himself. He went into it with his eyes open.
Stuart Tipple and his brothers helped Frank in his building work which he undertook during school holidays. Frank converted a property into flats and had half-completed the renovations of the family home when in December 1965 he died suddenly. Margaret, with five children, including a baby, was hard-pressed. Stuart remembers how the local SDA community moved in and began a project to finish the renovations of the family home. With Frank’s life insurance payout and income from leasing of the flats, the family was able to get by. And in the long, hard road ahead of her, Margaret became more spiritual. “She told me that when Dad died, she made a covenant with God,” Stuart said. “She asked God to become father of her fatherless children.” Stuart for his own part made a decision that he would “never ask Mother for a dollar”. He earned his own pocket money by delivering groceries by bicycle.
Stuart Tipple and Peter Chamberlain continued to get on well. Peter said: “We could talk freely with each other and often with different points of view. Yes, we argued but never in anger. We soon became great mates. Stuart was an honest clean-mouthed friend, and was there to back you up when needed in argument or fight. We were baptized into the Adventist Church at the same ceremony.” Stuart was without a male mentor or role model, so he learned to be self-sufficient, though Margaret kept the family on an even keel. Peter said: “Margaret enjoyed finding out what you thought, or how you ticked. She never would harp on your bad points, but would soon give her shilling’s worth if you questioned her better judgement. I respected Margaret, a special person and having to bring those Tipple boys and girls up single-handedly and with a baby in arms still. I admired her guts.
“It wasn't easy for the family to lose a dad so young or suddenly. My mother Greta was more of a follower, while Margaret was her own person, and I feel this helped this family to seek out the vocation they preferred in life. One of Stuart’s better points in life, was he waited and listened before he spoke. I was the opposite. I knew I was no saint like Stuart. He was a great mate in my early youth and probably helped me stay on the straight-and-narrow more than I helped him. Yes, we enjoyed duck hunting on the farm, social rugby and a little deer recovery to make a bob or two. We met some outdoor hardships together but were able to laugh about them later.”
Stuart Tipple finished his schooling at Shirley Boys High School but felt no inclination to do Law. He believed that a prerequisite for Law was Latin and because he had not studied Latin, he did not consider it as a possibility. Awarded a bursary to do teacher-training, he decided to follow his father into Education. When he went to enrol at Canterbury University in Christchurch, he discovered that Latin was no longer a prerequisite. He enrolled in Law. It meant he lost his bursary and to get himself through, he realised he would have to work part-time. His first job was cleaning windows. He made extra money shooting with Peter and selling deer carcasses to butchers. Then he did a tradesman’s course and worked as a drain-layer’s labourer, installing stormwater and sewerage pipes. “He worked hard for his extra dosh,” Peter said. “Often, I'd see him come home covered in dirt from drain laying for Stan Brown, our social Rugby coach.”
At Avondale College, Michael Chamberlain, having a better time of it, living a clean, healthy life and studying theology, became friendly with another theology student, Phil Ward. “I quite respected Phil – he was a highly creative preacher,” Michael said in Beyond Azaria. His sermons were completely different, out of left field.”
On 4th March 1948, Alice Lynne “Lindy” Murchison was born in Whakatane, on the North Island of New Zealand, daughter of an SDA pastor, Cliff Murchison, and Avis. Lindy’s paternal origins were in the Isle of Skye off Scotland. Her great grandfather, Malcolm Murchison, arrived in Australia in 1852 with wife Flora and an infant son, Alister, and settled in Geelong, Victoria. Flora ran the toll booth gate in Geelong. Alister died very young but their next child, Alexander Murchison, took to the land and set up sawmills and creameries in Victoria. He married Isadora Kate Marr, of Irish convict stock who was the proprietor of the Post Office Tea Rooms and Accommodation in Hobart. The couple settled in the Otway Ranges where Alexander started pioneer farming. Alexander was heavily involved in the Victorian Conservation Commission.
The Murchisons had a son, Clifford, or Cliff. They lived next door to another Cliff, Cliff Young, who became his friend and would become known throughout Australia for his long distance running in gum boots. When Cliff Murchison was very young, he accepted Christianity and decided to become a Seventh-day Adventist, the first in his family to do so. He also decided, in his teens, to become an SDA pastor. He left home and worked in rural Victoria selling books door-to-door to raise the money to go to Avondale College. He worked in Melbourne for a short time. Cliff was at Avondale College from 1933 till 1938. He worked in the college dairy during the terms and eventually got permission to start a local milk round, on foot, with the excess milk that had formerly been thrown away. His enterprise was so successful that the college bought a horse and cart to expand the service.
In 1939, Cliff Murchison was posted as an SDA pastor to Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand. He met Avis Hann, a New Zealand-born girl with English-German-Spanish heritage, who came from Stratford on New Zealand’s North Island. They married on 15th October 1941. A son, Alexander, was born on 20th August 1942 at Rotorua. Lindy arrived in 1948. She was 20 months old when the family settled in Victoria in 1949. Both Alexander and Lindy were brought up as Seventh-day Adventists. Alexander went to school in Melbourne. “Lindy started school when we were in South Gippsland,” Alex said. “She was a happy, cheerful creature but I found out that when I teased her even at an early age, she would stand up for herself.”
Cliff Murchison continued at various appointments around Victoria. At one of those postings, at Benalla, Lindy went to High school with and subsequently dated Alex Gazik, who went on to Avondale College to study theology. Cliff Murchison’s pastoral travels took him north of the border, to Broken Hill in New South Wales. At Avondale College, Michael shared a room with Alex Gazik, who still dating Lindy Murchison and had put up a large colour photo of her on the wall. Alex consistently “promoted” Lindy to Michael as someone he should meet. Michael said: “I gave in, accepting his word on a fateful hitch-hiking race to Broken Hill.” Soon afterwards Lindy and Alex broke up. Michael visited again the next year with Lindy’s cousin. Everything else followed. “Lindy and I fell in love, and I courted her by letter,” Michael said. “We spent 19 full days together before we got married, such was the insulation of college life.” Michael graduated in 1969 and married Lindy at the SDA church in Wahroonga on Sydney’s North Shore. Michael was posted to Tasmania, where he was very active in the community and wrote radio scripts. A son, Aidan, was born in 1973. Michael was ordained as a pastor just before they were transferred to North Queensland around Christmas 1974.
Phil Ward graduated in Theology and showed aptitude during his college years. He did not become a pastor but instead began work as a TV news camera man and started a publication, Small Business Letter, which was successful. He used his skill as a camera man by taking a film of Michael and Lindy’s wedding which he edited and gave to them as a wedding gift. It is necessary to mention Phil here because he was to loom much larger in the lives of Michael and Lindy at a later time.
Stuart Tipple graduated in Law in New Zealand in 1975. Setting out to work there presented difficulties. The country was, in Tipple’s words, “in a pretty bad way”. “I think about 40 of us graduated but there were only two positions available for articled clerks,” he said. “I managed to get one of them.” Tipple was accepted by the firm, Harper Pascoe and Company, in Christchurch, unusual in that he was “an Adventist boy when everyone else in the firm had been to Christ’s College”. Stuart pointed out to a senior partner that he was the only lawyer the firm had ever employed who had not been to Christ’s College. The partner thought long and hard before replying: “That is not right. In 1942, we employed someone who had been to St Andrew’s, the Presbyterian College.”
That same year, Michael, with Lindy and Aidan in tow,
