Before long David had a plan, and soon the members of the team were spread out around Darwin, putting their carpentry skills to work. They focused much of their efforts on houses that had been damaged but not destroyed by the cyclone. Some of these homes needed their roofs repaired or holes in the walls patched, while others needed bathrooms and kitchens put back into functioning order. So much work needed to be done across Darwin that the efforts of twenty men seemed insignificant, but they were not insignificant to those the men helped. With tears in their eyes, grown men would thank the workers for their efforts in giving them back a place to live. As David made it back to the hostel each evening dirty and sweaty, the thought of those thank-yous spurred him on to try to help even more people the next day.
Finally, after three weeks in Darwin, it was time for the team to head back to Sydney. Exhausted yet exhilarated from the experience, David clambered back onto the airplane. He took a last look at the devastated city of Darwin as the plane took off. So much work still needed to be done. It was going to take a long time and a massive rebuilding effort before the city could finally put the disaster of Cyclone Tracy behind it.
David hadn’t been back in Sydney long before he again began feeling frustrated. Once more he was renovating and restoring the houses of some of Sydney’s most wealthy residents, while across the country in Darwin so many people no longer even had homes in which to live. He wished he could do more for these people. He got his opportunity three weeks after arriving back from Darwin when the phone rang one evening.
“Hi, David. This is Doug McKenzie,” the voice on the other end of the line announced.
The Reverend Doug McKenzie was a minister in Darwin who had coordinated and helped the team’s efforts while they were there.
“Doug, it’s so nice to hear from you. How are things in Darwin?” David asked.
“You know there’s still a lot to be done. The Uniting Church wants to be involved in the ongoing rebuilding effort. We want to bring in work teams from across Australia to help us, and we need someone to coordinate those teams.” Doug paused for a moment before continuing. “Someone like you. David, would you be willing to move up here to Darwin for a while with your family and take on that role?”
David wanted to say yes immediately, but he knew that a decision like this would have to be talked over with Carol, since it affected her and the girls as much as it affected him. “Let me talk it over with Carol and get back to you.”
“And why would we do this?” was Carol’s initial reaction when David told her about Doug’s phone call. But as the two of them talked more about it, Carol warmed to the idea of going to Darwin. They agreed that it would be a challenge. They would be kept busy, but it could also be a lot of fun and a great break from the pattern their lives had fallen into in Sydney. David called Doug back and told him that the family would come to Darwin as soon as he could take care of business matters.
David set to work organizing his construction businesses so that they would carry on without him around. By now he had come to the conclusion that he wanted to sell the businesses, and he had stopped accepting new contracts and concentrated on completing several large contracts that were already under way. When the projects were finished, he would put the companies up for sale. Meanwhile, Vic Henshaw, the manager of David’s tile and bathroom store, and his wife agreed to move into the Darley Road house and collect the rent from the flats at the back while David and Carol were in Darwin.
As soon as things were organized, David headed to Darwin. Two months later Carol and the girls joined him there. They lived in Gordon Symonds Hostel near the airport, where David and his team had stayed during their earlier trip to Darwin. Before Cyclone Tracy, the hostel had been a place for Aborigines to stay when visiting Darwin from outlying areas around the Northern Territory. Although visiting Aborigines continued to use the place, the hostel also served as home for the teams of workers coming from all over Australia to help with the reconstruction effort.
When Carol arrived, she took over managing the facility while David kept busy coordinating and managing the teams. And David had plenty to keep him busy. He was in charge of ordering the necessary building supplies so they would be on hand when teams arrived, and he also assigned workers to various projects. The teams of workers rebuilt church buildings, community buildings, and private homes in and around Darwin. Basically, David’s teams were willing to undertake any job that would help the people of the city get back on their feet.
Besides purchasing new building materials for the jobs, David recycled as much as he possibly could. He would sift through piles of debris from the cyclone. “This is good. We can reuse this,” he would say, and some of the men would set the item aside. Soon David had amassed a large pile of window frames, doors and door frames, and sheets of corrugated roofing iron that could all be used in the rebuilding effort.
While he and Carol were kept busy with their respective responsibilities, David always found time to spend with five-year-old Natasha and three-year-old Rachel. At the rear of the hostel was a trampoline, and soon David had the girls doing somersaults and backflips on it. After a heavy downpour of rain, he would take the girls swimming in large, rain-filled potholes around the hostel.
David also spent a lot of time away from Darwin, fulfilling the other responsibility of his job—recruiting teams of skilled workers to come to the devastated city. He would fly to various cities around Australia where he spoke in churches, describing the need for both workers and money for the rebuilding work in Darwin. At first this was not easy for him. He was a naturally shy person, and standing in front of a church full of people was nerve-wracking. But as David spoke at more and more churches, his confidence as a public speaker grew. Soon he no longer experienced the nauseating knot in his stomach as he waited to speak. And the words he had stumbled over at first now seemed to flow easily from his mouth.
After he had spoken, plenty of people were always willing to volunteer for the rebuilding task in Darwin. However, David would not allow just anyone to go to Darwin. Because he wanted skilled workers—carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and the like—after he had spoken at a church, he would spend time interviewing the volunteers to make sure they did indeed have the skills they said they had. Many people, he discovered, were eager to get to Darwin and see firsthand the damage Cyclone Tracy had meted out to the city. But the Australian government tightly controlled access to the devastated city, issuing permits to travel there only to skilled workers. As a result, people often told David they had skills that weren’t up to the task. But David found that a few minutes of talking with each volunteer quickly sorted out the skilled tradesmen from the not-so-skilled or unskilled volunteers.
While he was away on his speaking and recruiting trips, David would travel to Sydney to see how things were going with his construction businesses. When all the outstanding contracts the companies had been undertaking were finally completed, he began the process of selling the companies.
Back in Darwin the rebuilding effort kept moving forward. A steady flow of teams came to the city, and with each passing month, Darwin began to emerge from the devastation of Cyclone Tracy. People started to return home to live, though many who had fled in the wake of the cyclone never returned. And many of those who had come to help in the various rebuilding efforts decided to stay. More and more, Darwin once again was beginning to look and feel like a city.
Finally, one day in late 1976, David arrived back at the hostel and said to Carol, “I think our time here is reaching its natural end. Fewer volunteer workers are coming, and the reconstruction money is drying up.”
“You’re right,” Carol said, “So what do we do now?”
It was a good question. David did not want to return to Sydney, especially now that he was selling his construction businesses. Somehow, even though things were winding down in Darwin, he felt that he was at the start of something new—that there was more out there somewhere for him to do. And he knew that Carol felt that way too. All they had to do now was find out what that next thing was.
That next thing came as a result of an earthquake that occurred July 14, 1976, beneath the Indian Ocean. Seismic waves had radiated out from the earthquake and had wrought devastation on the nearby island of Bali, Indonesia. It had taken some time for all the damage to be assessed, especially in the isolated outlying villages. Finally a request for help from Bishop Wayan Mastra in Bali had reached the Reverend Doug McKenzie in Darwin. Bishop Wayan Mastra wanted to know whether Doug knew of a good carpenter who could come to Bali and help rebuild a church in the isolated Christian village of Blimbingsari on the western side of the island that had been toppled by the earthquake.
“David,” Doug said to David one day late in 1976, “my friend Bishop Wayan Mastra in Bali needs a skilled carpenter to come and help rebuild a church in a village destroyed by the earthquake. I immediately thought of you.”
Without a pause David responded, “Yes, we’ll go there.”
Three weeks later, after being in Darwin for eighteen months, David and Carol and their two daughters were on their way to Bali.
Chapter 10
Blimbingsari
As the airplane winged its way west from Darwin, David thought about the decision he had made to come to Bali, and the enormity of it hit him. He was taking his family to live in a remote Balinese village where they would be exposed to danger, disease, and strange cultural ways. The family would also have to support themselves financially throughout their time there. Since little money was available for the rebuilding project, David knew that he would have to use some of his own money to help the project along. Despite these drawbacks, he felt an excitement about what lay ahead. It was the next step for him and Carol—a step of faith—and as he took the step, he was certain that a new path would open up for them both.
The welcome the Bussau family received upon their arrival at the Denpasar airport in Bali was less than enthusiastic. An Indonesian customs official poured the contents of their suitcases onto a large table and began rummaging through their belongings, pocketing for himself those items that seemed to take his fancy. Finally, with a grunt and a wave of his hand, he turned and walked away, leaving the girls shaken and David and Carol scrambling to stuff their belongings—which by now were spread across the table and floor—back into their suitcases. Once they left the customs hall and emerged into the arrival area, however, things were different. Wayan Mastra was waiting for them, and he warmly welcomed David and Carol and the girls to Bali.
Bishop Wayan Mastra was a gregarious, caring man, and David liked him immediately. During the several days the Bussaus spent in and around Denpasar, Bali’s capital, before heading to the village of Blimbingsari, Wayan told David about himself, the history of Christianity on the island, and his vision for the future.
Bali was a deeply spiritual place, where the predominant religion was Hinduism, and Hindu temples dotted the landscape. Wayan had himself been born into a poor Hindu family. However, he had been fortunate enough to attend elementary and secondary school, where he excelled. He had then attended college on the island of Java, where he converted to Christianity. After receiving his undergraduate degree, Wayan earned a scholarship and traveled to the United States to study at the University of Dubuque in Iowa, graduating with a PhD in 1970. He returned to Bali after receiving his degree and eventually became the leader of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali. As leader of the church, Wayan strongly believed that it should have a distinct Balinese cultural flavor. He also believed that the Bali church should be self-sustaining and not dependent on Western churches for support. He had ideas about training church members in various skills so that they could get well-paying jobs in the tourist industry that was just beginning to blossom in Bali. David admired Wayan’s farsighted vision.
