Reverend Ernest Wynne EvansPrint Page

The credence table in the chapel commemorates Reverend Ernest Wynne Evans (1905-1933).  Evans, who was Superintendent of the Emerald River Mission, was a former assistant curate at St John`s parish.

Ernest Evans was born in Kew, Victoria, in 1905 and at some time in the 1920s he joined the Church Missionary Society and served in the Emerald River Mission on Groote Eylandt. In 1929 he was given leave to study for Holy Orders and came to Tasmania for that purpose.

For two years he studied, maintaining himself by serving St. John's parish, Launceston, as assistant curate. He was ordained deacon on 20^th December 1931, and priest twelve months later; both ordinations were at St. David's Cathedral, Hobart.  On 19^th January 1933, Ernest married Gwendoline Frewin, daughter of the Reverend J. F. Frewin, vicar of St. Clements, Elsternwick, Melbourne.

The Church Missionary Society of Tasmania officially adopted Ernest as its own missionary and he and his wife moved to the Northern Territory to take up the appointment as superintendent of the Emerald River Mission. It was a time of tension in the Northern Territory there having been several murders, first of Japanese fishermen by aborigines and then of a constable sent to apprehend the aborigines. The Northern Territory Administration proposed to send in a punitive expedition but church authorities countered with a proposal for an Arnhem Land Peace Expedition.

In this climate of hostility, the carrying of weapons, even by missionaries, was excusable. But it led to the death of the young, recently married priest. He was climbing up some steep cliffs at the foot of Mount Ellie on Groote Eylandt, and was following his custom of using his gun as a walking stick.  As he was climbing he slipped and fell on the gun which discharged and killed him instantly.  This occured on 15^th November 1933. He was aged 28.

Ernest Evans was buried at the Emerald River Mission and a stone cairn, erected in 1937, marks the grave. About the same time a carved oak credence table was placed in the chapel of St John's Church in his memory.

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