A Terribly Wild Man

Saint or sinner? Turbulent priest or dedicated shepherd? Ernest Gribble’s life teemed with trials and contradictions. But who was this ‘terribly wild man’?

Gribble wanted to be a drover or jackeroo, but he obeyed his dying father and embraced a missionary career with all the fervour of his tormented soul. ‘Obsessed with sex’, according to his superiors, Gribble zealously policed the behaviour of his Aboriginal charges, ruling his missions with a benevolent rod of iron. Anticipating the Stolen Generations, he abducted Aboriginal children from their parents ‘for their own protection’.

To his contemporaries, this driven, quixotic man was either a visionary, a madman or a traitor to white society. His single-minded championing of Aboriginal rights made him powerful enemies and his campaign for an investigation into a police massacre of Aboriginals in the 1920s put Australia in the international spotlight.

Gribble’s tortured private life matched his controversial public career. Once described as the first ‘successful’ missionary to the Aboriginals, Gribble would die in obscurity, mourned only by those he had spent his life trying to protect.

Christine Halse’s biography reveals the humanity of this complex, tragic figure - a man whose life echoes the tensions that haunt Australia’s past.

‘What a story! A man who made hell in the name of heaven but in the late 1920s forced his country to acknowledge one of the last great massacres of black Australians.’ - David Marr