I'm the Uniting Church Chaplain to the University of New England, Armidale, NSW. For those who are keen on structures, this is in Presbytery of New England North West in the Synod of New South Wales.. I started the chaplaincy on 1 February, 2001 but was only half time until 1 October 2002. The other half of my time I was minister to the congregations of Guyra, Uralla and District. I have also been Outreach Ministries Coordinator to the Uniting Church Synod of Victoria. Before that, I was the chaplain to the Gippsland campus of Monash University for five and a half years and I am very happy to be back doing campus ministry. My first placement was as a congregational minister in Dimboola in the Wimmera district of western Victoria.

My work website will give you more information about both university chaplaincy in general and what I am doing in particular, as well as various things that interest me.

I've been a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia since December 1987.

On a more personal note

I am married to Bruce and we have two children - Hugh and Ceiridwen (that's pronounced CARE-id-wen) . We live in our own home on Armidale's South Hill, a bit of a change from the largish block of land in bayside Melbourne (that's Port Philip Bay for those of you who are not Melbournians) 700 metres from the beach, and about the same distance from a wetlands reserve where we used to live.The wildlife in our current backyard is not all that exciting - we miss the koalas, echidnas (also known as spiny anteaters), kookaburras, crimson rosellas and other assorted wildlife wandering through our back yard on a fairly regular basis which we had when we lived in Gippsland, although a wallaby (small kangaroo) jumped through a few weeks ago.

The lack of wildlife is significantly made up for by the fact that this is our own home, so we can do what we want with it. Up to now we have always lived in houses provided by the church. We are enjoying the wide variety of Australian birds which fly by - I've seen galahs and various rosellas but I don't look all that hard and Bruce has seen heaps more! We're slowly landscaping the yard as funds become available - aiming for a mainly Australian native garden although we can't bring ourselves to pull out viable plants so our native garden currently has a number of large, self-sown silverbeet plants.

If, by the way, you're interested in what the animals and birds named here look like, a good place to start is the Three Great (Victorian) Zoos website which has a search facility attached.

I have qualifications in Agricultural Science (from the University of Sydney) and Nutrition and Dietetics (from the Queensland Institute - now university - of Technology) as well as Theology (from the Melbourne College of Divinity) and have returned to study full time after time in the workforce twice. Although pressures of work meant I had to withdraw from my Masters degree in Theology programme I am still interested in feminist theology and liturgy. This year I am enrolled in a PhD looking at the parables of the Realm of God that appear in the Gospel of Thomas and at least one of the cannonical Synoptic Gospels (ie Matthew, Mark and Luke). The Gospel of Thomas is one of the Nag Hammadi documents. I recently upgraded from a Masters research course because there was too much in what I wanted to do to fit into a Masters' thesis.

I enjoy meeting people, music, sewing, reading, cooking and gentle forms of exercise as long as it isn't in any way competitive. I also really enjoy having the chance to explore just what can be done with a computer and an Internet account and the scope and challenges which being 'in charge' of the chaplaincy website on campus is giving me.

If you're curious about what I look like the photo on this page will give you some idea.

The graphics on this page come from

and are used with permission although the gallery no longer appears to exist.