What do you think?
Rate this book
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 fervor of his tormented soul. "Obsessed with sex," according to his superiors, Gribble zealously policed the behavior 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.
248 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2002
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 22, 2015
This isn’t really going to even pretend to be an ‘objective’ review – I need to start by saying that I was one of Chris’s research assistants for two years, stopping only at the start of this year to focus on finishing my PhD. I had meant to read this book earlier, but time has not really been in vast supply. Still, it is done now.
The problem I had with this book is that I didn’t like Earnest Gribble even a little bit. This book certainly isn’t trying to be a hagiography – you know, a life of a saint presented without criticism. But Gribble seemed almost completely incapable of even the barest levels of self-awareness. And then there was part of me that kept thinking, ‘you have to see the man as part of his times’. But this wore thin fairly quickly. This is the story of someone that ‘knows’ – no, it is even worse than just knowing, he has been called to do God’s work and so knowing is almost beside the point. And God’s work for him was to be the ‘protector of Aboriginals’ – which, as is repeatedly said in this book, was pretty much to ensure that this race of savages were kept away from white society (which could only corrupt, exploit and kill them off) and thus keep them safe under the protection of people of the church. (Yes, there is a paradox at the heart of this, and no, it isn’t easy to resolve it) Aboriginal people needed to have all of their savage customs stripped from them – particularly their language, but also their marriage practices, religious practices and pretty well everything else. So, to facilitate this, it was best to remove parents from children – to avoid contamination between generations.
I’m not going to cast stones – I’m certainly in no position to do that – but a person with just a little ability to self-reflect might have had a bit more compassion when others went ‘off the rails’ rather than gone around whipping people who didn’t conform to their image of the ideal. A person that was effectively divorced, for instance, might just hold off before deciding what was best for other people, like a sister, for instance. But if history teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that it is full of people more than happy to punish people – who do nasty things onto others for things they do themselves.
All the same, it is hard not to have some respect for someone, whatever his motives, who sought to bring to justice those who had undertaken massacres against Aboriginal people: cruel, savage, inhuman acts of slaughter – and worse, for it wasn’t only ‘people’ who did this, but police, and when it was discovered, white society did what it could to cover it all up. The history of white Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples is one of utter horror, of a level of barbarity that has proven enough to repeatedly bring senior members of parliament to tears – even if it never quite seems enough for us to actually address or redress this tragic history in a way that would give Aboriginal people’s self-dignity, self-determination or autonomy.
So, it isn’t all that hard to have some sympathy that someone might look at the situation and think, the only hope is complete separation. Unfortunately, we can’t be judged by our intentions, only by the outcomes of our actions. Such was a fruitless and hopeless dream – worse than hopeless. The situation was such that once the best lands had been removed from the Aboriginal people it was impossible for them to live outside of white society (as they had always done) other than within the charity of white people. And charity is hardly something we whites are renowned for.
This is the story of someone frequently thwarted in his attempts to do both good and, no matter how unconsciously, ill. It is an important read in the sense that it once again shows that you can have the best of intentions, but still cause more harm than good. That history is a story of power, that law is a story of power, and morality is all too infrequently allowed any space at all.
By the end I was left wondering if it is possible to truly dedicate one’s life to the service of others if we don’t also have an image of what you are seeking to help the others towards. You know, ‘we must do something to help the (insert name of disadvantaged group here) to become (insert vision splendid here)’. Is it possible to be actively motivated to do something without first having a vision of what this disadvantaged group should become?
What is made very clear in this book is that it wasn’t just loony Christians that were causing the trouble, in fact, life in the government sponsored missions for Aboriginals weren’t any better – and in fact were sometimes a thousand times worse. There are no simple solutions – so there should be no harm then in my offering one.
The whole way through this I kept thinking of Freire and his pedagogy of the oppressed. Of how he proposed teaching people from their lives and of teaching them power – or as he would say, ‘to learn the word and the world’. Not, ‘how can I make you into my vision splendid’, but rather, how can we work together, learn together, live together?
Like I said, it feels unfair to read someone’s life through our modern prejudices and preferences and beliefs – as you can see, I certainly didn’t come away from this thinking of Gribble as a hero, far less a saint, but I did come away thinking his story is important and one that needed to be told if we are to even begin to understand Australia and Aboriginal Australia.
The problem I had with this book is that I didn’t like Earnest Gribble even a little bit. This book certainly isn’t trying to be a hagiography – you know, a life of a saint presented without criticism. But Gribble seemed almost completely incapable of even the barest levels of self-awareness. And then there was part of me that kept thinking, ‘you have to see the man as part of his times’. But this wore thin fairly quickly. This is the story of someone that ‘knows’ – no, it is even worse than just knowing, he has been called to do God’s work and so knowing is almost beside the point. And God’s work for him was to be the ‘protector of Aboriginals’ – which, as is repeatedly said in this book, was pretty much to ensure that this race of savages were kept away from white society (which could only corrupt, exploit and kill them off) and thus keep them safe under the protection of people of the church. (Yes, there is a paradox at the heart of this, and no, it isn’t easy to resolve it) Aboriginal people needed to have all of their savage customs stripped from them – particularly their language, but also their marriage practices, religious practices and pretty well everything else. So, to facilitate this, it was best to remove parents from children – to avoid contamination between generations.
I’m not going to cast stones – I’m certainly in no position to do that – but a person with just a little ability to self-reflect might have had a bit more compassion when others went ‘off the rails’ rather than gone around whipping people who didn’t conform to their image of the ideal. A person that was effectively divorced, for instance, might just hold off before deciding what was best for other people, like a sister, for instance. But if history teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that it is full of people more than happy to punish people – who do nasty things onto others for things they do themselves.
All the same, it is hard not to have some respect for someone, whatever his motives, who sought to bring to justice those who had undertaken massacres against Aboriginal people: cruel, savage, inhuman acts of slaughter – and worse, for it wasn’t only ‘people’ who did this, but police, and when it was discovered, white society did what it could to cover it all up. The history of white Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples is one of utter horror, of a level of barbarity that has proven enough to repeatedly bring senior members of parliament to tears – even if it never quite seems enough for us to actually address or redress this tragic history in a way that would give Aboriginal people’s self-dignity, self-determination or autonomy.
So, it isn’t all that hard to have some sympathy that someone might look at the situation and think, the only hope is complete separation. Unfortunately, we can’t be judged by our intentions, only by the outcomes of our actions. Such was a fruitless and hopeless dream – worse than hopeless. The situation was such that once the best lands had been removed from the Aboriginal people it was impossible for them to live outside of white society (as they had always done) other than within the charity of white people. And charity is hardly something we whites are renowned for.
This is the story of someone frequently thwarted in his attempts to do both good and, no matter how unconsciously, ill. It is an important read in the sense that it once again shows that you can have the best of intentions, but still cause more harm than good. That history is a story of power, that law is a story of power, and morality is all too infrequently allowed any space at all.
By the end I was left wondering if it is possible to truly dedicate one’s life to the service of others if we don’t also have an image of what you are seeking to help the others towards. You know, ‘we must do something to help the (insert name of disadvantaged group here) to become (insert vision splendid here)’. Is it possible to be actively motivated to do something without first having a vision of what this disadvantaged group should become?
What is made very clear in this book is that it wasn’t just loony Christians that were causing the trouble, in fact, life in the government sponsored missions for Aboriginals weren’t any better – and in fact were sometimes a thousand times worse. There are no simple solutions – so there should be no harm then in my offering one.
The whole way through this I kept thinking of Freire and his pedagogy of the oppressed. Of how he proposed teaching people from their lives and of teaching them power – or as he would say, ‘to learn the word and the world’. Not, ‘how can I make you into my vision splendid’, but rather, how can we work together, learn together, live together?
Like I said, it feels unfair to read someone’s life through our modern prejudices and preferences and beliefs – as you can see, I certainly didn’t come away from this thinking of Gribble as a hero, far less a saint, but I did come away thinking his story is important and one that needed to be told if we are to even begin to understand Australia and Aboriginal Australia.
October 15, 2025
I found this book so amazing as my old school colleague wrote it for her PhD thesis I believe. I was never quite sure what her topic had been…but now I know!! The research that was undertaken to make a readable story was totally incredible to me. Chris must have sorted through a sheer plethora of often extremely confronting details regarding life on Gribbles missions, but particularly the aboriginal massacres.
I am left in awe regarding the amount of time, labour, dedication, compassion and intelligence Chris has displayed in putting together this very readable account of quite a terrible time in our early history.
I am left in awe regarding the amount of time, labour, dedication, compassion and intelligence Chris has displayed in putting together this very readable account of quite a terrible time in our early history.
October 13, 2019
. A Terribly Wild Man.. this was an interesting read about Australian history however it was extremely hard to follow as it constantly jumped back and forth in time. I found this very hard to stick to but got there in the end 👏
December 1, 2008
An interesting biography about Ernest Gribble and his "missional" work with the aborigional people in the earle 1900's. While the book is a little like reading a 200 paged highschool report on some historical figure, it does raise some good ethical questions on what is considered just and good in the name of expanding the kingdom of heaven.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews