Introduction to Touching the Rock

John M. Hull

I was born on 22 April 1935 in Corryong, a town in North Eastern Victoria. My father was the Methodist minister in nearby Cudgewa. He had emigrated from England as a lad in 1915 and, after a series of jobs in farms and factories, trained as an engine driver. He drove traction engines, agricultural machinery, worked on refrigeration plants and irrigation schemes, and was then drawn into the timber industry. He worked in sawmills and as a winch driver on various logging stations, mostly in the forests of Eastern and Southern Victoria. He has told the story of these colourful years in his autobiography Yarns of Cowra Jack which was published by the Joint Board of Christian Education in Melbourne, 1984.

It was while he was working in a remote logging camp in the Beenak area of the Dandenong Ranges that he met Madge Huttley, the only teacher in the tiny local school. She was an enthusiastic Christian and was a major influence in Jack’s conversion to Christianity which took place in 1927. He trained for the Methodist ministry in Queen’s College, Melbourne, and Cudgewa was his first appointment.

My mother had been brought up in Stawell, a country town in North Western Victoria close to the beautiful Grampian mountain ranges. The Huttleys had emigrated from England in the 1870s, and Madge’s father was the owner/operator of the first garage in Stawell. Madge trained as a primary teacher in Melbourne before taking up her first appointment in Beenak.

I was the second child of the marriage, my sister Alison having been born in 1933. Within a few days of birth my skin erupted in sores. This was the start of the condition which plagued me for the first half of my life. It may have been an allergic condition, perhaps associated with the asthma and the congenital cataracts in a syndrome which was not identified until many years later. Whatever the cause, the results were dramatic, and although as a child one accepts everything as being natural without question, this aspect of my childhood and youth has left a deep impression upon me. My childhood memories are of bandages and ointments, of shirt sleeves worn thin and torn with scratching, of pushing myself around as a small child on a tricycle, being unable to straighten my legs enough to walk comfortably, of puzzled teachers asking me why my fingernails were so worn and polished, and of my mother’s caring love. Her firm hands, her endless patience and the combination of strength and intimacy which she conveyed to me left permanent influences.

Cudgewa, not far from the sources of the river Murray and Australia’s highest peak, Mount Kosciusko, is in an area of great natural beauty, but this made no impression on me until I came back more than twenty years later, for within two years my father had been posted to the other side of the State, to Red Cliffs, a town on the Murray river not far from Mildura. The vineyards were irrigated from the waters of the Murray. My first childhood memories come from those years. Food was kept cool in the icebox, and I can still remember the man from the ice cart bringing in the huge block of ice wrapped in hessian which he would chip with a pick to make it fit. Alison and I would grab the sharp fragments of ice and run out into the furrows between the grapevines next to the house. I can remember the salty quality of the sharp ice, the sweet green grapes and the hot, dry crumbly soil.

Under the itinerant arrangements usual for the Methodist ministry in those days, my father was again moved after three years and this time to Tasmania. It was late in 1939 or early 1940, and on the deck of the ship which took us from the mainland there was an anti-aircraft gun. When the crew removed the camouflage for the daily practice they were watched by an admiring crowd of small children, including me and my younger brother Keith, born in Red Cliffs.

During these years of the Second World War we lived in Wynyard, on the Northern coast. There was a fear that the Japanese would bomb Melbourne guided by the lights of the Northern Tasmanian coast, or might even attempt a landing prior to attacking the mainland. A zigzag trench was dug in the school yard, and every day we were drilled in snatching our tin helmets and gas masks while we ran to the shelter of the trench. In the evenings we children would sit on the front fence and watch the searchlights play in the sky. Holidays were taken every summer at Boat Harbour, on the coast not far away. Here I first learned to love the sea, the excitement and danger of the tides and the wonder of the life in the rock pools. While we lived in Wynyard, our family was completed by the birth of Janice.

When the war in the Pacific ended, in 1945, I was in the children’s ward of Prince Henry’s Hospital in Melbourne, because of the severity of my eczema. The firework display along the banks of the Yarra was clearly visible from the tenth floor of the hospital, and the voice of General McArthur announcing the end of the war was broadcast through the wards. The family had moved back to Victoria, and my father was now posted in Charlton, a small town on the Avoca river in the North Western part of the state. This was wheat-growing country, and we boys played cowboys and indians on the huge stacks of bags of wheat, piled up beside the railway line and in the warehouses. On my way to school I had to cross the river on a footbridge. One year the river flooded and the bridge was impassable. It was very exciting watching the water come higher and higher each day and then the patterns of deep cracks in the drying mud under the fierce sunshine. Several times there were quite severe dust storms. The sky would grow red and ominous and we would all be sent home from school. I felt my way along the front fence to find the gate, hardly being able to open my eyes because of the fierce burning dust.

I missed a year from school because of my poor health, and spent this time in the correspondence school run by the State Education Department. I loved this, and waited eagerly for the weekly packet of booklets and work cards with a personal letter from my teacher whom I had never met. There followed two years in the Charlton Higher Elementary School before we moved sixty miles south to Eaglehawk near the city of Bendigo. Keith and I travelled three miles to school on the tram or rode our bikes. Eaglehawk and Bendigo were situated on the old Victorian goldfields and the tall derricks above the mine workings were part of the skyline. In the bush there were tunnels and mineshafts, ideal for adventure.

My father had a large circuit consisting of three town churches, each with a full programme of activities, and three small country churches. Life in the churches was busy and exciting. It was in the church that we were taught how to study, to debate, to chair public meetings, to publish newspapers, to find our way around the bush and to sing. At the age of fourteen a group of young men training for the Methodist ministry at my father’s old college in Melbourne, Queen’s, conducted a mission in the central Bendigo church, Forest Street. This marked the beginning of ten years of adolescent religious and emotional intensity, years from which I emerged to find myself studying theology in Cambridge, England.

It was sometime earlier, perhaps when I was thirteen, that I remarked as I came in for breakfast that it was a very misty morning. My surprised mother contradicted me, and then remembering that I had been complaining of not being able to see the board at school, took me into Bendigo to see my first eye specialist. It was to be thirty-eight years later before the last eye specialist signed me off.

Cataracts were diagnosed and I lost the sight of one eye. After several months, the sight in the second eye began to deteriorate, and within a few months I could see nothing but a dense white fog. I was reading a novel about the Wild West, and was in a hurry to finish it, rather annoyed at the interruption. A particularly nasty skin infection which covered my face and neck made surgery impossible and I spent several weeks in hospital just waiting. Finally the lenses were pierced so that the cataracts could gradually dissolve. This ‘needling’ operation is no longer carried out, because it has been found that the vitreous jelly tends to move forward to cause detachment of the retina. My case, perhaps, played a small part in that discovery. Finally, the bandages were taken off and I was fitted with glasses. The heavy lenses restored the world to me and I can remember with delight the vivid outlines of shapes and colours. I gasped, and both the consultant and my father laughed with delight.

Three or four years later I had my first experience of the characteristic dark, disc-shaped area, edged with a flicker of light when I moved my eye rapidly, a symptom which I learned to associate with detached retina. I was to spend many years watching the progress of these dark shadows, measuring them carefully on the wall to mark out the speed of their advance, trying to explain their exact appearance and position to sceptical ophthalmologists, and knowing that when the disc passed over the central point of vision I would not be able to read. The first time this happened, however, I was not aware of its significance, and although I kept careful diagrams of the field of vision I am not sure that I told my parents. This was in the right eye, and according to my records the disc passed right over, light appeared on the other side, and sight was fully restored. At that time, I knew nothing about detached retinas. Some doctors have said that they could detect signs of this earlier detachment; in any case, it was of no significance. I was seventeen when the black disc appeared in the left eye. We were now living in Melbourne and I was taken to one of the leading hospitals. No diagnosis was made and the black disc engulfed the vision of the left eye. For some time, I saw as through a deep green jelly, and then there was a haemorrhage and light faded. With the carefree nature of youth, I was undismayed. I still had my right eye which somehow seemed to have fixed itself up.

For my sixth form studies I attended Melbourne High School for Boys. The move from a small provincial high school to one of the leading schools in the State Capital was very exciting, and for the first time I really enjoyed school. In History, English Literature and Geography, we were made to think about reasons and causes, and I began to understand the nature of evidence. Already a qualified and experienced Methodist local preacher, I soon found friends and common enterprises. In 1953 I matriculated to the University of Melbourne and decided to take an ordinary general Arts degree. The thought of joining one of the Honours Schools did not occur to me – I was destined for the Methodist ministry and was looking for a broad education which would prepare me for study at Queen’s College and then to follow my father’s footsteps. Vacations were crowded with organising holiday camps for children and beach missions; twice I travelled inter-state on student committees and each time returned home early with asthma.

Just before the end of my first year, the now familiar dark disc reappeared in my right eye. This time diagnosis and surgery were swift. I spent several weeks in hospital, my head resting on a padded ring to reduce movement. I taught myself braille and read the Psalms and parts of St Mark’s Gospel. I had only been recuperating for a few days at home, and had just been examined for new glasses when the thing happened again. Once more I was lying on my back in the darkness reading braille and wondering about the future. Strangely enough, it still made little impact on me. This time the operation was more successful and I finished my degree.

Finding that the Government scholarship I had received could cover a teacher training course, I decided this would be a useful adjunct to the ministry and so spent a further year in the University Faculty of Education taking the Diploma in Education (the initial teacher training qualification) specialising in Religious Education. Since this was not taught in the State schools, the independent sector beckoned me and I was appointed to the staff of Caulfield Church of England Boys’ Grammar School in Melbourne.

I spent nearly three happy years on the staff at Caulfield. I taught English, History, Social Studies and Religious Education, did some coaching of younger boys in cricket and Australian rules football and was in charge of the junior boarding house of about thirty youngsters aged eight to eleven. Twice a week after school I travelled back to the University to attend lectures in the philosophy and psychology of education as part of my B.Ed. degree. In 1958 I began thinking seriously about the future. The Methodist ministry was still my goal but the prospect of a further three years of study in Melbourne did not appeal. I wanted now to study theology in one of the leading European or North American Universities. I was offered a place at Cambridge through Fitzwilliam House (now Fitzwilliam College). Accommodation in Wesley House was limited and I was advised to apply to Cheshunt College, which was a Congregationalist theological college although the principal at the time was a Methodist. Early in August of 1959 I set sail on the SS Strathmore.

In London I was met by Mary, my father’s younger sister. She was a children’s social worker with Doctor Barnardo’s Homes in Devon and had come from Exeter to meet me. We had a marvellous time looking at all the great sights of London, familiar to me from the Monopoly board, and then I travelled by train to Cambridge.

The three years which followed were amongst the most formative of my life. I made friends with fellow students from many parts of the world, some of whom have remained friends ever since. I bought a motor scooter and travelled all over England, even taking the machine to France and Switzerland. The sight in my right eye was excellent, although I had to be careful with things on my left, and my night vision was poor. I learned to love the sights and sounds of Cambridge, punting on the Cam, toasting buns over coal fires on winter afternoons, the bookshops, the parties and the music. Above all, I learned to love the University Library. Following a trail of ideas across the centuries and from one wing of the library to another engrossed and delighted me. In tutorials for the first time in my life, I found myself alone with someone whose job it was to probe my thinking.

For two years I read Part II of the Theological Tripos and stayed on for a year to read Part III, specialising in New Testament Studies. In my third year I was elected Chair of the Junior Common Room, while vacations were spent hitch-hiking throughout Europe and the Middle East. Passing through a crisis of faith, I found I could not conscientiously enter the ministry, and I decided to stay on in England and resume my work as a teacher. I married one of my fellow students from Cheshunt College and we eventually moved to Birmingham.

In 1968 the student movement was at its height, and Birmingham was no exception. During my first term the students occupied The Great Hall and the administrative block, and the whole campus was in a state of excitement. I was elected staff representative on to the Board of Education and from there to the University Senate, Council and Court, and spent six years in the middle 1970s on the Academic Executive Committee of Senate.

Birmingham was a fascinating city for my work. Cambridge was so beautiful, and London so large, but in Birmingham I learned to know and love the heart of England. Here there was no cushioning against public events, and the link between public and private was obvious. If there was industrial unrest, if the price of petrol went up, if there were problems in the high-rise flats or with the water supply, it was talked about in the schools and the markets, and its impact was immediate. Here I learned to appreciate Judaism, Hinduism, the Sikh faith and Islam. Here, in one of the great industrial, multi-cultural cities of Western Europe, religious education had a vital part to play.

I had been in my new post less than two years when the almost forgotten dark shadow made its reappearance. I reported the problem to a rather incredulous GP, who examined me carefully, assured me he could see nothing and dismissed me. After several insistent phone calls, he agreed to get me an appointment at the local Eye Clinic. Here the problem was quickly diagnosed and I underwent surgery in the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital. The treatment was expert and the result highly successful. The sight of my right eye was restored virtually intact and I was presented to one of the meetings of the West Midlands Ophthalmological Society. Within a few months, however, the problem had returned.

This time diagnosis was more difficult. Week after week passed, and the consultant refused to see me, while house doctors and students assured me there was nothing wrong. Every week I marked out on the wall of my office the progress of the black disc. Only after a letter of protest, sent by recorded delivery to his private address, was I admitted into the presence of the consultant. After a long examination he told me that immediate surgery would be necessary. I assured him that I had complete confidence in his skill but he insisted on passing me to a colleague. The next operation was done with great skill, I believe, but by now the eye was battered and scarred. In 1970 I began a decade of failing vision.

In 1973 my daughter Imogen Mary was born, but in the spring of 1979, after more than two years of informal separation, my wife and I agreed on a divorce.

My New Testament researches in the Universities of London and Birmingham were complete by 1970, but the preparation of the 1974 publication did present some problems, so much of the work being in ancient and foreign languages. Although I hoped that my sight would not continue to deteriorate, I knew it would be foolish to put out hostages to fortune. I could get people to read books in English to me, but it would be more difficult finding people to read Greek and Aramaic. I was never much good at languages anyway, and found the gradual move to philosophy, theology and the social sciences very much to my liking. I had begun to teach an M.Ed. course in the Theology of Education, and this occupied me intellectually, while frequent lecturing visits to various countries brought an expanding group of colleagues and a deeper understanding of the relationship between religious education and modern culture.

I had begun reading with a magnifying glass in 1973 or thereabouts and in 1977 I finished Shardik by Richard Adams, having decided that this would be the last novel I would read with my eyes. I thought of the time thirty years earlier when I had hurried to finish that Western novel as the cataracts grew. From now on I must use my remaining sight to read for my work. There was no longer spare sight for unnecessary reading. The magnifying glasses grew larger and heavier. I held them in my hands, mounted them on my desk, and fixed them to my glasses. My desk was a battery of lamps and bookstands. Recording what I had read became an increasing problem. I wrote with thicker and thicker felt-tipped pens, finally having only a dozen or so words on a sheet, which I read with the aid of magnifying glasses. On 1 November 1979 I remarried. Within less than a year our first child was born, and I had registered blind. In September of 1980 I returned to my office from the Eye Hospital and the Maternity Hospital, a patient in the former and a visitor to the latter, to face a curious situation. Term was due to begin in less than a month, and the walls of my room were covered with files of notes representing years of work, all of which was now inaccessible.

The solving of these problems occupied the years 1980 to 1983, and might be the theme of a book in itself. This book does not describe these years but deals instead with the years 1983–6. In 1983 the last light sensations faded and the dark discs had finally overwhelmed me. I had fought them bravely, as it seemed to me, for thirty-six years, but all to no avail. It was then I began to sink into the deep ocean, and finally learned how to touch the rock on the far side of despair.