Retired Anglican canon Peter Bertram has a collection of 30 flags and flies a different one almost every day. “I like to keep the neighbours guessing,” he says with a smile. It’s one example of his fun-loving ways. Photo: John Thistleton.
After the Anglican Church decided parish rectors had to retire at age 65, Peter Bertram found a way to continue looking after parishes. He became a locum canon, filling temporary postings at parishes far and wide in the eastern states of Australia.
He well remembers the church’s decision on retirement being debated at Synod and causing mayhem among the clergy who did not want to go.
“There was blood on the walls, it was a hectic debate,” he said.
“One old bloke got there at the microphone and said he was as good now as ever he was etc., and then spoiled it all because he could not find his way back to his seat,” Peter said with a wry chuckle.
Peter ‘retired’ in Goulburn with his wife Betty, but his days of frequent travelling were just beginning.
“I looked after 32 different parishes can you believe it?” the 93 year-old emeritus canon said. “Including Longreach – oh that was fun – a number in Victoria, around Bathurst and I was the acting dean here (Goulburn) for a couple of months and at Griffith,” he said.
“It was fun because you were not there as a tourist, you were actually part of the community as soon as you got there.”
Betty would remain at home looking after their big garden at Run-o-Waters on the southern edge of Goulburn.
“I went to look after Charlton (in the Wimmera district of Victoria) once until the new rector arrived and I was there for two years,” Peter said.
Parishes appreciated having him there. “For some of them, it was the first time they had a rector who was seasoned, that he wasn’t a ‘new boy’ just out of college.”
Finally, at age 85, Peter decided to stop. “I can always remember Bishop Clements saying ‘you are always the last one to know you are too old’ which is very true.”
He was cajoled into one more stint at Blayney, which he found to be an amazing little community, before calling it a day.
Nowadays, a flood of Christmas cards arrive from parishioners from towns everywhere who have not forgotten him.
“I was at a churchy thing out at Crookwell recently and had to say to this lady, ‘look I am sorry I can’t place you’. ‘You must remember me,’ she said, ‘you had afternoon tea at my place once’. She could have been any one of 1000 people.”
Peter’s vocation began unexpectedly. A 28 year-old accountant in Wagga working for Southern Riverina County Council, he was drawn to St John’s Anglican Church for the music and joined the choir. There he came to hero-worship the Archdeacon Robert Davies. Hearing his sermon on vocations one day, he was convinced Archdeacon Davies had him in his sights.
“I felt that embarrassed because I thought everybody would be looking at me sitting up in the choir,” Peter said.
The following day Archdeacon Davies assured Peter he was not the target of his vocations appeal. But if he was ready to serve God, he could meet Bishop Ernest Burgmann who was visiting later that day. He did just that.
He soon found he was the oldest student among 53 others attending St John’s College at Morpeth in the Hunter Valley, where he condensed his three years of training into two. He loved being among a community of men.
During his ministry, he presided over 890 funerals and witnessed congregations and ministers undergo profound changes over the years.
“I used to spend so much time just visiting people, it doesn’t happen now,” he said. “It was getting that way and COVID really accelerated the trend. The clergy just don’t go out and see people anymore. It is a different world.”
In retirement, Peter researched his family history, discovering he was a seventh generation Australian and that an emphatic statement from his mother Thelma that there were no convicts in the family was incorrect.
Going back to 1779 uncovered Elizabeth Pulley, a 14-year-old petty thief who hardened into a serial offender. She joined a batch of violent women called the “fighting five’’ who became troublesome during the prisoners’ voyage to Australia and spent time in irons.
Generations later Peter arrived, the youngest of three children who learned through life while tending to people’s spiritual needs never to take things at face value.
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