Ryan Schram Yawahigu ana amwahao Ol rot bilong laip bilong mi (or, Curriculum vitae)

Liberation and development in Glebe at Tranby College

In Glebe, the leafy suburb of Sydney, one can find a connection between the Australian labor movement, Anglo-Catholic Anglicanism, and the Territory of Papua at Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative College. Alf Clint was a labor activist who was drawn to the Christian socialism of the Anglo-Catholic community based at Christ Church St Laurence in Sydney. He eventually became ordained as a minister and took up work in a rural mission to Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory. His political views alienated him from the Anglican mission body and he left for Gona, Papua, where as a missionary he advised local communities on how to start up agricultural cooperatives. Returning to Sydney, he wanted to set up a training school for Aborigines to train them in running their own cooperative businesses. Under the Anglican Board of Missions, he founded Tranby Co-operative College. The school resided in Tranby, an old manor house on Mansfield Street in Glebe. Eventually the cooperative section of the mission was spun off as Co-Operatives for Aborigines Limited.

Several themes of Australian history and settler Australian relations with indigenous Australians and Melanesians come together in Clint’s life. He was a radical who worked for the liberation and social equality of indigenous Australians, ultimately finding a branch of the Anglican church that would nourish this effort. This led him to work for the economic development and integration of Papuans and Aborigines as means to their self-determination. Tranby is today an independent and cooperatively administered school which uses practical education as a means to empowerment.