Remembering Pastor Ronnie MacNamara
Ronnie was born around the early to mid-1940s at Manyira (Bowson’s Hole), southwest of Areyonga (north of Tempe Downs Station). His father, Billy McNamara, was a whitefella of Afghan descent who hailed from Oodnadatta. Billy’s father – Ronnie’s grandfather – had helped to build the railway from Finke to Alice Springs. Ronnie’s mother, Ruby Mpitjana, was an Indigenous woman from the Nyirrpi area (west of Yuendumu).
When he was still a baby, his mother took him to live at Glen Helen Station. Three Indigenous men helped to raise him: Tom Onion Pangarta, Donkey George Pangarta and Jim Palayirrana (his uncle). Later, his mother took him to Hermannsburg, where he attended school.
He left school at 14 and went to Henbury station to work before moving to the Hermannsburg area for work. He worked in several places before settling at Napperby in the 1950s, working on fencing, bore maintenance, yard building and camp cooking.
Around this time, he married his first wife, Mary Golder. They had two sons, Ronnie and Geoffrey, who have since passed away. Later, he married Agnes Ngala Gibson. They had five children: Freda, Anita, Kylie, Stephen and Anthony. (Anthony has since passed away.) They were all baptised together by Pastor Immanuel Rutjinama.
After working at Napperby for some time, Ronnie senior started travelling with other stockmen, droving cattle and horses through the Granites across the border into Western Australia, where he worked around Halls Creek for a few months. It was around this time, in the 1970s, that his wife passed away. A few years later, he married Rita Ngala and stayed in Napperby.
One day, he was fixing fences at Napperby when someone from the Finke River Mission approached him and asked if he wanted to be a pastor. He said yes. He then worked around Napperby and the adjacent Indigenous community of Laramba as an evangelist. In 1990, his training began in earnest under Pastor Albrecht. He travelled to Mount Allan every four weeks to train with a few other men. He was finally ordained at Laramba on 23 February 1992. He was given responsibility for the Lutheran Anmatyerre-speaking congregations of Laramba, Mt Allan (Yuelamu) and Ti Tree (Nturiya) at that time. After a few years, he began focusing on the first two communities after another pastor was installed at Ti Tree.
He later said, ‘Being a pastor has become my life, and I hope to continue to serve … as long as I live’. His people very much appreciated his calm but firm ministry style. Moreover, his experience as a man of God and proficiency in several languages meant his opinions were always respected at Finke River Mission meetings. Around 2000, he advised Finke River Mission that an Anmatyerre Bible translation was urgently needed. The board followed his advice, and so the Anmatyerre language project commenced.
He slowed down somewhat as age and health issues came to the fore. But he never stopped being concerned for the spiritual welfare of the Anmatyerre people.
Paul Treager is FRM Support Worker for the Pintupi–Luritja language area.
