Revisiting Mission History: Annie Lock

The early-twentieth-century white female missionary Annie Lock was deeply complicit in the removal of children from their families – the Stolen Generation – and yet also nursed the sick, fed the hungry and shared a campfire with Aboriginal people. In this seminar Dr Catherine Bishop discusses her biography of Annie Lock, opening a view into the now controversial history of Christian mission in Australia. To write mission history is to walk a fine line between recognising historical context and refusing the often unthinking (and enormous) condescension of the present, and at the same time addressing the ongoing trauma and practices of settler colonialism. How do we reconcile individual experiences and encounters (which may have been positive, or at least not fatal) with the broader, deeper history of the continuing structural inequalities of settler colonialism? 

An award-winning author, Dr Catherine Bishop is an Honorary Research Fellow at Macquarie University researching twentieth century Australian businesswomen. She is also a Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery project ‘Shop Talk’, writing about female department store buyers. Her books include Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney (NewSouth, 2015), Women Mean Business: Colonial Businesswomen in New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2019), and The World We Want: The New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum and the Cold War Teenager (ASP, 2024). Too Much Cabbage and Jesus Christ: Our ‘Mission Girl’ Annie Lock (Wakefield Press, 2021) is her first biography.

Image: Group of children at the first mission house at Oodnadatta, 1925. State Library of South Australia.