Many Precious Truths

In 1840, when William Barratt was 17, his mother and stepfather decided to leave their home in one of the industrial districts near Manchester, England, and seek a better life in Australia. Barratt, who was the only Latter-day Saint in his family, told the missionaries in Manchester that he was expected to go with his family to Australia. “The Spirit made it manifest to me that if he went,” Alfred Cordon, one of the missionaries, wrote, “he must be ordained to the Office of an Elder.” George A. Smith, an Apostle, ordained Barratt and gave him just three hours of instruction before he left. “I feel just as the Apostles were as a Lamb among wolves going in a land of strangers to preach [the] gospel,” Barratt wrote to his fellow Saints. “Pray for me.”

The following year, while Barratt was working in a shepherd’s camp in Mount Barker, east of Adelaide, he met Robert Beauchamp Dolling (frequently referred to as Robert Beauchamp). Dolling, a recent immigrant, soon heard Barratt sharing the restored gospel with men in the camp. Dolling had heard about the Church and couldn’t understand why an intelligent young man like Barratt would belong to it. “My heart was touched with pity for him,” Dolling, himself a pious Christian, later wrote, “and I determined, with God’s help, to convert him from the error of his ways.” Dolling, however, proved less successful than Barratt. “I found that, if he had not quite made a ‘Mormon’ of me, he had at least taught me many precious truths,” Dolling wrote. He was soon baptized, perhaps Barratt’s only convert. Without close contact with the Church and after receiving news of Joseph Smith’s death, however, Barratt later became active in another faith. Dolling moved his family to other parts of Australia, seeking work.

Within a few years, other Latter-day Saint immigrants arrived in other parts of Australia. In New South Wales, Andrew Anderson, a convert from Edinburgh, Scotland, was also preaching the gospel. Anderson baptized 11 converts in a shepherd camp 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles) northwest of Sydney and organized the first Australian branch of the Church in Montefiores in 1844. At the same time, James Wall preached near Victoria and baptized several converts.

In 1851, just a few years after settling in Utah, John Murdock and Charles W. Wandell were called to organize a mission in Australia. In Sydney they began printing tracts and taught members of a Primitive Methodist group who met at a local racetrack. By late 1852 Murdock and Wandell had organized branches in Sydney and Melbourne and connected with Anderson and several of his converts.

As news of Murdock and Wandell’s successes reached Utah, 10 additional missionaries were called to Australia in October 1852. Over the next two years, under the direction of Augustus Farnham, missionaries expanded work to the Camden district, the Hunter River Valley, the Victorian gold fields, South Australia, and Tasmania. To expand the work even further, local members were called as missionaries. Many were soon baptized, and branches were organized throughout Australia. In Tasmania, missionaries met Robert Beauchamp Dolling. Despite having lost contact with the Church during the decade since his conversion, Dolling had remained committed to his faith. He went on to contribute greatly to the work of the Church, serving in many branches during his family’s frequent moves before immigrating to Utah in 1868. Shortly after his arrival, Dolling—the first convert in Australia—was called to return to Australia as a mission president, where he served until 1874.

Robert and Jane Dolling

Robert and Jane Dolling, circa 1880