Lockyer Valley legends - Polly Dix

The Salvation Army in the Lockyer Valley has hosted its fair share of outstanding Salvationists. Ordaining women was still a revolutionary concept in the late 1800s and Lieutenant Polly Dix, appointed to take charge of Laidley Salvation Army in 1893, would have been quite a subject of local gossip!

A story about her in The Salvation Army’s War Cry newspaper on 15 November 1902 gives her great credit: Anyone knowing that difficult post [Laidley] and adding to this fact that the great 1893 flood had just subsided, and the district was swamped in mud, will have some faint idea of what the two brave lassie officers had to contend with. The camp had to be worked on horseback. The Lieutenant had never done any riding previously, but with her usual determination, she soon overcame this difficulty and became quite an expert horsewoman. The work was very hard, the scattered district making it extremely so, but the officers had the joy of pointing souls to Jesus, and this, in the now Adjutant Dix’s opinion, is worth any amount of sacrifice.

Lieutenant-Commissioner Polly Harewood (nee Dix) returned to visit Laidley in 1940 during her retirement. In his book A Country Corps, The History of The Salvation Army in the Lockyer Valley, Jim Nicholls wrote: Mrs Harewood, whose fifty-seven years of devoted and fruitful service began with her appointment to Laidley in 1893, was Promoted to Glory in 1950.