Australian Beginnings

The First Salvo Meeting
On 5 September 1880, two Salvationists from England,  Edward Saunders and John Gore, led the first Salvation Army meeting in  Australia.  Gore and Saunders were both converts of the early Christian  Mission.  They met unexpectedly in the colony of South Australia and  decided to form a Salvation Army Corps in Adelaide.

Gore and Saunders held a street meeting from the back of a  greengrocer's cart in Adelaide Botanic Park.  When Gore said "If there  is any man here who hasn't had a decent meal today, let him come home to  tea with me," little did he realise that within a century, The  Salvation Army would feed hundreds of thousands of Australians each  year.  Nevertheless, he was expressing the ethos of an organisation  which, from its earliest days, was concerned for a person's physical as  well as spiritual needs.

In a climate where religion had failed to really gain acceptance,  Saunders and Gore presented themselves as ordinary men.  Without  theological training or the status of ordination, the railway worker and  the builder invited their small audience to attend a meeting of The  Salvation Army that evening.  A number agreed to attend, and Saunders  and Gore formed themselves into a Corps (church) under the temporary  leadership of Gore.  After an appeal to London for officers to be sent,  Captain and Mrs Thomas Sutherland were despatched on the S.S. Aconcagua,  arriving at Adelaide in February 1881.

The new officers arrived wearing the first Salvation Army uniforms seen in Australia.  Thomas  wore a scarlet jacket (ex-British Army), navy-blue trousers, and  spike-topped white helmet, and Adelaide wore a princess robe-style dress  with a small bonnet.  They brought with them 12 uniforms, and were met  by 68 converts and Army followers.

Within three years, 32 Officers were commissioned and 12  corps formed, and on the third anniversary 3,600 soldiers mustered for  the grand celebrations.

In 1882, Major James Barker and his wife Alice were  appointed by the General and sent from London to extend and establish  The Salvation Army's work "in all the colonies of the Southern Seas".

Intending to disembark at the Port of Adelaide, a  wharf-strike forced the Barkers on to Williamstown, Victoria.  Friends  of The Salvation Army met them and took them into Melbourne, where the  Barkers were so impressed by the potential of Victoria that they  determined to begin work there.

By 1883 the first Salvation Army Social Services  Institution in the world was established in Australia: Major Barker  rented a small two roomed house with a lean-to in Lygon Street, Carlton  (Victoria) to house released prisoners.  The Lygon Street Home in  Melbourne soon proved too small and on 8 December 1883 larger premises  were rented in Argyle Place South, Carlton.  This was the beginning of  the Salvation Army’s institutional social work.

From this humble beginning, The Salvation Army grew rapidly in Australia.   Pioneer Salvationists faced rowdy and sometimes violent opposition,  with at least two members being fatally injured.  However, by 1890, mob  attacks had virtually ceased, and by the early 1900s Salvationists were  accepted in the general Australian community.

On Friday 30th November 2018, General Brian Peddle announced that the two territories of Australia (The Salvation Army, Australian Eastern Territory and The Salvation Army, Australia Southern Territory) were again one territory, to be known as the Australian Territory.