Rodolphe Samuel Schenk

Rodolphe Samuel Schenk (29 October 1888, Macorna, Victoria – 7 August 1969) was an Australian missionary.

He attended a New South Wales interdenominational theological college and in 1917 joined the United Aborigines' Mission. From Walgett, where he built a bag church and a wooden hut for himself, he ministered to Aboriginal communities, travelling long distances by motor cycle, addressing meetings and making converts. In 1920 he spent four months in Melbourne preparing for a new mission on the Western Australian goldfields near Laverton ([1]).

Choosing the old Mount Margaret goldfield, he leased its common and began to erect huts and raise goats to finance provision of rations. Soon groups of Aborigines came to 'sit down' at the mission and helped to build fences, shepherd goats and pull sandalwood. His success in attracting Aborigines and his policy of paying them modest wages antagonized local pastoralists who tried to sabotage the mission and have it moved into the desert ([2]).

In Melbourne on 14 October 1922 Schenk married Isobel May Johnston, a typist; at Mount Margaret she taught crafts to the women. The products helped to finance the mission, as did the publication of Schenk's 'prayer letters' by the U.A.M. and concerts given by the Mount Margaret Minstrels. School classes began in 1926, and from 1932 Mrs. Mary Bennett taught there. It was in basic literacy and numeracy, craft and vocational training that the mission made its greatest impact.

Mount Margaret had been secure from 1927 when police began to entrust Aborigines of part-descent who were state wards to Schenk's care rather than to the Moore River government settlement north of Perth. This was approved by the chief protector of Aborigines A. O. Neville, who strengthened Schenk's hand by making the mission a central rationing station. Thirty children were accommodated in the first Graham Home by 1930; parents were encouraged to settle at the mission — unlike the dormitory-based régimes of other Aboriginal institutions.

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