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Ellen G. White: The Australian Years: 1891-1900 (vol. 4)

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The Early Camp Meetings

It was planned that the camp meeting season would open in Toowoomba, Queensland, and the dates were set for October 12 to 23. The notice appearing in the October 1 Union Conference Record stated that Ellen G. White would be attending. Writing on September 11, she stated: 4BIO 435.1

The next camp meeting held in Queensland will be at Toowoomba, a beautiful city about one hundred miles west from Brisbane. It is the business center of a large, fertile, and wealthy district. There is a small band of Sabbathkeepers in this place, and much prejudice against the truth, but we trust that the camp meeting will sweep this away, and that this may become the center of an important work.—Letter 139, 1899. 4BIO 435.2

The city, with a population of seven thousand, was some 1,800 feet above sea level and located in a region of great natural beauty. Twenty family tents were pitched on neatly kept grass on grounds provided by the Agricultural Society. The new canvas pavilion, eighty by fifty feet, stood near the entrance (UCR, November 1, 1899). Toowoomba was a resort city, strongly Catholic, and attendance at the meetings, in spite of a wide circulation of notices, was disappointing (Letter 248, 1899). Ellen White spoke the first Sabbath afternoon to about a hundred persons and on Sunday afternoon to two hundred. Her six addresses during the meeting were on practical subjects. 4BIO 435.3

Of the location and surroundings she declared: 4BIO 435.4

We have never had a tent meeting, since my acquaintance, in any place so pleasant and so beautiful, with trees and with green grass. The tents so clean and new make a nice appearance.—Letter 234, 1899.

There were four churches in Queensland, with an aggregate membership of 211, and those at the camp meeting urged the organization of a conference. Elder Daniells, the union president, was there, and joined in the steps appropriate to form the new organization (UCR, December 1, 1899). G. C. Tenney was chosen president, and Herbert Lacey, assigned to Queensland for evangelistic work, was selected secretary. As evangelistic meetings were to continue in the tent after the close of the camp meeting, Lacey and his wife were left in the town for the follow-up work. 4BIO 435.5