FEATURE - NAMBOUR’S BISHOP BRINGS HOPE

“I had no idea as a young person what I wanted to do when I ‘grew up’,

my mum always said to me I’d either be a priest or an actress - I had a story to tell,” says Nambour’s Bishop Sarah Plowman, “a story of hope.”

by Rebecca Mugridge

Bishop Sarah Plowman is an extraordinary woman. She is the Bishop for the Northern Region in Queensland, has a Bachelor of Theology, and a Bachelor of Applied Science with Majors in Physics and Maths and a Graduate Diploma in Education.

She has held important roles such as Priest, Diocesan Director of Ordinands and Vocations, School Chaplain, Youth Minister and Science, Physics and Religious Studies Teacher. 

And she grew up right here in Nambour.

“We moved to Nambour when I was three, mum and dad bought a pineapple farm on Pringle Road, just over the hill, past Panorama Drive,” she shares, adding her dad decided against pineapples and changed to avocados.

“But before avocados were cool,” she laughs, “I thought they were gross, weird things.

“I grew up in Nambour when the cane trains came through town. As we walked home, we would cross the railway lines and pick up a piece of cane on the road and suck it on the way home. We didn’t care about germs back then.

“It was really amazing; we had 18 acres, a dam and a creek. I went to Nambour Primary School and then Nambour High until grade 10, when mum and dad decided to send my brother and I to boarding schools in Brisbane.

“I went to St Margaret’s and won a scholarship to go there, which was terrific as we didn’t have a great deal of money. Then I went to university and studied chemistry, because I loved science. 

“I loved physics the most, but I thought there were no jobs. I was pretty clumsy and used to knock things over and I broke some beakers. I remember one lecturer saying to me,

‘That’s why they shouldn’t let women in the laboratory,’ and I was like, ‘what!’ 

“I went back to physics, finished my degree, majoring in physics and maths. And then I came back to Nambour.”

After a couple of years, she had an opportunity to travel to Africa. “When I returned, I did my teaching degree. I taught at Caboolture High for two years and I became heavily involved in the church. I loved working with the youth, it was something I felt drawn to.”

The Priest in her parish told her she would make a great priest. “He planted a seed that wouldn’t go away.”

Finishing her Theology degree she trained to be a priest and became a Deacon in 2004 and then a Priest in 2005. “That was where my heart really was, working with kids in schools.”

During that time, Bishop Sarah got married, and when she was ordained,she was actually pregnant with twins.

“I had only ever heard of one other person ordained while they were pregnant. My kids joke that that makes them priests too, because they were there,’ she laughs.

Bishop Sarah was a School Chaplain at Canon Hill Anglican College for 11 happy years. 

“There are some really tough things that our kids have to go through,” she says.

“Sometimes it’s a parent who dies unexpectedly. We had one lovely girl whose mum died when she was in year 9. Her dad was fantastic, but she sometimes just wanted a woman to talk to.

“There are times when the chaplain at a school has a really important role for grief.

“We had a year 12 student die in a car accident, which is the worst thing I think I have ever had to face. The family were Hindu, and so we found a way for this student’s faith and family to be represented as we supported the whole school that was grieving.

“I had one little girl from the primary school come up to one of our grief quiet spaces and she was crying, and she said to me, ‘Reverend Sarah. I’m really sad. I don’t know why I am sad, I didn’t know the boy, but I am really sad.’ And I said to her, ‘that’s called empathy. That is you feeling someone else’s pain’.

“And she said, ‘yeah, I’ve got empathy.’ That’s the privileged stuff, helping kids find the language to say what they believe and what they are feeling.”

Bishop Sarah’s sermons were so loved that when she left, a staff member took some of them and published a little book, Joyful Leadership.

Last Christmas, Bishop Sarah returned to Nambour.

“I had the opportunity to take the Christmas Eve service in Nambour, which was just lovely. And what was really nice was that when I was a kid in Nambour, we had a group called the Girls Friendly Society (GFS), I belonged to this and my two leaders were Verlie Davies and Coral McVean.

“On Christmas Eve, who was helping me lead the service but Verlie and Coral! It was so special.

“One of the things I love about the hinterland is it’s kind of like a whole lot of connected villages, a community. 

“What the church is learning now is that people are longing for community, and community comes in small packages. The church is learning to value this, and I think the little towns in the Hinterland are pretty special too!”