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Preaching through the choir
On the eve of retirement, Angaston’s Pastor Rob Borgas reflects on faith, culture and life in the desert.
words Heidi Helbig
PHOTOGRAPHY John Krüger
For Rob Borgas, faith is universal, no matter what language you speak.
For more than 30 years, the Lutheran pastor has shared the gospel through word and song with First Nations Australians in some of the most remote indigenous communities of Central Australia.
Rob’s mission work in the Pitjantjatjara-speaking region of the Finke River Mission is renowned, bringing international understanding and recognition of the indigenous Hermannsburg (Ntaria) and Areyonga (Utju) choirs.
A firm believer that humanity always prevails, the retiring Angaston pastor says it was the most challenging circumstances in outback Australia that provided the most memorable experiences.
By his own admission, it was a steep cultural learning curve when he arrived with wife Kriss and their baby, Jeremy, at Yalata, near the Nullarbor Plain, one of many government-established Aboriginal communities with a history of displacement and upheaval.
“At times relationships would become strained and the authorities invited Christian missionaries to come and look after the Aboriginal people – that was the start of community living,” explains Rob.
He says the early 1990s were a time of alcohol-fuelled violence, high mortality rates and little police intervention. At the time, ABC television described Yalata as having some of the “harshest conditions in the world”.
“When I first went to Yalata it was fairly chaotic. I saw five people die in a car crash…alcohol was tearing the community apart,” he says.
“I took a gun off someone firing bullets in the air. The police said they couldn’t come out, so I put the gun under the bed. In a way, it was easier for us to do it than it was for them.”
Missionaries like Rob bridged the void of authorities, building trust with a transient local population.
“It was really good being isolated because it forced you to learn the language, go hunting, understand the culture. It was so different, but so interesting,” Rob says.
“We’d go into the Nullarbor at night, drive into a wombat hole and walk 30 kilometres across the bush to get help. Back then we just relied on luck, never a spare tyre!”
Other communities such as Areyonga (Utju), located near the Mereenie oil and gas fields in the Northern Territory, were untouched by Western influences.
“Areyonga was an amazing community, so peaceful – the only thing you’d hear at night were the donkeys,” says Rob.
“The more isolated communities were actually far better off away from the problems of western society that caused so much death and destruction.”
“You’d get a new word, a new figure or speech or expression, and think, ‘what’s that?’ To understand how it’s used in everyday life, you have to be completely immersed in their community, because language is a product of culture.”
- Rob Borgas
After stints at Yalata and Ceduna, a turning point came in 2000 when Rob and Kriss were relocated to Alice Springs, where Rob served as a pastor. In 2007, he started working for Finke River Mission, named after the river that flows through Hermannsburg Mission, established by German Lutheran missionaries in 1877.
Unlike many other missions, the early Lutheran missionaries didn’t attempt to teach indigenous Australians German or English, but instead learned the local languages so they could communicate respectfully with people on Country, and share the Christian message with them in their own language.
Rob describes the early attempts at translating First Nations languages as groundbreaking.
“The government wanted them to learn English, but the German missionaries were not hand maidens of the Colonial British system,” says Rob.
“The Aboriginal language was never in writing, always oral, so the missionaries created the written-down language and taught it to the Aboriginal people so they could teach it to each other.”
Following in their footsteps, but today with the aid of Indigenous pastors, Rob had the privilege of training Aboriginal Lutheran pastors and translating English liturgies and prayers into their native language.
“You’d get a new word, a new figure or speech or expression, and think, ‘what’s that?’ To understand how it’s used in everyday life, you have to be completely immersed in their community, because language is a product of culture,” says Rob.
“There are 10 different language groups across the Gibson and Great Victoria Desert…One thing I learned is that language is very important, and taking it away is cultural genocide.”
Away from the mission, Rob indulged his passion for cricket and footy, revelling in exhibition Test matches between England and the Prime Minister’s XI, and AFL matches played at Alice Springs.
As a player and an umpire himself, Rob was often the only European, or piranpa, on the ground and admired the natural aptitude of the indigenous players.
“They played in bare feet with prickles everywhere, trained on dirt and rocks – absolutely unbelievable stuff – and they had some really talented players,” says Rob.
“Their rituals were quite different from ours, yet they were very serious about football. Their rituals kept the confederacy of their groups alive, which is all part of Western Desert Culture.
“Their ceremonies ran along the same lines. Being a pastor, I was never part of ceremony. I respected that and held (Christian) services afterwards. It was no problem – somehow they managed to practice both their Christian faith and their culture, yet keep them separate.”
Raising three sons in the outback, Kriss’ experiences were similar, as she integrated into the local way of life and came to know the women and their traditions intimately.
“Kriss really enjoyed living in community among the women, hunting and caring for children, and thought they were some of the best years of our marriage,” says Rob.
It was during this time that Rob came into contact with Guyanese born Morris Stuart, a former pastor from Melbourne and current director of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir.
The choir became known for its rendition of famous German hymns, such as Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (by Philipp Nicolai and Johann Sebastian Bach) in the local dialect.
“We came up with the idea of taking these songs back to Germany, so the Germans could hear their own songs in Indigenous languages – that’s why we called it the Boomerang Choir tour,” says Rob.
“We visited mission societies in Germany, particularly Mission Eine Welt (Mission One World) near Nuremberg, Evangelical Lutheran Mission at Hermannsburg, and the Kirchentag, the German National Church Day Festival at Stuttgart.”
Their journey was immortalised in the documentary, The Song Keepers, and the choir went on to tour Australia and the United States, captivating audiences with performances of Waltzing Matilda and Australia’s national anthem sung in Pitjantjatjara.
Rob says the experience had a lasting impact on the wellbeing of their communities.
“They were so amazed to perform at places like the Sydney Opera House, where people thought they were important – they had never experienced that before,” Rob says.
Choir leader Daphne Puntjina translated many hymns into Pitjantjatjara, and received the Northern Territory Citizen of the Year Award in 2004.
“Daphne also received a Lutheran Church Servant of Christ Award. She died in 2025, knowing it was worth it – her life was important and worthy, and she meant a lot to so many people,” Rob says.
Now serving Angaston Zion Lutheran Church and the Gnadenberg and Gruenberg congregations at Moculta, Rob eschews the politics of division around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues.
He reflects that the differences between indigenous and western cultures are not as vast as people might think, even though colonialisation has affected both groups quite differently.
“A lot of things are different but we share a lot of similarities. We all have the same wants and needs and desires for our family, that’s universal,” says Rob.
“Political things happen, but individuals are bigger than that. What happens to individuals depends more on them and the choices they make, their family and their upbringing and their faith and not just the impact of the wider society.
“When a community decides to stay strong, their people benefit.”
On the cusp of retirement, Rob hopes his legacy in the Aboriginal communities he served will outlast him.
“It’s not about having all the answers,” he says. “It’s about supporting them, helping them to take more responsibility for their own choices and for their communities, and encouraging them in their journey, and I hope I have helped.”
