On his arrival in Sydney, Australia, on 26 September 1837, William Hamilton discovered that the prospects for ministerial labour within the Colony of New South Wales were not as they had been so glowingly described by the Rev. J. Dunmore Lang. Hamilton notes in his journal: 'We learned that our prospects ... were not such as we had been led to expect. We learned also that any country charge which we can obtain must comprise only a few families.'

This latter consideration was not unimportant from the point of view of temporal support. The Colonial government dispensed financial aid to ministers of the church in the form of a yearly allowance which depended upon the size of the adult congregation; government aid beginning when the adults in regular attendance reached one hundred in number. A 'stipend' of 1100 per year was then allowed to the minister.

Notwithstanding the difficulties this would entail upon him in a distant settlement such as Goulburn, where he could only expect a very small congregation, Hamilton presented himself to the Presbytery of New South Wales for service and was duly appointed to pastoral duties in the district of Argyle, NSW.

On the evening of 11 October 1837, Hamilton 'set out for Goulburn, the post town which forms the centre of the district ... I travelled in the mail-coach, an open vehicle consisting of two box seats, and a car behind capable of carrying in all ten individuals'.

The trip to Goulburn was not without incident. As travelling companions Hamilton had several drunken and quarrelsome men who 'stopped to drink ... at every public house and at length they attacked each other with their fists...' The travellers were also beset with bad weather and mechanical problems. A main bolt underpinning the axle and spring broke in half disabling the coach and halting the onward progress of their journey. At that precise moment a violent thunderstorm, accompanied by heavy rain, broke over their heads. Hamilton and two lady passengers left the coach, travelling towards Berrima on foot. The ladies experienced great difficulty with their shoes, one losing both in the thick mud. Hamilton fared not much better, for he reports that upon reaching the Berrima hotel he handed his shoes to a servant for drying, and received one back 'burned to a crisp'!

William Hamilton arrived in Goulburn on 14 October 1837, covering in three days a journey which can now be accomplished in less than two hours by motor vehicle. Of his first sight of Goulburn, Hamilton writes:

About Goulburn are extensive open plains and they come into view after the eye has been for days regaled by thick forests, the sensation of pleasure is lively in the extreme ... I was therefore delighted with the sight of them in no small degree and especially as I considered them the scene of my future life and labours.

Hamilton was to labour faithfully for nine years in Goulburn and the surrounding districts, resigning his charge and withdrawing from the Synod of NSW in October 1864. His subsequent journey took him to Melbourne, Victoria, with his wife and children.

A large number of people attended the first worship service which the Rev. William Hamilton conducted in Goulburn at the original courthouse. To Hamilton's consternation, the clerk of the court offered him a white gown which was reserved for the Episcopalian clergyman on his quarterly visit. Hamilton refused the gown and also the clerk's offer of help. He writes: 'I conducted public worship exactly as is done in the churches of Scotland only introducing the Lord's prayer immediately before the sermon ... I presented myself and was the first to introduce singing into public worship in this part of the country'. Such large attendances upon his ministry did not last long. In a journal entry dated 19 November 1837 he notes:

Today I expected a pretty large attendance at public worship in the courthouse; but was con­siderably disappointed. The congregation which I had in the forenoon did not exceed thirty, while in the evening only four women and four children came together'. The reasons for the initial large numbers attending Sunday worship Hamilton gives as the people being 'under the impulse of civility or novelty. Similar coldness I felt at Bungonia. Though it is a day of small things I am far from despairing of a better time.

Hamilton was faced with apathy, coldness and downright paganism from the populace of Goulburn. He records his impressions thus: 'They border on heathenism and have hitherto been without a minister. They require one who can travel from place to place. They ... require all the civility of manners I can command and ... my utmost familiarity and plainness'. Hamilton was not alone in this assessment of the residents of Goulburn.

James Black, a Quaker missionary, who visited the town in 1836, described Goulburn's inhabitants as 'of the lowest order; victims of immorality, the scourge of this class'. Hamilton was to write later, 'It would seem as if the people ... even the most Christian ... would have been fully well as pleased had a minister not come among them'.

Hamilton was not unaffected by moving in the circles in which his labours must of necessity take him. He writes in his journal: 'Hitherto I have moved about extensively among people who do not know the language of Zion and to whom His customs are strange, whose worldly and in some instances whose ungodly conversation chills my piety and tends to degrade my discourse'.

William Hamilton's 'Charge' was far flung, with his main centres of ministry being Goulburn, Crookwell, Bungonia, Braidwood, Limestone Plains (Canberra), Wingello, and points in between. To engage in ministry over such a large area Hamilton needed a conveyance. Unlike the Episcopalian clergyman who travelled in his own two-horse carriage, Hamilton could only afford a horse. He procured one in Sydney for £32, in the month of November 1837.

The roads joining the townships and hamlets were of the poorest quality. The weather was extremely hot in summer but windswept and freezing cold in winter, adding to which was the constant threat of his falling prey to the numerous bushrangers who infested the Southern Tablelands district. Thus travel was not only time-consuming but difficult and sometimes dangerous. Yet in spite of all this, Hamilton was able to write:

I have experienced the divine protection and support in this country and do not doubt that God is with me in the situation into which I have come ... I have been delivered from many dangers in travelling night and day ... and have been well sustained under great fatigue while travelling under the sun.

Hamilton was, as are most Scots, a practical man. The cost of living in this new land caused him some concern. He notes: 'I have been rendered uneasy by the expenditure of living in this country. Money is not half the value that it is in Scotland. In paying therefore for the necessities I have required I have felt as if I were robbed ... The keeping of a horse is also a costly matter and the conveyance of goods is not a small charge'. He noted that £200 expenditure in the Colony would not keep him as well as £70 in Scotland!

Scripture tells us that God searches for a man whose heart is fully his. Such a man he found in William Hamilton. Hamilton pursued his calling with energy and unabated vigour. His journals are replete with the record of his day-to-day activities as he sought to serve his Master and carry out his commission. Taking up a new journal on 27 February 1838, Hamilton writes upon the first page the following: 'I now take up this small volume and devote it to the purpose of setting down the principal steps which I have taken or may take in forming a congregation at Goulburn and prosecuting my missionary enterprises in the adjacent districts and also the transactions in which I engage as a minister'.

That journal clearly shows that Hamilton considers no one outside the pale of his missionary endeavour: Presbyterians, Episcopalians, even Catholics, came under his missionary zeal. Soldiers in the local stockade, 'ticket of leave men',¹ convicts in the chain gangs, were all part of his 'flock'. He was active in ministering to patients in the newly-established hospital, and he ministered to the youth of the town. He writes:

I came again to Goulburn ... proposing for some time to do duty there every second Sabbath and on every alternate Sabbath to be about some preaching station ... I officiated at one such station, Bungonia. On the 19th ... at Goulburn and on the 26th ... at Wingfellow and the neighbouring stockade. From my first coming to Goulburn I have made a weekly visit to the hospital exhort­ing and praying ... I commenced a course of religious instruction for the young having obtained a class of ten or twelve youthful catechumens ... I officiated ... at the Towrang stockade.

On the 2nd January 1838, Hamilton conducted his first wedding in the district, and was busy baptising infants. On Wednesday the 10th January ... in the presence of ten or twelve assembled friends I baptised the infant daughter of Dr Richardson. On Thursday 11th ... I baptised the daughter of Mr. Patterson ... also the daughter of Colin and L. On the same day at Strathallan ... I baptised a son of Rory McLean. He notes that on the 21st of that same month he officiated 'beyond the Southern border' of the colony at Bergalia, baptising four children, and, on the day following, performing his second marriage service.

Hamilton was the motivating force in having the first Presbyterian church built in Goulburn. That he was a man of vision and faith can be seen from an extract from the 'First Resolution' placed before the building committee: 'That the church ... be adequate to accommodate in its area 200 persons ... and shall admit of easy enlargement if needful some time in the future'. The church building was finally opened on the 30th May, 1841.

The town jail was also on his visitation list. He writes under 13 December 1838: 'I have paid a weekly visit to the lock-up these three weeks and propose regularly to continue the practice. The rise in numbers from 15 to 30 have been very attentive. I will be able in this manner to see a much larger number of government men than in any other'.

He gave out and sold Bibles and tracts at every opportunity, the majority of which he received from individuals in Scotland. Of these gifts he writes, 'I am thus getting armed in my warfare'. He encouraged the local Presby­terians to begin a school and to engage and support a school teacher. When the first Methodist church building was opened for worship in Goulburn he preached the sermon in the new building. In the face of such zeal, diligence and compassion it was not long before the 'coldness' he had previously encountered was melted away. He could write in the month of February, 1839: 'My people I have every reason to believe grow in attachment and I am gaining accessions to the members of my congregation from the Episcopalian ranks ... I record with gratitude to God all these pleasing and encouraging circumstances'. A growing congregation was also evident at Braidwood, and Hamilton proposed that the Presbytery call a minister. He writes:

This dis­trict I have diligently cultivated since my first coming to Goulburn and being now ripe for a minister I trust it will receive one whose commission shall be from God himself.

Marriage did not decrease his zeal although it did curtail his journalistic efforts somewhat. He was a deeply devoted husband, thankful to God for the gift of such a wife as his. He was much impressed with the grave but happy responsibility that was his as a father and a husband. He writes on the birth of the first child, a girl, on 9 February 1841: 'I feel myself bound by new obligations to love and glorify him who is the God of grace and consolation. Henceforward I will occupy a new position in society; I trust and pray therefore that I may be enabled to maintain a more exemplary deportment. As the father of a family may the Lord preserve me from covetousness and undue anxiety about earthly things ... Seeing my first-born I am led to regard myself as in a state of preparation for my removal to another world'.

Hamilton's zeal for the work of the Lord came from a deep-seated knowledge of the seriousness of his calling. In all he did, and in every role he was called upon to play in life, whether as pastor, husband, father or member of the Presbyterian Synod, he saw the necessity for living in a way that would further the gospel of Christ, bring honour to his Name and bring about a growth of true religion in the land. His tireless efforts to promote the cause of Christ in the Southern Tablelands, and later in Victoria, have per­haps never gained the recognition they deserve, even up to the present day.