By Loren Elliott

BROKEN HILL, Australia (Reuters ) – The Christmas spirit is not transported by sleigh in the Australian outback during summer. The single-engine Cessna 182 is the aircraft that it uses to fly in.

    At least, that is how David Shrimpton, a pastor with a pilot’s licence, delivers holiday cheer to a congregation of a couple of thousand spread over livestock and farm land nearly three times the size of Ireland. The Uniting Church pastor, David Shrimpton has flown to remote communities in Australia since 2003 to speak to and help a dispersed flock.

(Open https://reut.rs/32elm71 to see a photo essay on David Shrimpton’s airborne ministry)

    That largely stopped last year when Australia introduced some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 restrictions. Although “Padre Dave”, who could have been granted essential worker status, would have kept his four-year schedule in this region of 225,000 km (87,000 miles), but chose to use phone calls instead to reduce the chance of the coronavirus spreading.

    Now, with restrictions easing, Shrimpton is taking to the skies again with hopes of sharing the closest thing to a normal Christmas season this vast tract of western New South Wales state has seen in years. Shrimpton is open to all: farmers and graziers as well as schoolchildren, believers or not.

    “It will be great to go out again and reconnect with these folk, reconnect with the kids and be part of their school life once again, reconnect with the adults who are living remotely and, let them know that they’re not forgotten,” Shrimpton, 57, told Reuters at a small airport near his home in Broken Hill.

    “Some had thought that I’d retired and moved on, but no, I’m still here and still willing to go out and catch up.”

    The pandemic was just the latest in a string of setbacks – after nearly a half decade of drought – for this loose network of one-pub towns, sheep and cattle stations, Indigenous communities and schools with a handful of children.

    “A lot of these blokes out here are big and tough, but they have a soft side and the drought buckled a few,” said Josh Sheard, a former pub owner who has put up Shrimpton for years in Pooncarie, where a sign outside the town says, “Population 84”.

The locals will inform you that it is far less than they used to be.

    “To be able to talk to Dave was really good for them. Sheard and Sheard only love to tell each other how they’re doing when it’s making them money. Sheard is seen battling flies with a rubber cooler as she swatted away the flies from a table of beer in rubber coolers.

    Sara Carey, who looks after a merino sheep operation called Netley Station with her partner Tony, has had visits from Shrimpton for six years. Shrimpton has the gift of getting men to have a cup o’ tea and answer questions that they didn’t know they were answering, said Carey.

    Pooncarie’s five public school students – who don’t have internet connections good enough for home learning or socialising during lockdowns – were excited about their year-end awards day mostly because of who would be attending.

    “Even though they knew they were going to get a disco, they knew they were going to get awards, they were putting on a play, all they talked about the last few days was ‘when’s Padre Dave coming?'” Alison King, school principal said that.

    “It’s about having someone to just spend time with, and if they’ve got any concerns they can talk to him, even if it’s just to talk, having someone just to listen. He is always there to listen.”

    Shrimpton’s unusual occupation is the result of two callings. According to Shrimpton, flying was something he wanted as a kid. However, he worked in childcare and real estate before driving taxis and studying theology at the urging of his wife.

After being appointed as a pastor at a nearby airport church, he noticed an advertisement offering flying lessons. He signed up out of curiosity. He was soon moved to Darwin in Northern Australia to start his nearly twenty-year career as a pilot pastor. He relocated to Broken Hill, in 2014.

    Shrimpton said that like his congregation, he also has been impacted by the restrictions imposed on social interaction over the past two years. According to Shrimpton, this would be the start of “better times” and a better future.

    “It’s time to celebrate … enjoying one another’s company and hearing from folk in the bush that they are looking forward to connection with family that wasn’t there last Christmas.”