Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

CALL OF THE CHURCH
Service In Years and Miles
Young John Smiley, Irish Rugby footballer and newly-ordained clergyman in the year of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, heard and answered a call for more Presbyterian ministers in Queensland. In Melbourne last week the Victorian Assembly placed on record Its deep appreciation of the long, faithful and brilliant. service rendered the church by Rev. John Smiley, its retiring clerk of assembly.
Travelling some 12,000 miles to his first charge of the 'nineties, the young Ulster minister found himself called upon to continue travelling within his charge. For, while his 42 years' service to the Presbyterian Church in Australia was destined to be confined to three charges, it was to Darling Downs (Qld.), a charge the size of the whole of Victoria, to which he was first allotted."And travelling was travelling those days." he remarked yesterday. "We had no motor cars and had to travel by sulky or on horse back. My charge extended from Charlevllle on the west, to the sea on the east, and down to the New South Wales border in the south. And on one journey I was a week in transit." As a Queenslander. Fr. Smiley saw the federation of the Australian States and in the first decade of the Commonwealth he came to Victoria, to the Presbyterians of Learmonth, near Ballarat it was in 1913 that he came to Melbourne — to Sandringham church — where he remained for 21 years. This period was Interrupted by his service overseas as a captain chaplain with the A.I, F. in the Great War. His retirement from the Sandringham charge in 1934 did not mean the end of active service, for in the last ten years he has acted for the Assembly as assistant business convener, acting convener, assistant clerk and clerk and also on the standing orders committee. As a rugby footballer in his youth, Mr. Smiley was in international Ireland v.Scotland class, with an athletic training that no doubt stood him in good stead in the great distances he had to cover in administering his Darling Downs charge."I was a young fellow in those days,"I was his own reflective comment yesterday.Mr. Smiley is still a young fellow In the spirit and enthusiasm for the church to which he dedicated his life. On the motion of Mr, Holland, M.L.A., the central executive of the Victorian Labor party adopted a resolution demanding a redistribution of the wards of the Melbourne City Council before the annual elections in August of this year,and urging that the Government pass amending legislation to give effect to the'resolution.

The Age Tuesday 16 May 1939 page 10

REV JOHN SMILEY

The death has occurred at his home in Hampton of Rev. John Smiley, 83 years, a revered Presbyterian minister.
A native of North Ireland, Rev. Smiley was formerly clerk of the Victorian Assembly. During the war he came out of retirement and in the absence of the ministers on active service he was acting minister at both Mooroopna and Shepparton. He won the respect and esteem of all whom he came in contact.

Shepparton Advertiser Friday 02 February 1951 page 8