Tenterfield Traveller
What’s so great about Tenterfield? And just where is it?
 Tenterfield. It’s a small town on the New England Highway (the inland trek between Sydney and Brisbane—or Brisbane and Sydney) in northern New South Wales. It’s famous for a speech made there by Sir Henry Parkes on the future of Australia about the time your great-great-great-grandmother met your great-great-great-grandfather. And it’s the birthplace of Peter Allen.
Who said Peter who?
This is Peter “I Still Call Australia Home” Allen. It’s un-Australian not to get a little misty eyed whenever that song is sung.
A question? Yes, you up the back in the “I barrack for any team that beats Australia” T-shirt. No, you don’t have to get misty eyed if you aren’t Australian.
Peter Allen also wrote the song “Tenterfield saddler”—about his grandfather, George Woolnough. Woolnough is dead, but his shop lives on. I saw it a few weeks ago.
In the song, I thought it said Woolnough “worked on High Street, lived on manners.”
But it says, “Worked on High Street, lived on Manners.”
Get it? Worked on High Street, lived on my street. Manners Street is the next street over from High Street where the saddlery is.
I HAVE A STREET NAMED AFTER ME! Oops, let me turn the volume down. I have a street named after me.
Of course, if your last name is Smith or Station or Church you’ve got dozens of streets named after you—probably all over the world. (Actually, I do have a photo where I’m standing under the Manners Street sign in Wellington, New Zealand).
Another question? Yes, yes I know the street has had its name for more years than I’ve been alive so therefore it can’t be named after me. What a dreary detail.
That does remind me, again, that we all crave recognition of some kind. To be someone who stands out from the herd. To have a sense of significance. Sometimes we’ll clutch at anything.
But we don’t have to. God points to another sign—a cross on a hill. No street sign this, it’s a life sign. A love sign that I matter, that you matter. We matter enough that God showed we’re worth dying for.
Wow!
You don’t have to have your name in lights, or on a street sign to be significant to God. You’re important simply because you are.
I still think it’s neat having a street named after me.
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Bruce Manners (left) is senior pastor of
the Avondale College church.