The Cult Of Community

They raised eyebrows with their old-fashioned dress, strict vows and radical lifestyle. But, as Jenny Brown reports, the Bruderhof sect in rural NSW has not only flourished, it’s won the hearts and minds of the local community.

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It was an almighty and trusting leap of faith. At first, Australia seemed the far side of the universe to Norann Voll, newly arrived from New York with her husband and two small children, one of them just 10 weeks old.

Migrating to a windswept hilltop in rural NSW, the young Americans were strangers in a strange land. Kookaburras sounded mocking and bush flies were a torment. Even the grey eucalypts looked unwelcoming, their bark hanging off in knotty, fibrous strips.

Danthonia was not, perhaps, their dream destination. But members of the Bruderhof – a radical Christian sect that aims to live like true disciples – joyfully go wherever the church decides they are most needed. And for the Voll family, 17 years ago, that place was the Bruderhof’s first Australian outpost, which had been established just three years before their arrival in New England’s rolling grasslands outside Inverell.

“We’d come to another wonderful, faith-based community, but there were only 50 people living here at that time,” recalls Norann, 43, bustling around her cosy 1950s fibro home, where a hand-painted motto “Live Laugh Love” is emblazoned above the kitchen door. “In the States we’d had lots of neighbours close by, lots of contact with the wider community, a completely different culture. Then we landed from upstate New York’s hustle and bustle into a paddock!” It was a marvellous, Godgiven adventure. Yet transplanted so suddenly, the young mother struggled to cope in such alien surroundings until traditional bush kindness stepped in. “Right away the amazing, outreaching warmth of Australian women and their radical hospitality just saved me in some ways,” smiles Norann, a trained teacher who has now welcomed three strapping sons with 43-year-old husband Chris. “They just rescued a part of me that was getting ready to shrivel up.