by Helen Brinkman
For more than 60 years, retired teachers Trevor and Liz Winderlich have been working together to plant and grow schools in Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), sowing seeds of faith for God to harvest.
It was a match made in heaven when the pair met in 1959 while studying teaching at the then Concordia Seminary, at Highgate, in suburban Adelaide. Trevor still recalls their first date – a night at the movies to see Darby O’ Gill and the Little People, starring Sean Connery.
After their graduations in 1961, Trevor was unexpectedly called to a teaching post in PNG. Liz had been awaiting a teaching position with the SA Education Department, but once she heard Trevor’s news, she changed her plans. ‘I had always wanted to go there,’ Liz says, because her father, Pastor Fred Noack, had been a missionary there.
So, in 1962, they went to Melbourne to study at the Wycliffe Institute of Linguistics, before marrying. Three weeks later, they flew out to PNG.
Their five-year adventure began at Gelem school on Rooke Island, where Liz taught Grade 2 students and the school’s student teachers, while Trevor taught Grades 7 and 9 students. After they arrived in PNG, the Winderlichs overcame their language barrier with Pidgin English, and within weeks, they were using Pidgin to write Maths books for the students.
Only when the first pay cheque arrived did they realise that although Liz and Trevor both worked full-time, they received only a single wage. Church policy at that time meant that wives of married teaching couples did not receive a wage! However, that didn’t dint their enthusiasm, and the couple went on to work in Menyamya District, in the PNG Highlands southwest of Lae, where Liz supervised indigenous teachers and Trevor became a teaching principal and taught Year 4s. Beyond teaching, they loved being part of the community, helping to develop local gardens and expand dietary options by bringing in vegetable seeds and building a dam to support local aquaculture.
They even developed a travelling Christmas slideshow for surrounding villages featuring their students in the costumes of the Nativity, narrating the Christmas story in their native tongue. To power the projector on their journeys, they carried a battery in a wheelbarrow, with a borrowed sheet for the screen. ‘The good Lord had so many ideas for us,’ says Trevor.
One of the students who featured in the nativity play, Jesse Tanggwo, joined the family on a visit back to Australia. He later became a Lutheran pastor, and Trevor and Liz also supported his son Nicholas through PNG’s Martin Luther Seminary to become a pastor.
Their own son James was born in Lae in May 1964, followed two years later by their first daughter Kathy, now Matuschka. James, pastor of St Johns Southgate Lutheran congregation in Melbourne, was Australian Lutheran College principal from 2014 to 2023.
In 1967, the family left their peaceful Highlands life and headed to Tanunda in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, where Trevor became the teaching principal of Tanunda Lutheran School. ‘What a culture shock,’ Liz says about having to reacclimatise to a more structured life. Along with the birth of their youngest child, Christine, in 1969, another highlight for Liz of their new base was playing pipe organs at their Langmeil church and other surrounding Lutheran congregations.
Over the following decades, Trevor and Liz were called to establish three new Lutheran schools. Starting with Murray Bridge from 1978 to 1987, Trevor remembers visiting a dusty plot on the edge of town, which would soon become the primary school, where he became a teaching principal, and Liz established the library and later taught.
In 1988, both Trevor and Liz were called to establish Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School, co-located with the Wynn Vale state primary school. In their first year, the Winderlichs were the only school staff until a secretary joined them that October to help with administration. They established their classes in a large composite room, which, on the weekends, became the worship area. That required the weekly stacking of school furniture to make room for Sunday services!
By 1995, their three children had grown up and headed to Queensland, so Trevor and Liz moved north and set about expanding the Caboolture Lutheran Primary School on the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast remains their community following their retirement in late 2004.
As well as being active members of Living Faith Lutheran Church, Murrumba Downs, for the past two decades Liz has been a part of the Streams in the Desert network of Lutherans, which supports women’s contributions to God’s ministry.
After retirement, relief teaching over the next few years supported their next adventure, volunteering for Finke River Mission and travelling around Queensland congregations to promote and fundraise for the Central Australian LCA ministry.
Today, their hall walls reflect their pride in their six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. They are also honorary grandparents to their young neighbour, Hugo, whose father, Glen, suffered burns to 70 per cent of his body in a road accident in 2020, underwent approximately 20 surgeries and lost his lower legs. Trevor and Liz have stepped in to co-parent Hugo, now 6, and continue to support his mum, Roni, while Glen recovers.
Trevor and Liz’s wedding text from Psalm 37:5, ‘Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act’, reflects God’s continued grace as they tend to his earthly garden.
‘We’ll always have people in our sphere who just need someone to talk to and who just need to be loved,’ Trevor says. ‘I think God’s not finished with us yet. I’m tipping I’ll be around ‘til I’m 120. I’ve got so much left to do.’
