Bulows have the magic touch when it comes to chaplaincy on the fly
- deansimpson7
- Sep 18
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 24
With The Salvation Army set to mark 80 years of the Flying Padre Service, we feature the story of one couple who, 14 years ago, felt called by God to serve in the isolated Darling Downs region of Queensland. Majors Mark and Jo Bulow arrived on remote cattle stations and farming properties – first in helicopters, then later in a fixed-wing, four-seat Cessna 182 Skylane – bringing practical assistance and a caring, pastoral presence during many of the best and worst moments of rural life.
BY KIRRALEE NICOLLE
Major Mark Bulow is a Christian magician.
I’m honest with him: I have absolutely no idea what that means. In my experience of Christian communities, many would consider this title an oxymoron.
“I basically use magic tricks, but I use them to talk about the Gospel,” Mark says. “When we go around and do different events, I’ll take magic tricks for the kids and for the adults. I’ll do two or three secular tricks but then bring it around into a Christian faith message.
“I’ve been doing that since I was 13 years old.”
It isn’t the only seeming contradiction about Mark and his wife, Major Jo Bulow. They are self-described country people born and raised in rural Queensland, working a deeply practical, physical job which is, at its core, all about tending to the hearts of those battling to manage farms, weather changes and the turmoil of life in profoundly isolating circumstances.
On an average day, this might look like handing out plyers and critiquing fences.
“I’ve always grown up in the bush [and] feel very comfortable with farmers, understand the way they talk and that they’re very direct, which is how I speak,” Mark says.
“When we go to their properties and they’re having a bad day, I don’t get offended, because I know what it’s like to have a bad day.”
Mark says on a recent visit, a farmer was having a particularly awful day.
“I said [to him], ‘Your fences look like they need a bit of work, can I give you a good set of plyers to help?’ So, I gave him a set of good plyers. As we walked past his workshop, I said, ‘I see you’ve got a good workshop, and I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with cutting things 100ml too short, so here’s a tape measure, that way you won’t make the same mistakes I did’, so he said, ‘Thanks! Oh well, you better come and have a cup of coffee’.
“[We] seem to know how to connect with these people. I don’t get offended easy, and we just go in and get it done.”
The Bulows fly together into rural properties, with Jo primarily caring for the women and Mark for the men. Despite undertaking pilot training before commencing, the transition to rural and remote chaplaincy was a fairly straightforward one for the couple, whose last shared appointment was as corps officers in Toowoomba, just an hour south-east of Dalby, where The Salvation Army hangar is located.
“It was a natural transition, really,” Jo says. “We went from a country city to a smaller country town.”
When Mark started flying a Salvation Army helicopter in 2012, the Darling Downs was facing devastating flooding, with the Warrego River in Cunnamulla, Charleville and Roma breaking its banks, inundating homes and isolating residents. Mark describes ‘bunny-hopping’ across the river to help those who were stuck.
But very soon after the floods, the region was plunged into a crushing eight-year drought.
“The same people that were concerned about all the floods, next minute, the water turned off and [the land] went into this horrible drought,” Mark says. “Our own families were struggling.”
Since the drought ended, Mark says the region has had several great seasons of plentiful produce, but many fear drought is on its way again.
“It’s just the cycle of the bush, you know,” he says.
“You get good seasons; you get bad seasons. You get terrible seasons with hail and the like. But they just have to prepare for that. The smart ones are already preparing for it.”
Through the good and the bad, Mark and Jo are there with their Cessna, but most of all, with a listening ear.
They said that during the drought, they flew to rural airstrips to chat over a kitchen table with those who were facing physical, mental or financial barriers to doing the things they once loved. For some, it was working with leather, for others, it was building model aircraft.
Where needed, they would go and purchase the tools or equipment to ensure residents in isolated areas could maintain their hobbies despite the seemingly insurmountable challenge of farming with no rain.
One woman loved sewing, but couldn’t afford to fix her broken sewing machine, so Mark says he and Jo flew the machine back to Dalby and paid to have it repaired.
Country folk need face-to-face contact, Mark says.
“We took it back out there with material and patterns, and then that allowed her just to get back to her happy place,” Mark says.
For one of the couples the Bulows regularly visit, not only have they navigated flood and drought alongside one another, but Mark and Jo have been there for two of the most crucial moments in their lives.
“We’ve had the joy of marrying [their] daughter, but we’ve also had the heartbreak of having to bury their son,” Mark says.
Jo says she and Mark were the first people the couple called after their son died.
“They didn’t know who else to ring,” she says.
Mark says it takes a long time to build trust in the bush, and when you have it, it pays to visit regularly.
“They know that if they’re in trouble [or] things are tough, that my phone is on 24/7 and I’ll pick it up, even if it’s at three in the morning, because for so many, it’s at three in the morning when the demons come and all those bad thoughts happen.
“I say to them, ‘I don’t care where or what you’re doing. If you need me, you just give us a ring, and you know either of us will pick up our phones and we’re here to chat with you’.”
Lunch can sometimes be ‘on the run’ on a landing strip somewhere in the Outback.
Mark and Jo say that despite the shifts the Flying Padre Service has seen over the past 80 years, one thing remains unchanged: the purpose.
“One thing that these farmers and any people in remote [areas] need is face-to-face contact,” he says. “Talking like we are over a cup of tea; it can never be replaced.”
“You can put your hand on their shoulder and say, ‘Mate, you’ve got this’,” Jo says.
Mark says what the flying padre can offer is like no other service out bush.
“[Rural Australians] may ring up the other agencies, but they don’t know the people they’re talking to. Where they pick up the phone and they chat with Jo or I, they know us, and we can say, ‘Hey, listen, we’ll be out there tomorrow’.”
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