In a Big Place With Few People, a Minister Needs a Pilot’s License

After a couple hours of sitting under the blazing outback sun, the two-decade-old Cessna 182 was being finicky. It stood by an overgrown airstrip that needed mowing and was missing a windsock.

When Niall Gibson tried to start the engine, it tiredly growled, then went silent. He revved it once more. It sputtered, before giving way to stillness.

“This is when we pray,” said his wife, Michelle Gibson.

In Australia’s Northern Territory, there are flying veterinarians, flying doctors, flying mechanics and flying mailmen. How else do you serve an area nearly as vast as Alaska but much sparser, where the cattle outnumber the humans seven to one? Where “The Wet,” as the rainy season is known, submerges roads each year, isolating towns and farms for months on end?

The Gibsons are the latest in a long line of “Flying Padres” — chaplains who have been traversing the region by air for the Salvation Army since the final days of World War II. They offer their counsel and services at key stages of life, like baptisms, weddings and funerals. But more often, they tend to the years in between, dropping in to lend an ear to people for whom isolation is a daily reality.