The Sky Pilot Fellowship was an evangelical Christian organisation set up by Gwen and Keith Langford-Smith, who fostered Aboriginal children on their Kellyville farm property, which became Marella Mission Farm.
Sky Pilot Fellowship was incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation on 23 May 1949. The Sky Pilot Fellowship conducted Christian radio broadcasts and raised money for Marella. In October 1954 the Sky Pilot Fellowship Ltd was formed as a non-profit organisation, and began operating as a company on 1 April 1955.
Keith Langford-Smith was a pilot and Anglican missionary who had lived in the Northern Territory, and had run Roper Mission for the Church Missionary Society. He set up Marella Mission Farm in the late 1940s, and led the Sky Pilot Fellowship.
According to the Nepean Times, in 1960 Langford-Smith told a meeting of St Mary's Rotary that the children at Marella were children of women who had been evacuated as children from the Northern Territory and housed at Mulgoa. However, he received children through government and non-government agencies, many of whose parents were from New South Wales.
Sources used to compile this entry: 'Caring for the Australian Native', Nepean Times, 18 February 1960, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article100976350; Irish, Paul, Hidden in Plain View: Aboriginal Historical People and Places in an Urban Sydney Landscape, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, http://web.archive.org/web/20140212012126/http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research/conf2009/presentations/Day1/MCC4/MC4_UH1_3.pdf; Platt, Matthew and Verdich, Kathleen, General Guide to the Collections in the Samuel Marsden Archives at Moore Theological College, University of New South Wales, 1987, http://myrrh.library.moore.edu.au/handle/10248/4112.
Prepared by: Naomi Parry
Created: 13 May 2013, Last modified: 10 July 2013
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE01292b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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