William David Crews AM [1] (born 1944) is an Australian Christian minister of the Uniting Church. He is the minister of the Ashfield parish in Sydney's Inner West.
William David Crews AM [1] (born 1944) is an Australian Christian minister of the Uniting Church. He is the minister of the Ashfield parish in Sydney's Inner West.
Bill Crews was born in England in 1944 [2] and migrated to Australia in his early years. He studied electrical engineering at the University of New South Wales under a scholarship provided by Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) (AWA). He worked with AWA in microelectronic research studying the properties of silicon until 1971, including building the first machine in Australia to grow ultra pure single crystal silicon.
In late 1969, he first visited the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross and ultimately became involved in voluntary programs, visiting the elderly, sick and shut-ins of the Woolloomooloo-Kings Cross area.
By 1971, he had decided to quit engineering and work full-time at the Wayside Chapel. Crews was a member of the team that created the first 24-hour crisis centre in Australia. By 1972 he was director of the crisis centre and directed all the social work programs of the Wayside Chapel until 1983. [3] During that time he established the first program in Australia to reunite adoptees and birth parents (Reunion Register), and the first program to assist parents who were at risk of abusing their children (Child Abuse Prevention Service). He also established the first modern youth refuge in Australia. [4]
In 1973 he was made a member of the New South Wales Drug and Alcohol Authority and was intimately involved in establishing drug rehabilitation, education and prevention programs throughout New South Wales. Together with Ted Noffs, in 1978 they created the first Life Education Centre, that have since spread all over Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, England and America, promoting drug avoidance and harm minimization strategies.
After leaving the Wayside Chapel, Crews went into the Uniting Church ministry and eventually became minister at the Uniting Church in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield. He then became founder and chairman of the Exodus Foundation, a charity that assists homeless [5] and abandoned youth. [6] He is also the founder and CEO of the Bill Crews Charitable Trust. The Exodus Foundation's activities include a free kitchen (restaurant) in Ashfield which feeds 400 people each day, health both dental and medical and welfare services for the homeless and needy, and an outreach program for homeless youth. There is also a night food van providing meals to the homeless at Woolloomooloo.
From 1996 to 2014 Exodus (in collaboration with MULTILIT) operated a literacy program which offered free remedial reading tuition to disadvantaged primary school children, with tutorial centres located in Ashfield, Redfern, Coen, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory. The NSW State Government terminated funding to the program on 30 September 2014, [7] and the Ashfield and Redfern centres closed soon after, although The Bill Crews Trust continues to operate a literacy program for indigenous students in the Northern Territory.
Since 2002, Crews has hosted the radio program Sunday Night with Bill Crews on Sydney radio station 2GB and Brisbane radio station 4BC. Guests have included Clive James, Helen Reddy, Bob Hawke, and Kerry O'Brien. He is known to have a centre-left political viewpoint. Crews was the subject of a documentary film released in 2020, A War of Compassion, directed by Warwick Moss. [8]
Crews has been awarded an International Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Foundation. He has been voted Father of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year (1992). In February 1998 Crews was included in the National Trust of Australia's 100 "National Living Treasures". In 1999 he was appointed a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to the disadvantaged and his work with homeless youth. [1]
As part of the 2000 Summer Olympics, Crews ran a leg of the Olympic Torch Relay and the Paralympic Torch Relay. He also distributed hundreds of donated tickets to those who would otherwise not have had the financial means to partake in the Olympic experience.
In 2001 Crews was named Ashfield Citizen of the Year for his contribution to the local community. He received the William R. Tresise Fellowship Award from the Australian Lions Foundation in June 2001 – the highest honour the Foundation bestows for humanitarian services. In 2001 Crews also received an Alumni Award from the University of New South Wales.
Crews is a patron of Australians For Just Refugee Programs and chairman of Fair Go Australia – an anti-racism project sponsored by the NSW Government through the Community Relations Commission.
Ashfield is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Ashfield is about 8 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district.
Potts Point is a small and densely populated suburb in inner-city Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Potts Point is located 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) east of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney.
Woolloomooloo is a harbourside, inner-city eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1.5 kilometres east of the central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney. It is in a low-lying, former docklands area at the head of Woolloomooloo Bay, on Sydney Harbour. The Domain sits to the west, the locality of East Sydney is near the south-west corner of the suburb and the locality of Kings Cross is near the south-east corner. Potts Point is immediately to the east.
Kings Cross is an inner-eastern locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney. It is bounded by the suburbs of Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay, Rushcutters Bay and Darlinghurst.
The Wayside Chapel is a charity and parish mission of the Uniting Church in Australia in the Potts Point area of Sydney, Australia. Situated near Sydney's most prominent red-light district in Kings Cross, the Wayside Chapel offers programs and services which attempt to ensure access to health, welfare, social and recreation services. The centre assists homeless people and others on the margins of society.
Aboriginal Medical Services Redfern, known as AMS Redfern, formerly the Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) is an Aboriginal Australian health service in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Established around 1971, it was the first Aboriginal community-controlled health service in Australia. It became a key Indigenous Australian community organisation, from which most Aboriginal medical services around the State of New South Wales have stemmed.
The Redfern Park Speech, also known as the Redfern speech or Redfern address, was made on 10 December 1992 by the then Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, at Redfern Park, which is in Redfern, New South Wales, an inner city suburb of Sydney. The speech dealt with the challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is still remembered as one of the most powerful speeches in Australian history, both for its rhetorical eloquence and for its ground-breaking admission of the negative impact of white settlement in Australia on its Indigenous peoples, culture and society, in the first acknowledgement by the Australian Government of the dispossession of its First Peoples. It has been described as "a defining moment in the nation's reconciliation with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people".
The Finger Wharf is a heritage-listed former wharf and passenger terminal and now marina, residential apartments, hotel and restaurant located at 6 Cowper Wharf Road, in the inner city Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo, Australia. It was designed by Henry D. Walsh and built from 1910 to 1915 by the Sydney Harbour Trust. It is also known as Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf and Woolloomooloo Wharf. The property is owned by Transport for NSW. The structure is the longest timbered-piled wharf in the world.
The Sydney Fish Market is a fish market in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The market sits on the Blackwattle Bay foreshore in Pyrmont, 2 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district. It is the world's third largest fish market.
The National Black Theatre (NBT) was a theatre company run by a small group of Aboriginal people based in the Sydney suburb of Redfern which operated from 1972 to 1977. The original concept for the theatre grew out of political struggles, especially the land rights demonstrations, which at the time were being organised by the Black Moratorium Committee. The centre held workshops in modern dancing, tribal dancing, writing for theatre, karate and photography, and provided a venue for new Aboriginal drama. It also ran drama classes under Brian Syron, whose students included Jack Davis, Freddie Reynolds, Maureen Watson, Lillian Crombie, and Hyllus Maris.
Theodore Delwin "Ted" Noffs was a Methodist minister who founded the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, Sydney, in 1964.
The Ted Noffs Foundation is a charitable organisation located in Randwick, New South Wales, Australia. Founded as the Wayside Foundation in 1971 in Sydney by the Reverend Ted Noffs and his wife, Margaret, which provides drug and alcohol services for young people in Australia.
Youth Off The Streets is an Australian non-denominational not-for-profit youth organisation. The organisation works with young people and their families and communities in an endeavour to create safety, offer support and provide opportunities to build a positive future.
John Webster, also known as Mo(u)hammed Jon Webster, or more simply just Webster, was a soap box orator and public speaker, primarily at Speakers' Corner near Marble Arch at Hyde Park, London and beneath the Moreton Bay Fig trees of The Domain, Sydney from the early 1950s till the late 1980s. He also made sorties into Arabia, Tasmania, Melbourne's Yarra Bank and various other outposts of what had been the British Empire. Webster, who almost exclusively referred to himself in the third person, delivered a wide-reaching and eclectic philosophy in a hybrid carny barking cockney/Australian accent. He was the most prominent and listened-to of all long-term speakers at the Sydney Domain. Journalist John Edwards wrote in 1971 "The only (modern) force is the inimitable Webster who, lately returned from England, is responsible for most of the popularity of the (Sydney) Domain." Nene King observed of a day spent at the Sydney Domain "Webster commanded the largest audience as he waved a verbal flag for the British Empire – 'We Englishmen are God's gift to the whole world.'"
Brian Patrick McGahen was an Australian gay activist and social libertarian.
Caretakers Cottage is an Australian non-profit, non-governmental organisation based in Sydney assisting children and young adults facing homelessness. Caretakers Cottage is funded by the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice to provide services for young people across Sydney's South-Eastern district. Services include short-term, emergency accommodation, semi-independent living options, case support and early intervention for young people at risk of homelessness.
Detour House is a non-profit organisation servicing homeless and other at-risk girls and women, based in Sydney, Australia. Detour House also incorporates The Girls Refuge, a crisis accommodation service for homeless girls.
Squatting in Australia usually refers to a person who is not the owner, taking possession of land or an empty house. In 19th century Australian history, a squatter was a settler who occupied a large tract of Aboriginal land in order to graze livestock. At first this was done illegally, later under licence from the Crown.