Muriel has given fifty years to this land. The land doesn't always give back.
Muriel has worked her family’s property outside Cowell, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, for more than half a century. She knows this land — its moods, its silences, its demands. She’s weathered things that would send most people packing.
But the last few years have been different.
Relentless drought stripped the paddocks bare. Then floods came and undid what had just been repaired. Fuel costs climbed. Contractors stopped coming this far out. And through all of it, Muriel and her husband kept going—quietly, stubbornly, the way bush people do—because what else do you do?
The hardest part isn’t the physical load, though that’s real enough. It’s the isolation. When you’re this far from the nearest town, from family, from anyone who might just drop in, the weight of it compounds in ways that are difficult to describe. Even the strongest people reach a point where the silence starts to feel less like peace and more like being forgotten.
That’s where Sunny comes in.
Bush Chaplain Sunny Kadaparambil travels the vast stretch of central South Australia, visiting around 49 communities, 170 stations, remote roadhouses and mining camps. He covers more ground in a month than most Australians travel in a year, and he does it because he knows that showing up is often the most powerful thing one person can do for another.
When Sunny arrived at Muriel’s property, he didn’t come with grand gestures or easy answers. He came with time, with a listening ear — and eventually, with a group of Outback Links volunteers ready to roll their sleeves up and help. Together they worked through a backlog of jobs that had quietly grown impossible to manage alone. Practical things. The kind of things that, when left undone, become a daily reminder of how hard it all is.
But more than the work itself, it was the simple fact of people turning up that shifted something. Muriel and her husband weren’t invisible. They weren’t forgotten. Someone — a lot of someone’s — actually came.
It didn’t fix everything. It never does. But it reminded them that the rest of Australia is still there, and still cares about what happens out here.
This is the work Frontier Services has been doing for more than 110 years — since Reverend John Flynn first rode into the Outback determined to make sure no one in the bush faced life’s hardest moments entirely alone.
Right now, there are people like Muriel on properties all across regional Australia. Farmers carrying more than any one person should. Families who’ve been through fire, flood or drought — or all three — and are quietly getting on with it, because that’s simply what you do.
Bush Chaplains like Sunny are out there with them. But there’s only so much one person can cover. And that’s exactly where Outback Links volunteers come in.
You could be the one who shows up.
Outback Links is Frontier Services’ national volunteer program — and it’s one of the most straightforward ways to make a real, lasting difference in someone’s life.
We connect everyday Australians with farming families and remote communities who need a practical hand. The work varies: property maintenance, clearing storm debris, lending support during a busy season, or simply being present somewhere that company doesn’t come easy. You don’t need a trade. You don’t need to have done anything like this before. What matters is that you’re willing to show up.
Previous volunteers talk about leaving with friendships they didn’t expect and a perspective on this country they couldn’t have found any other way. Some come back again and again. One volunteer put it simply: “You can give back a little and make a big difference.”
Frontier Services will support you from the start — matching you to the right placement, providing a proper briefing, and being with you every step of the way.
You don’t have to fix everything. You just have to turn up.
Be there for someone like Muriel
Register your interest today and we’ll match you with a placement that suits your skills, your schedule and where you’d like to go.
Be there for someone like Muriel.
Frontier Services is Australia’s oldest bush charity, founded in 1912. Through our network of Bush Chaplains and the Outback Links volunteer program, we support people living and working in rural and remote Australia — practically, emotionally, and with the kind of steadfast presence that reminds them they are not alone.