SOME I-Kiribati men fish at midnight.
John Grogan, who counted himself in their number, was fishing with his five-year-old son, Joseph, at midnight.
They were out in the waters surrounding Tarawa, Kiribati, net-fishing from the canoe, when he noticed they were taking on water.
It was bad. The canoe was sinking.
John knew he could not wait for rescue, he had to get back to shore – Joseph’s life depended on it.
He could not leave the canoe either; no canoe meant no fish, and no fish meant his family going hungry.
John climbed into the cold waters and put Joseph on his shoulders.
He had to keep his son calm. Panic kills in the ocean.
He told Joseph to keep his eyes on the stars.
He told him stories from the Bible and stories from the island.
He waded with his son on his shoulders, dragging his canoe behind him, for 20km in the dark.
The ocean decided not to swallow him that night.
An older man now, living in Brisbane with his three adult children, Joseph, Alice and Caroline, he says he still walks by the ocean.
He walks the pier at Shorncliffe and spends the time in prayer.
He prays for his children, for their faith and vocations, and he prays for the people of Kiribati who also face the threat of being swallowed in the sea by 2050.
The sea, he said, was one of God’s most incredible creations.
It has meant different things to him at different times in life.
When John was young, the ocean brought on memories of happy holidays by the water, kicking an Aussie Rules football around the sand with his mates.
John was born in 1960 to Irish-Australian parents Ulick John Grogan and Patricia (nee Pearce).
He was raised on his parents’ farm in Victoria until they had to move into Bendigo for better Catholic schooling for him and his four siblings.
While Assisi captain at St Liborius school, John witnessed his parents’ altruism.
His father John volunteered his farm truck and physical labour, and his mother Patricia cooked cakes and fundraised, for parish working bees and school fetes.
John’s early years were spent playing footy. A lot of footy.
John had proven himself one of the best rising footballers around, playing in front of scouts from Melbourne.
But his heart already belonged to adventure and the call of the ocean.
When John was young, he loved to read the tales of Columban missionaries travelling to exotic places in the back of The Far East magazine.
As he grew older, he took this idea more and more seriously.
He loved it when the missionary priests visited his Sunday Masses to give homilies about life overseas, ministering to the poor and walking the walk.
John’s mates were shocked when he turned down the promise of a football career for a missionary life.
He trained to become a teacher and applied to go on mission with Palms Australia, which is a Catholic lay missionary organisation assisting the vulnerable across Australia and overseas.
John was encouraged by Indigenous Australian humanitarian Mum Shirl to serve in places with urgent needs.
“I had never heard of Kiribati, but it sounded exotic and they really wanted teachers – and I was a Catholic missionary teacher,” he said.
In 1981, he touched down in Kiribati and the first thing he felt was the heat.
“It’s just an intense humidity,” he said.
The next shock was the amount of responsibility entrusted to him.
He was 20 years old, a heart on fire for Jesus, getting settled with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at their monastery.
Come day two, Kiribati Bishop Paul Mea asked him to become the deputy principal of the local school.
“We had about 680 students and about nine teachers,” he said.
His first class had 96 students aged between 14 and 22 years old.
“We had holes in the walls of the classrooms and sometimes we’d have 30 or 40 people outside because they couldn’t fit in, looking through and taking notes,” he said.
“We had the ground as the floor, we had no electricity, no running water and no toilets,” he said.
The students would walk across the soccer pitch to use the beaches for their toilets, he said.
There were almost no textbooks, but the students were always well behaved.
The challenge, he remembered, was incentivising students to see tertiary study as a genuine pathway.
John spearheaded a scholarship project to give a leg-up to outstanding students, choosing to take them on over the summer holidays and open the school longer hours.
“One of the students excelled in law and his brother was one of the hardest working priests in the islands,” he said.
Daughter of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sister Eileen Kennedy became a steadfast mentor and lifelong friend during this time.
John married in Kiribati and left the monastery to live with his Kiribati-born wife in the village.
Village life was a “rude awakening to just how strong poverty was in certain areas”.
He said as a lay missionary living in the monastery he was assured three meals a day and safety at night.
“In the village, you haven’t got that guarantee and it took me a while to adjust to the level of hardship,” he said.
He dropped significant weight, ribs visible under the skin and he got sick.
All the while, there was an expectation on his age group to provide for both the elders and the children.
John’s father-in-law from a noble Maneaba clan intervened and was patient with teaching him the local customs and language.
“He was an Unimane (Wise Elder), an inspiration at teaching me to fish in dangerous waters, Kiribati’s style with nets and canoes at midnight.
“He was kindly welcoming a white man into his community and trusting me with the family name of the chieftain Kokoria bestowed upon my son.”
The birth of Joseph was an arduous 24-hour labour in a traditional village hut.
There was an alarming infant mortality rate in Kiribati, and there were fears Joseph or his mother would not survive.
Thanks to some water from Lourdes offered by a Sacred Heart Missionary sister – and plenty of rosaries – Joseph was born healthy.
It was this harrowing night that led the family to travel to Australia, where John’s daughters Alice and Caroline were born.
John worked in the Pontifical Mission Aid office while living in an inherited home in South Yarra.
But the Missionary calling led the family back to Kiribati then Nauru, before returning to rural Cohuna then Melbourne in 1992.
Here, John’s research supported Middle Eastern refugees in Coburg.
The family moved to Brisbane in 1997, where the “footloose” side of John’s missionary life finally found a foothold in St Stephen’s Cathedral parish.
It never entirely disappeared.
Alice said if she was going to meet up with her dad in the city, she often found him sitting and sharing food with a person sleeping rough.
It was this same impulse to help others that led John’s family to serve with the Order of Malta and the United Nations Association of Australia, Queensland Division.
John is quietly proud of his children’s spiritual maturation and academic achievements, especially because his missionary heart meant upping and leaving to a new location every few years.
Among his children are two doctorates and a Masters underway.
He taught in more than 70 schools as a teacher, both in Catholic and state education across different countries.
His Master’s research supported Sudanese refugees entering Catholic education.
His doctoral research, supervised by Noble Peace Prize Laureate Professor Patrick Nunn, delved into sustainable livelihoods in Marakei, Kiribati.
His stories from Kiribati, especially fishing stories, were always popular in the classroom.
He said fishing had sharpened his view of the apostles and their own fishing stories in the Gospel.
“One night we were out for five hours and literally caught nothing,” he said.
“And then, at three in the morning, my father-in-law was praying in the canoe, we tried one more place, I can remember it, the nets were suddenly full – absolutely full.”
He was being yelled at to “hurry up” because he was too slow pulling the fish up into the canoe.
“It was like we lived the story from the Bible,” he said.
“Every time you go out fishing, something different happens.”
He said you develop a spiritual gratitude for the ocean – “its danger and its beauty”.
And the beauty of the ocean was stunning in Kiribati.
He remembered catching a boat across the bay and seeing the dolphins coming up the side.
“We often saw dolphins when we went fishing,” he said.
“You really get this deep appreciation for God’s creation around you.”
He stills thinks about that in his quiet moments by the ocean at Shorncliffe and he gives thanks to God for all the loved ones who touched his life, near and far.
