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About Focal Point » About Us

Focal Point exists to bring glory to God, link churches and serve the whole community. Focal Point started it's life in Marysville in the early 1980's as a resource center operating on behalf of the Marysville United Church, now renamed the Marysville Community Church. In those days it incorporated an op-shop, a lending library, a counselling room and it operated a community bus.
The vision was driven and initially managed by Graeme Dawson on behalf of the above church.

Some years after Graeme left Marysville, Focal Point ceased operation in that area. With permission of the Marysville church leadership it found new life in the Yarra Valley when in the mid 90's Graeme started working with twelve churches on the Warburton Highway.

The Focal Point name is used to identify a range of ministries that Graeme is involved in.

The first area of involvement was a Combined Church outreach dinner, followed by Combined Church Celebration afternoons and monthly dinners for the leaders of the Churches and para-church groups.
Under Graeme's leadership and with his vision for unity among the churches, a Document of Unity was developed. (See Archives - Combined Churches )
A mission then commenced with John Smith of the God Squad and his team to work within schools reaching children, staff, principals and parents.
The outcome of these contacts led to the establishing of Chaplaincies in many of our Primary Schools.
Graeme also started the Valley Care Counselling Service and managed it on behalf of the churches and has since taken up full ownership of it and is one of the counsellors.

Focal Point is supported by local churches, some local businesses and many individuals.

Since the devastaing fires of early '09, Graeme has been working with the Combined Churches of the Marysville Triangle area helping to support people in their brokeness and loss.

Focal Point's Biblical Mandate for Justice

Given Graeme's personal Manifesto for ministry and the general aims and values of the role and ministry of Focal Point, 'justice' will always be a key plank in the pathway trodden. The Christian Bible will always be the ultimate guidebook. The following are some important excerpts that form this mandate:

"This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor'."
Zechariah 7: 9-10

"Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts."
Amos 5: 15a

"Let justice roll on like a river, rightness like an everlasting stream."
Amos 5: 24

"But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always."
Hosea 12:6

Graeme Dawson Proud to be Australian (Photos are not of Graeme) Born in East Melbourne in 1942 and growing up in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne Australia, Graeme was the first son of Kenneth and Isobel Dawson and eventually brother to David, Maxwell and Clifford. Ken's father came from Durham, England as a boy and Isobel's parents came from Hamilton, Scotland. With more life behind than in front, Graeme feels like he is a lynch pin between a pioneer past and a new electronic world. He was born while WW2 was still in progress and lived out his boyhood not unfamiliar with a horsedrawn world. With the past filled with family, building, farming and property sales and investment experience, God in his mysterious way called him into a new field. He now spends his days as a counsellor, chaplain, church leader’s facilitator, preacher, part time renovator, gardener, and horse rider on the Bicentennial National Trail. Graeme endeavors to help people come to a more positive way of living through discovering aspects of themselves and others previously unknown. This healing that leads to wholeness is something that he believes is the work of the Spirit of God. However, the smells of the chaff in the stable, the daily attending to his horses, bull dust at the cattle sales and the lilac buddleia in his garden still evokes wonderful memories of times past and things of value now. As a cathartic experience Graeme is recording some of his rich and exciting times and will attempt to write about the painful experiences too. It is hoped that as you travel with him you too will draw on the strength and hope that he has drawn on in his life guided by and sustained by his God. He has included some photo images and Dorothea McKellar's poem that he thinks illustrates just some of what he appreciates as Australian. Graeme (Smokey) Dawson on bottom left

 MY COUNTRY
by Dorothea McKellar

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains. 
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again
The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold. 
Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country, a willful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her, you will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.

© Focal Point Yarra Valley 2009