Founders of Joshua House Australia LTD

Gary was born in Sydney in mid 1954, to a Tasmanian couple, who soon moved back to Hobart, where Gary grew up. After many years he got a job as the Catering Manager of the Tasmanian Australian Catering Service which caters for the mining industry. In 1992 he was transferred to Clermont, in Central Queensland.

Della was born in late 1969 in Narrabri NSW and grew up on a wheat/sheep farm there. She moved to Sydney when 18 to study Architectural Drafting. While she was on holidays in Central Queensland in 1991, she got a job as a Home Tutor in Emerald and then as Teacher Aide/ Admin Assistant at a one-teacher school near Clermont, and she met Gary at a Bible Study in Clermont in 1993.

They married in Emerald in January 1994 and moved to Townsville to go to Rhema Bible College. In the following year, Gary became Assistant Pastor at Cardwell AOG church, but left that position to pursue his passion to help intellectually disabled people, back in Townsville.

In early 1997 Gary & Della decided to go for a holiday down to Tasmania and ended up staying there for 18 months. While they were there, Gary’s interest in the disabled was re-ignited when they found a building that would be most suitable to run as a boarding house. But the door of finance did not open.

While in Tasmania, they felt it was time to follow another of their dreams, to travel Australia preaching the Gospel, and so preparing for this journey they acquired a motor home. They set off in November 1998.

They went home to Della’s family’s farm at Narrabri for Christmas 1998 and felt God’s renewed calling to go and minister in Wee Waa (a little town ½ hour West of Narrabri). They were there for 3 years, running a drop-in centre and pioneering a church.

Towards the end of 2001 Gary & Della felt it was ‘time’ to leave Wee Waa and moved to Inverell in early 2002. But soon they got the opportunity to again minister to people with intellectual disabilities, this time in Toowoomba, and moved there in August, opening "Sandra Ward House" soon after, run under Family Life Ministries Welfare, Apostolic Church Australia.

In early 2003 the opportunity came for them to buy a larger premises to run the boarding house, so "Joshua House Australia Ltd," a public not-for-profit welfare organisation, was formed. An old nunnery was purchased in September 2003 and became the first "Joshua House." By July 2005 they fed & housed 17 people with mild intellectual disabilities.

Gary and Della are thoroughly fulfilled in their work.