Why would the Church Missionary Society in far away Victoria decide in 1906 to establish a mission to Aborigines in a tropical North Australian location where malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy were common, and the only available transport an occasional boat or horseback? This question intrigued Murray Seiffert such that he has sought answers from the contemporary records. In this centenary year of the formation of the Roper River Mission (Ngukurr), a review of the early years of the mission, begun by three white men from the south and three Indigenous missionaries from Queensland, is timely.