[1] The South Australian Baptist Missionary Society was founded at Flinders Street Baptist Church on 10 November 1864 under Rev Silas Mead,[2] and the first missionaries, Ellen Arnold and Marie Gilbert, were sent to East Bengal in 1882.
[5][6][7] Four other young women decided to join her (becoming known as the "five barley loaves") in East Bengal, which then became the primary mission field for Australian Baptists.
[13] Wilton Hack, a South Australian Baptist pastor, had raised private funds to go to Japan in 1874, not wanting to take money prioritised to the work in Faridpur.
[9] Work in Papua New Guinea began in 1949, at the urging of returned World War II chaplains, with focus on Bible translation as well as health and education.
[15] Workers were later sent to Papua and Timor, and then to Zambia and Zimbabwe, later moving to Malawi and Mozambique.