THE life of a country church minister means one comes across some amazing tales of people's lives but few are as interesting as that of the man himself.

John Bowles, 88, a Christian minister of five denominations, including the Presbyterian, Methodist, Uniting Baptist and Church of Christ, during his long career is now retired and lives with his wife of more than 60 years, Marion, at their home in Cabarita.

For 65 years they served communities across country NSW including Boolaroo, Wilcannia, Moree and Kyogle, before eventually ending up in the Tweed Shire where they settled and brought up their four daughters.

But it was his own troubled childhood that paved the way for John to dedicate his life to others.

Born in Sydney in 1929, the year of the great stock market crash of Wall St, Mr Bowles grew up in the years of the Great Depression.

"Things were very tight in those years, we had to be very careful with money,” he recalled.

Luckily for Mr Bowles and his four siblings, his father was a bicycle manufacturer and everybody in their family had a bike.

Despite the poverty of the era, the family led a relatively cultured life, with their mother an accomplished pianist.

"I loved her very dearly,” Mr Bowles remembers fondly.

"She was a pianist, she could've gone over to Europe. She played in the Sydney Town Hall. I remember falling asleep listening to her music playing and my father would pick us up from wherever we were and take us home.”

Unfortunately, their mother died of tuberculosis in 1940 when John was just 11 years old, precipitating a series of catastrophic events for the young family.

After the death of their mother, their father employed a live-in housekeeper named Roma, who he later ended up marrying.

In a story echoing that of the famed fairytale Cinderella, the stepmother turned out to be a tyrant: cruel and mean to the five children.

Within three weeks of marrying, their father mysteriously took suddenly ill and died, leaving the children to the care of the woman. At the age of 14, John left school to work in the family business and went to live with his aunt and uncle near Newcastle.

But his younger brothers were not so lucky.

"She turned out to be not a very nice person,” Mr Bowles said of Roma.

"It was absolute hell for my brothers.”

A year later, Mr Bowles went back to his former home in Sydney to find out how his brothers were.

Spying on them from the safety of a neighbour's house, he saw two of his siblings in the window.

"When they saw me, there was much waving and then they suddenly turned very cold; my stepmother walked into the room and they froze,” Mr Bowles recalled.

"I realised we couldn't leave them there and decided I would kidnap them.”

The next morning, after the neighbour told him his stepmother had left the house, Mr Bowles took his brothers out of school and returned home to gather their belongings.

"We got through a fence and managed to get some clothes, we put them in sugar bags - that's all we had - and went to the railway station and caught the train to our uncle at Singleton,” he said.

After notifying the police, the boys were later fostered out to various family members, and their step-mother remarried.

As a young man, John longed for a family of his own and was drawn to the comfort of the church, where he found friendship and happiness and soon joined the ministry.

After completing college, Mr Bowles was posted to Wilcannia, near Broken Hill, to begin his life as a minister. On a break at Nambucca Heads some months later, he met his wife to be, Marion, a young teacher, as she celebrated her 21st birthday.

Despite not knowing each other very well, he proposed a few months later, and the rest is history.

"I was completely convinced she was the woman for me, even though we didn't know each other very well,” he said.

The loving couple, who now boast eight great-grandchildren all under the age of five, love nothing more than to serve their community.

"I've always believed in the positivity of Christianity,” Mr Bowles said.