Priest cooked up a winner

Sydney
15 December 2002

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Pudding a town on the map – Fr Mac’s heavenly legacy

Priest cooked up a winner

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Priest cooked up a winner

When Fr Darcy McCarthy arrived in Alstonville as the first parish priest, in 1981, he found buildings in need of major repairs.

Children from the school, run by the Sisters of St Joseph, were taught in the parish garage.

Parish fundraising began in earnest, including a cake stall outside the church after Mass.

Fr McCarthy had a passion for cooking. He provided for the cake stall and found that his puddings were the biggest hit.

The first year Fr Mac cooked around 300 puddings; that number soon grew to 11,000.

He cooked two or three at a time in an ordinary household boiler – getting up several times at night to top up the water.

In 1986 the government rejected the parish’s application for a capital grant to fund maintenance and to build two new classrooms.

Fr Mac bought an industrial steamer and, with the help of parishioners, his production doubled, then quadrupled.

By 1990 Fr Mac’s puddings were already helping schools, clubs and businesses to supplement their own fundraising.

Fr Mac died of cancer in 1991 and parishioners decided to continue his legacy.

The new parish priest, Fr Frank Mulcahy, set up a company, extended the factory and upgraded it to meet health requirements so that the puddings could be sold through supermarket chains, making them cheaper for people to buy.

Now they are available from IGA stores.

The Fr Mac’s Heavenly Pudding enterprise is still owned and operated by the parish and is staffed mainly by volunteers.

The proceeds from pudding sales plus parishioner donations have helped to fund more than $1,500,000 in new school buildings without a cent of government capital grant funding.