Inspirations: Priest named church after Gaelic saint

Sydney
20 January 2002

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Inspirations: Priest named church after Gaelic saint

Inspirations: Priest named church after Gaelic saint

St Canice’s and the presbytery in the 1920s

Australia Day – January 26 – has a special added significance for Catholics in the Blue Mountains.

It marks the centenary of the laying of the foundation stone of St Canice’s Church, Katoomba, by Cardinal Moran in 1902.

Now, 100 years after Francis Patrick Moran made the steam train journey from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, the former Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Clancy, the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Francesco Canilini, the Bishop of Parramatta, Bishop Kevin Manning, and a number of Federal, State and local political leaders will gather in Katoomba to reenact the events of 1902.

They will celebrate this Australia Day in grand style with St Canice’s parishioners and the other good folk of Katoomba.

Members of the official party will gather in the forecourt of the historic Carrington Hotel to receive a traditional welcome to Gundungurra country from Dawn Coltess, public officer and elder of the Gundungurran Tribal Council.

Then they will proceed along Katoomba St in horse-drawn carriages and vintage cars to St Canice’s Church, where Bishop Manning will lead a concelebrated High Mass for all parishioners.

A centenary dinner for 500 will be held under a marquee that evening with a menu resembling that of 100 years ago – roast pork, roast beef, roast lamb, farm fresh vegetables and pudding.

St Canice’s Church forms part of the rich history of the Blue Mountains going back as far as the 1800s, when pioneering priests discovered that escaped convicts from Emu Plains had settled among the Aboriginal communities in the Megalong Valley.

Many of the escaped men, some of Irish descent, intermarried with the Aborigines and lived a tribal life until the end of the 19th century. They were among the first parishioners of the area.

One was Billy Lynch, recognised as leader of the Aboriginal community and referred to as ‘King Billy’. His wife, Fanny Lynch, a fullblooded Aboriginal and member of the Gundungurra people, died in 1900 some years before him.

Both are buried in the Megalong Valley where Fanny has a headstone. Billy was buried upright, though, the last person to be buried in a traditional way, in the riverbank “north of a Stringybark, next to a Bluegum”.

‘King Billy’ was the great-great grandfather of Gundungurra elder Dawn Coltess who, as it happens, is an ex-pupil of St Canice’s Primary School, as was her mother.

The first Mountains’ parish was established in 1841 as the Bathurst Mission, served from Hartley.

St Canice’s was preceded by a small weatherboard church, which was begun in 1887. The tiny church (14 metres x 7 metres) cost £160 ($320).

In 1890, Fr James McGough, an Irish priest in his early 40s, who had been ordained at All Hallows, departed for the “foreign mission” of Australia.

He spent two years in Maitland, NSW, before going to Katoomba, where he became pastor of Katoomba, the centre of the Parish of the Blue Mountains.

He named his new church St Canice’s after a Gaelic saint born in County Derry about 516. St Canice had studied in Wales at St Cadoc in Liancarvan and, later, at the monastery St Finian founded at Clonard.

There he met Columcille and Comgall and Mobhi and the other great saints who became known as the “12 Great Apostles of Ireland”. Canice, along with Mobhi, Columcille and Comgall, then went to Scotland where Mobhi founded a monastery on the banks of the River Tolka at Giasnevin.

Canice’s name, in the form of Kenneth, has been borne by many Scots from his day to our own; his memory is enshrined in place names like Laggan-Kenny (at the foot of the Grampians), Cambus-Kenneth (near Stirling) and Kitchamnoch (in Iona).

Fr McGough was faced with many challenges in the early months of his tenure at Katoomba, such as the indifference of local Catholics to going to church. Even when the bishop visited, Fr McGough could think of barely 10 parishioners who would want to attend Mass.

His parish was 30 miles (48km) from one end to the other, Penrith on one side of the Mountains and Lithgow on the other. His biggest obstacle was communication.

Fr McGough had to travel on horseback spending many days and nights in the saddle, in sometimes inhospitable weather on tracks that were often impossible to negotiate even on horseback, to alert his parishioners to the fact that his small weatherboard church was waiting and welcoming.

After 10 difficult years, Fr McGough resigned in October 1900 to be replaced by a larger-than-life character, Fr St Clair Joseph Bridge, a 40-something priest who took the parish by the scruff of the neck and reputedly “pulled it alongside the hooves of his thundering horse”.

Fr Bridge, the son of a wealthy wool merchant, was described as “a bit unstable”, a “little odd” and “eccentric on a large scale”.

He had been born in Dundee Scotland, and claimed kinship to Cardinal Moran.

The eccentricity of the new incumbent soon became evident. At services men sat on the left side of the church (with boys at the front) and women on the right (girls at the front).

The doors were locked when Mass commenced and were not re-opened until the Mass was over.

Fr Bridge was popular though, and generous; he always remembered the collectors and wardens every Christmas and was meticulous in giving his altar boys some pocket money every Saturday night.

During his tenure he oversaw a frenzy of building, culminating in the laying and blessing of the foundation stone of St Canice’s by Cardinal Moran in 1902.

The Blue Mountains Parish thrived in the early 1900s with churches in Mt Victoria, Springwood, Blackheath, Wentworth Falls and Megalong; there were ceremonies every week to do with new schools, churches or convents.

The parish thrived because the mountains thrived.

It has been said that Katoomba was in “a fascinating stage of change” in 1889.

“There were two Katoombas. One was a rough frontier mining town populated by drunken, brawling, uneducated miners. The other was the fashionable town where a group of wealthy businessmen and prominent socialites of Sydney had built grand holiday homes.”

Katoomba was also becoming a popular tourist destination for ordinary Sydneysiders, making the journey by steam train to stay at the historic Carrington, Hydro Majestic and Palais Royale Hotels, and guest houses like the Mountain Heritage.

So January 26 provides an opportunity not only to celebrate the 100th anniversary of St Canice’s Church, but also to be part of the rich history of the Blue Mountains.

There are still some places available at the Centenary of the Laying of the Stone Dinner at a cost of $25 per head. Numbers are limited to 500.

For further information, call Brian Tozer on 4782 2085 or Alf Milani on 4787 8572.

To reserve your table, send your cheque or money order to St Canice’s Parish, PO Box 526, Katoomba 2780, or call into the parish office at 158 Katoomba St.