Inspirations: Bush retreat is a winner with kids

Sydney
7 July 2002

Bishops take their message to the top

MPs misled on embryos: ethicist

Cardinal Clancy’s look to ‘blue sky’

Golden wedding Mass at Cardinal Gilroy Village

200,000 boost lifts number of Aussie Catholics above 5m

Penny-farthing raises ante

Tas firm wins sacred text rights for web

Pope presents pallium to Archbishop Wilson

NZ bishops apologise to abuse victims

Church guidelines for priestly behaviour under review

Religious still ‘prepare for the unknown’

Flags for World Youth Day pilgrims

Fr Maurice O’Connor OSA (1921-2002)

Vatican gives nod to neocatechumenism

Caritas set to hit $6m target

‘Most travelled priest’ – golden jubilee

Editorial: Spiritual gold

Letters: Sex abuse issue

Conversation: People ‘often look for God in wrong places’ - Cardinal Clancy, retired Archbishop of Sydney

Reflections: Proclaiming the ‘Gospel of life’!

Respect for human dignity

‘Hundreds in crisis’ in Macarthur area

‘Times have changed’ at St Anthony’s

New clinic offers alternative to IVF

Inspirations: Bush retreat is a winner with kids

Inspirations: Bush retreat is a winner with kids

Mass at the Wooglemai property,

Wooglemai, a 16ha Blue Mountains property now owned by the Guntawang Catholic Youth Centre Inc, has proved a raging success with kids.

“We have received hundreds of letters from kids who just love coming here and learning about the bush,” says David Hordern, a member of the centre.

Now Wooglemai has a new building – the Fr Richard Coughlan Memorial Hall – to better serve the school children who use the centre for environmental studies.

“I don’t think Fr Coughlan could have envisaged the place would be the overwhelming success that it has been,” said David.

The establishment of the Wooglemai centre has its roots in 1940 when five priests from the Archdiocese of Sydney built a shack and chapel in the relatively uninhabited Burragorang Valley area of the southern Blue Mountains.

The shack and chapel were meant to serve as a retreat from parish duties for the priests. However, four of them soon joined the defence forces as World War II chaplains, leaving Fr Richard Coughlan of the Gladesville parish as the only one to make use of the facilities.

The Catholic Bushwalking Club was formed in Sydney in 1943; its members soon learnt about Fr Coughlan’s retreat.

These were the days before Saturday and Sunday evening masses so, in order to attempt more ambitious walks, the bushwalkers occasionally made use of the little bush chapel for Mass on Sunday mornings.

The shack and chapel became known to the bushwalkers as “the Shack” and also as Kiarama, the name of the local Aboriginal people.

By the early 1950s the site was used for spiritual retreats for the bushwalkers and for a High Mass in 1953 when the tiny ironbark chapel was dedicated to Our Lady of the Way, patron of the Catholic Bushwalking Club.

However, with the completion of the Warragamba Dam and the flooding of the Burragorang Valley around 1960, Fr Coughlan’s access to the Shack via Camden and the Burragorang Valley was cut off.

He looked around for another suitable place, not only for use as his own retreat, but also by the bushwalkers, and where he could build another chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Way.

Eventually he chose the property at Oakdale which, although only a stone’s throw from the Oakdale-Picton road, looked down into a deep gorge which was the Nattai River arm of the Burragorang Valley.

It is about 30km of glorious walking country away from the original Shack.

And it also dripped with early Australian history.

Indeed, it was through this area that Francis Barrallier passed in his unsuccessful attempt to find a passage over the Blue Mountains in 1802.

His main depot is believed to have been on the Wooglemai site.

And Wooglemai, after whom Fr Coughlan named his new retreat, was one of Barrallier’s Aboriginal helpers.

As with the stone chapel at the Shack, a good deal of the building work was carried out by bushwalkers and their friends.

The primary function of Wooglemai these days is to serve as an environmental education centre for young people.

It is leased to the Department of Education during school times.

Environmental studies classes for school children of all ages have become so popular that extra accommodation became necessary to provide for indoor lessons and display areas.

The new Fr Richard Coughlan Memorial Hall was designed to blend into the bushland surroundings while being both functional and flexible in its use by the teachers and the students at the centre.

It is an appropriate memorial to a bushwalking priest who loved the beautiful things of the Australian bush and gave his all to ensure that as many young people as possible would have the opportunity to share in this fundamental of all pleasures – the love of nature – and to recognise the hand of God that created it all.

David Hordern says: “We are fulfilling Fr Coughlan’s dream and I can only see the centre going from strength to strength in the future.”