In 1845 William and Jane Wilson arrived by raft at their new property on the Richmond River in northern NSW. ‘When Mrs Wilson saw her picturesque house on the river bank surrounded by green fields and tree-clad hills, she was reminded of the Scottish highlands where she spent her honeymoon, and she named the station ‘Lismore’ after the green island in Loch Linnhe.’
When a village was proclaimed, the name Lismore stuck. A Scottish name was apt, since many of the early settlers in the district were Scottish, although Louise Daley’s Men and a River tells us that Irish Catholics predominated among station hands and sawyers in the later part of the century.
In 1867 Jeremiah Doyle enrolled at Mount Melleray College, Cappoquin, very close to Lismore, Ireland. In 1868, he went to All Hallows Missionary College, Dublin, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1874. Recruited by Timothy O’Mahoney, first bishop of Armidale, Doyle reached Armidale in 1875. When Doyle reached Lismore New South Wales in 1878, he was welcomed for bringing the population to the 500 required to have the district incorporated as a municipality.
Since 1877, Lismore had a small Catholic church called St. Mary’s, established by Abbe Schurr, from Alsace-Lorraine, who had been serving the district in the 1870s. When the new Bishop of Armidale, Elzear Torreggiani, arrived on 25 November 1879, he appointed Doyle to be permanently in charge of Richmond River District. Doyle promptly renamed the Lismore church, presumably with his Bishop’s approval; by 1881, St. Carthage’s church and school are on the record.
The name St. Carthage (c.564- 637) derives from Carthagus, the Latin version of Carthach, a name he shared with an older monk and mentor (‘St. Carthage the Elder’). He is also known, especially in Irish language sources, as Mochuda (with several spelling variations). In a sense, his first recorded presence in Australia is under that name in a manuscript prayer book now in the State Library of Victoria. Carthage was born near Castlemaine, Co. Kerry. He became the leader of a flourishing monastery at Rahan in Co. Meath; he was especially renowned for his care for lepers from all over Ireland. After forty years at Rahan, clerics and local rulers forced him out, claiming that his Munster connections were a source of annoyance and suspicion. As an old man, he went south to Lismore, accompanied by other monks and the lepers, probably around 632. At some stage before going to Lismore, he was declared a bishop – ‘by many saints’ – with a paruchia in Co. Kerry. He was later regarded as first bishop of Lismore, and its patron saint.
1884 saw the arrival of Patrick Francis Moran as Archbishop of Sydney. When Moran called a Plenary Council of bishops in 1885, Doyle accompanied Torreggiani to Sydney. Doyle’s abilities obviously impressed; he was proposed as Bishop-Elect of the new Diocese of Grafton, this appointment being confirmed in 1887. Though he was installed at yet another St. Mary’s, this one the church at Grafton, he soon decided to make Lismore his diocesan headquarters.
Through the 1890s Doyle lobbied to have the name of the diocese changed from Grafton to Lismore, giving reasons based on Lismore’s potential for growth as against Grafton’s imminent decline as an important centre. Pope Leo XIII agreed to this change in 1900. The foundation stone of the cathedral in Lismore was laid in 1892. In January 1905, a fire destroyed the building-in-progress, but Doyle – supported by the Presentation sisters as guarantors for a bank loan – started again and the cathedral was dedicated by Cardinal Moran in 1907.
By 1907 Doyle had a Diocese of Lismore with a St. Carthage’s Cathedral, from a Catholic point of view a greater homage to the saint than was possible in Ireland, where the diocese had been merged with Waterford since 1363 and the Church of Ireland occupied the site of the old cathedral. While Doyle had quietly transformed a Scottish Lismore to an Irish one, at least from a Catholic point of view, he offered the Scots some compensation by having a Scotch thistle prominently on his crozier. Doyle also moved to have St. Carthage recognised in the Australian Liturgy, and he received from Cardinal Moran 600 copies of a Life of St. Carthage, which unfortunately have vanished without trace. However, as of 2012, the cathedral still has no image of St. Carthage. In 1915, with John Carroll as Bishop of Lismore, the Pope declared St. Patrick, a national rather than a local Irish saint, Principal Patron of the Diocese, and he received a shrine of his own within St. Carthage’s cathedral.
Patron Saints have various uses. Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints discusses the model of a patrona, the local big man who is to some degree accessible and helpful if you keep on the right side of him. He can deliver favours in his own right, but he also has the connections with the real centre of power that are impossibly remote for most people. In Ireland, devotion to so many saints is strongly linked to their connection with local stories and local places. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, how might people relocate such a saint in Australia, which has no sacred history or places – at least of the kind that the Irish priests of that era would recognise? Doyle offers one example, thanks to a coincidence of place names.
As far as I know, all but two of the other Carthage Churches in Australasia, mostly in NSW, date from before 1907. The church at Cabarlah, originally called Highlands, north of Toowoomba, Queensland, no longer exists. Opened in 1884, it started as St. Patrick’s, but was renamed St. Carthage’s around 1890, probably because of the status of the rebuilt St. Patrick’s in Toowoomba as the main church for the district. The key figure for Cabarlah is probably Robert Dunne, who was born in Lismore, Ireland and studied at Mount Melleray, then at the Irish College in Rome. Dunne was in charge of Toowoomba from 1868 to 1880. After clashing with Bishop James Quinn of Brisbane, Dunne returned to Ireland, and considered joining the Mount Melleray community; but he was appointed Bishop of Brisbane in June 1882. So he both knew the Toowoomba area well and had the authority to memorialise the saint of his native town, while acknowledging the national Irish saint in the more important Toowoomba church.
Rev. Walter Curran established a St Carthage church at Silverton, NSW around 1885. This briefly booming mining town was soon superseded by nearby Broken Hill. The church was subsequently deconsecrated but is still standing; it is a photographer’s delight. In the 1890s, Curran founded another St. Carthage church at Trangie, where he is buried. This church is still in use. Curran was born in Co. Waterford, educated at Maynooth
An exception to the Co. Waterford connections for Carthage priests is Msgr. John O’Dowd, responsible for the Allansford church in 1890 when he was in charge of Warrnambool parish in western Victoria. O’Dowd came from Castlemaine, Co. Kerry, where there are now Catholic and Church of Ireland St Carthage churches at Kiltallagh (St. Carthage’s birthplace). The Catholic church there dates from two years later than the Allansford one; Msgr. Counihan stayed with O’Dowd while on a fundraising trip to Australia.
In 1895, a church jointly dedicated to St. Colman and St. Carthage was built at Windellama in the Goulburn district. It is recorded in the Australasian Catholic Directory for 1939 but, according to the Diocesan archivist, is now ‘disused and derelict’. I have no information on the founder, but the association with St. Colman, of whom there are many, might suggest a link with Rahan, or with a Colman closer to Lismore.
Near Orange, NSW, a St. Carthage church at Lidster, originally German Hill, might be the earliest of the group, as in 1874 a community of Sisters had a small convent and church there with no recorded name that I have found. Disagreements about authority between Bishop Matthew Quinn and Mary McKillop led to a closure, but in 1877 another church was built, and another in 1882. I have found no record of the name before 1899, but I think the name of Carthage came in 1877, from a Parish Priest Father Thomas Walsh originally of Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary, just north of Lismore. I believe it was closed in 1966.
At Whitton, near Wagga Wagga, NSW, a new St. Carthage church opened in 1963, and local sources confirm that an older church was allowed to fall into disrepair when the new one was built. The Australasian Catholic Directory for 1899 simply says there was a church at Whitton, without giving a name, while the Directories for 1925 and 1939 give the name of St Carthage. I have no further information on the date or founder of the old church.
In 1907, at Brooklyn, NSW, on the Hawkesbury River, the Sisters of Mercy established a St. Carthage’s Convent and College for Young Ladies when one of the novices donated a hotel she had inherited. In 1914, a hall was built across the road as part of college; it was used as a church and hence bore the same name. The College became St. Catherine’s orphanage in 1931, but the hall was called St. Carthage’s until 1967 when a chapel was built and the hall demolished. A view including the convent site appears on an old five-pound note. Possibly Cardinal Moran, fresh from dedicating the Lismore cathedral in 1907, and a scholar with his own southern Irish connections, wanted to give Carthage a place in his own diocese.
At Waikaka, Otago, New Zealand, St. Carthage’s Church was dedicated on 13th May 1906. It was founded by Fr. Patrick O’Donnell, who was born in 1862 at Pulnamuc, Co. Tipperary. He too studied at Mount Melleray and later at St. Patrick’s, Carlow. The church is still in use, part of the parish of Gore.
I recently visited Allansford which celebrated its centenary in 1990. It is still a well-kept church with a small congregation. The centenary booklet shows an overwhelmingly Irish list of names and a proud history. But I found no indication of specific devotion to St. Carthage. They seem to like their name, but the saint’s life doesn’t appear in any materials I have seen. This is probably typical. The newspaper report of the opening of the Waikaka church lists the speeches, but there is nothing about St. Carthage himself. It is as if the dedications from this period labelled the community as Irish and reflected the founder’s sense of personal devotion to his home-saint, but I have found no impulse to prolong devotion to the saint among the congregation. Nor have I seen any evidence that communities associated with these churches, probably composed largely of migrants to Australia or New Zealand, had any prior connection with St. Carthage before these priests and bishops named their churches.
By 1929, Australian Catholics were increasingly likely to be descended from Irish stock rather than be Irish-born themselves. In that year, Gordon Park was on the edge of the expanding capital city of Brisbane. St. Carthage’s church and school was built under the guidance of Fr. John McCarthy, and opened by Archbishop James Duhig. At the laying of the foundation stone, Duhigh said he had agreed to McCarthy’s request to dedicate it to St. Carthage, patron saint of the school he attended in Ireland. McCarthy was a native of Co. Waterford. Commenting on the saint, Duhig refers to John Healy’s Life of St. Carthage. Duhig described Carthage as ‘one of the best-known saints of Ireland’s golden age.’
When Father Carthage of Mount Melleray published The Story of St. Carthage, his preface says that ‘a busy priest in a struggling Australian mission considered that his flock could be spiritually benefited by a simple account of the life of the parish patron. He requested a friend to prepare a short booklet. Such was the origin of this work.’ The Australian edition of the book includes an introduction by Archbishop Duhig of Brisbane. A typed draft of this introduction is in the Brisbane Archdiocese Archives file for the Gordon Park church. Here is the Mount Melleray connection again. We see too the Australian church influencing the Irish one, by inspiring this booklet, also published in Ireland, that marked the 1300th Anniversary commemoration of St. Carthage’s death. Duhig’s introduction refers to the little children of Gordon Park lisping the name of St. Carthage. Whether or not this ever happened, the Church community adapted a hymn to St. Patrick for singing at Carthage’s feast on 14th May. In 1989, a Diamond Jubilee stone was laid and a small booklet ‘St. Carthage Our Saint’ gave their community an account of the saint’s life based on the Father Carthage book. A new church was built in 1966 and the original building used for a school, which was later closed. It is a well-kept church, still used, though the parish has been absorbed into the larger Kedron Brook cluster.
Father John Norris (1861-1941) was born in 1861 at Whiteford, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, educated at Mount Melleray Abbey and St. John’s, Waterford. He came to Australia in 1888 and left his mark in a number of respects, such as his role in the publication of The Austral Light and his continued dedication to the Australian Catholic Truth Society (A.C.T.S.). One tangible memorial of his contribution to Melbourne is St. Carthage’s Church in Parkville, originally a chapel of ease for St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, West Melbourne, where Norris was Parish Priest at the time. The land had been part of the property of Morgan Jageurs, a prominent member of Melbourne’s Irish Catholic community. The Foundation Stone was laid on 14th October 1934 by Archbishop Daniel Mannix. Norris’s appeal for funds stressed that it was needed because Parkville residents found it difficult to attend the West Melbourne church.
Jeremiah Murphy SJ, Rector of Newman College, stressed the aptness of a location opposite the University of Melbourne: ‘It was a happy thought on the part of Fr Norris to choose as patron of the new church such a distinguished man as St Carthage, who was virtually the founder of a kind of small university.’ As at the Gordon Park opening, Carthage’s standing was acknowledged orally, in print and visually. The stained glass window on the Gospel side shows St. Carthage, dressed as a monk, one hand raised in blessing, the other holding a scroll. The other church representations of Carthage that I know of, all in Ireland, stress his role as a bishop and church-builder; the Parkville image is unusual by indicating neither, although Norris at the foundation ceremony described him as ‘a great Abbot and Bishop’. Any other visual groupings of Carthage that I know of link him with other Irish saints or with the figures of Christ and Mary. A window at the Honan Chapel in Cork alludes to miracles mentioned in the Lives. The Parkville window is far more subdued.
The Parkville windows were made by the Yencken company, but it seems that no records have survived. While the windows had to be approved by the cathedral, I know of no records discussing the choice, but I assume that their design as well as the name of the church would reflect the views of Father Norris. Norris was the secretary of the A.C.T.S. (Australian Catholic Truth Society), which produced a booklet about St Thérèse in 1930. The window on the Epistle side shows one of the most popular saints of the time, St.Thérèse of Lisieux, dressed as a Carmelite; Carthage’s garb seems designed to mirror hers, with the colours of brown and cream reversed. Nothing in his appearance or the associated emblems indicates that he is an Irish saint. Carthage looks outwards while bestowing a blessing, and holds a scroll reading: ‘Here shall be my rest, for I have chosen it.’ It is the statement befitting an exile who had no choice in his departure from Rahan, his home for 40 years, but who declares that he has chosen the destination, the place where he will be buried.
The quotation, adapted from one version of a psalm, is attributed to Carthage as he prepares to cross the Blackwater River to Lismore, but only, as far as I can discover, in John Healy’s 1890 version of his story, and an 1898 paper by W. Grattan Flood, with only a vague source reference. In other sources, as in O’Hanlon’s Lives of the Irish Saints (1875 and later), and later in Father Carthage’s Life, the formula attributed to Carthage and others about their place of death and burial is ‘the place of my resurrection.’ Perhaps alternative versions of the Carthage story were not known and Healy’s wording was simply accepted as authoritative. Mannix’s own copy of Healy has no helpful annotations to suggest whether he had a view about this choice.
Thérèse concentrates on her crucifix. Canonised less than a decade beforehand, she was honoured as the saint of small things, the one who achieved sanctity through acceptance of suffering. She could be seen as another saint who made her own choice of how she would live – and achieve exemplary sanctity – despite external restrictions. The centrepiece with the Holy Ghost descending and the central focus on the Alpha-Omega symbol are part of the message about what is important for the viewers. Perhaps the windows encourage the congregation to make a place for prayer and silence, and to be satisfied with – indeed to make a strength of – the life God has allocated them. Parkville then was by no means a rich area, and the experience of the Great Depression might have been a consideration in urging such acceptance.
We could also consider the wording on that scroll, and the overall design, as a statement from and for the Irish emigrant who accepts the place where he now lives. Half a century before, Jeremiah Doyle had written about Irish priests’ yearning to end their days back in Ireland. In a personal note of 1923, Archbishop Daniel Mannix invited Father Hackett (albeit facetiously, but surely with a touch of genuine feeling for their home country) to join him in weeping for Sion, alluding to the famous psalm of exiles in Babylon.
Mount Melleray, a Cistercian community founded in 1835, within walking distance of Lismore, Ireland, and appearing often in the story of ‘Carthage’ priests, had a demonstrable interest in St. Carthage, including the use of the saint’s name by several of their members. In 1943, nearly ten years after the foundation of the Parkville church, this monastery installed a new window from the Harry Clarke studio in St. Philomena’s chapel, showing St. Carthage immediately right of centre, part of a small group of Irish saints. In the centre and above, Christ crowns the Virgin Mary, and angels celebrate above them. That is one way of relating the Irish saints to the larger array of the Church’s saints. In traditional terms, it evokes the ‘Church Triumphant’. In Parkville, the Irish saint is absorbed into the wider church life in a different way. The Parkville angels are very subdued. At the top-centre is simply the dove, figure of the Holy Ghost, reinforcing the emphasis on living as well as we can in the place where we are, here on earth.
In 1885, Jeremiah Doyle was thinking beyond the concept of exile when he addressed the children of Lismore (NSW) thus: ‘… Do then, my dear little children, be always devotedly attached to your holy religion, and glory in and love your beautiful Australia, and while doing so, always remember with pride and pleasure that beautiful land of your fathers.’ The Parkville windows connect parishioners of mostly Irish descent to a saint himself sent into exile. While the Church’s dedication pays homage to a saint associated with Norris’s early years, the windows are also a reminder that, whatever their Irish connections, Australia is now ‘home’ both for Irish-born priests and for their parishioners.
Footnotes on St Carthage
1. Louise Daley, Men and a River Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966, 82, quoting Wilson papers. This book is my main source for the history of the Lismore area. Jonathan Wooding has pointed out that some of the prominent ‘Scottish’ settlers in the region were in fact Ulster Plantation Scots who did not acknowledge their association with Ireland. However, the Wilsons who established the Lismore name came from Aberdeen. See http://www.lismore.nsw.gov.au/cp_themes/default/page.asp?p=DOC-BET-78-61-65 [accessed 20 August 2013].
2. Eileen Kelly P.B.V.M. ‘My cause is just’ Jeremiah Joseph Doyle, First Bishop of Lismore, [Lismore NSW: The author] 1999. This is my major source for information on Jeremiah Doyle. [Mother Stanislaus] Bishop Doyle of Lismore. A Memoir Lismore: North Coast Daily News 1909 is an informative contemporary tribute. A shorter, more recent account is Berenice Kerr, ‘Bishop Jeremiah Joseph Doyle 1849-1909.’ http://www.lismorediocese.org/journals/CL%20June%2009%20part%202.pdf [accessed 20 August 2013]
3. The only book-length life is Father Carthage [McCarthy], O.C.S.O. Cistercian of Mount Melleray Abbey, Co. Waterford, The Story of St. Carthage, Otherwise Saint Mochuda (VIIth Cent.) Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1937. This draws on earlier Lives in Latin and Old Irish. For more recent accounts, see Pádraig Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2011, 470-473, and Constant Mews, ‘The Flight of Carthage (Mochuda) from Rahan to Lismore: Lineage and identity in early medieval Ireland’, in Early Medieval Europe 21/1 (2013), 1-26.
4. ‘Et beatissimus Carthagus a multis sanctis consecratus est episcopus; et uisitabat aliquando parochiam suam, id est regionem Chiaraigi’ in Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, edited by Charles Plummer, 2 vols Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910, Vol.1, 178.
5. Mrs Nancy Tarlinton of the Diocese of Lismore sent, among many useful items, a copy of a letter (9 December 1993) from Monsignor Michael Olden of Kilsheelan, Clonmel, answering a question as to whether Carthage was the first Bishop of Lismore Diocese. Though frequently described as first bishop of Lismore, Carthage was, strictly speaking, the first bishop at Lismore, since a strong connection between a bishop and a geographical area came to Ireland some centuries later. On organisation of the church in Ireland, see Kathleen Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society, London: Methuen, 1966, and Marie Therese Flanagan, The Transformation of the Irish Church in the Twelfth Century, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010.
6. The crozier is shown in a booklet, St. Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, NSW, Australia Lismore Diocesan Chancery, 1995.
7. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Early Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press c1981. On the importance of local connections such as wells for English and Irish cults of saints, see Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in early modern Britain and Ireland Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011.
8. John Hennig, ‘Ireland’s Spiritual Empire. Church dedications in Australia’, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, LXIII, 3. March 1944, pp. 179-184, gives one more Carthage church in his statistics than I can find, but he does not give sources. Another item in the article suggest that he was using the Australasian Catholic Directory for 1937, which I have been unable to access.
9. St. Finbar’s in Brighton East, Victoria, suggests a parallel. On the site of an older St. Patrick’s, it had to change its name when Archbishop Goold decided that Melbourne’s cathedral would be St. Patrick’s. Information is from Walter Ebsworth, Pioneer Catholic Victoria Melbourne: Polding Press 1973 288-296, a plaque outside the church, and interview with Rev. Malcolm Crawford, Parish Priest of St. Finbar’s, East Brighton, 23rd March 2012.
10. For Robert Dunne, see Neil Byrne Robert Dunne 1830-1917, Archbishop of Brisbane, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press 1991. The Parish Priest at Toowoomba from 1880 to 1898 was Thomas O’Connell, born in Glengall, Co. Tipperary, and thus part of the recurrent Munster connection for Carthage churches. For information on the Cabarlah church, I was assisted by Gabrielle Saide, Diocesan Archivist at Toowoomba, Barbara McGovern of The Chronicle, Toowoomba, and by local residents, Lyndall Corcoran, Joan Broome and Faye Morgan.
11. See Kearns, R.H.B., Silverton. A Brief History 4th ed., Broken Hill: Broken Hill Historical Society 1980. For a picture of the church, see http://www.chockstonephotos.com/Australian-Print.asp?ID=205 [accessed 20 Aug 2013].
12. The Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW: 1888-1954) Monday 2 May 1921. [accessed 20 Aug 2013]. K.C. Murphy, J.M. Moroney & A.B. McLean, editors The story of the diocese: centenary booklet of the diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes Nyngan: Nyngan Printing Service 1987 gives some information on Walter Curran and includes a picture of St Carthage Church and School, Trangie.
13. Helen Goddard, who was secretary of the centennial committee of the Allansford church, provided a copy of the booklet, ‘St. Carthage’s Church Allansford 1890-1990’ as well as showing my wife and me around the church on 22 August 2012. On John O’Dowd and the Warrnambool district, see Walter Ebsworth, Pioneer Catholic Victoria, 342-03, D.F. Bourke, A History of the Catholic Church in Victoria Melbourne: Catholic Education Office 1988 and Denis Melican & Catherine Lourey, St Joseph’s Church, Warrnambool. A Century in Bluestone. Warrnambool,Vic: St. Joseph’s Church 1989. The church is mentioned in Graeme McLeod, Allan’s Ford. Allansford 1855-1981 [Allansford: Graeme McLeod, 1981] 83-84, where Carthage is described as ‘an obscure Irish monk and bishop of the 6th century’.
14. Windellima is an alternative spelling in the records. Brian Maher, Planting the Celtic Cross. Foundations of the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Canberra: B.Maher, 1997, in a list of early churches, names the church as St Colman/Carthage, on record at 19.05.1895. Denis Connor of Archives, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn tells me ‘The 1895 church – which is now disused and derelict – appears to have been mainly known as St. Colman’s.’ [personal communication, 14 September 2012].
15. Pádraig Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints lists about 55 Colmáns, some of whom might be doubles. Colman Eala had connections with Carthage at Rahan; the Irish Life of Colman Ela tells of an incident when Mochuda (Carthage), during the journey from Rahan to Lismore, cursed Duinecha for stinginess, recounted in Bethada Náem nÉrenn: Lives of the Irish Saints, edited by Charles Plummer, 2 vols Oxford: Oxford University Press 1922, Vol.1,180.
16 Leo Grant, Salt of the Earth: A Bathurst Necrology Bathurst: Leo Grant, 2005-6 records T.J. Walsh’s presence at Orange from 1871-1878. A brief biography says that he was born at Ardfinnan, Waterford on 1st November, 1843. Ardfinnan is actually in Co. Tipperary, but close to Lismore. Rev. Carl Mackander, formerly parish priest at Orange, directed me to these sources. For the presence of Josephite sisters at German Hill, see Marie Crowley, Women of the Vale. Perthville Josephites 1872-1972 Richmond, Vic.: Spectrum Publications 2002, 38-40.
17. Tammy Werner from St. Joseph’s Parish, Leeton, referred me to Reg Winkler of Whitton, who gave some information on the change of location when the new church was built and referred me to Matt Whelan. Both gave me interesting information on the area, but I could learn nothing more about the origins of the old church.
18, Information on this location came from Sister Miriam Grech of the Sisters of Mercy in North Sydney, who sent me several pictures as well as her updated version of Lucy Taylor RSM, ‘St. Catherine’s Home – Brooklyn’ (unpublished manuscript).
David Billington also provided relevant information by personal email. His pictures on several websites seem to be no longer accessible.
The building appears in an old £5 note. See http://www.rba.gov.au/Museum/Displays/1900_1920_a_new_currency/first_notes_reflections_of_the_aus_economy.html [accessed 21 August 2013]
19. For a description of the church’s opening, see The church’s early history is given in Mary Sheddan, A History of the Church of St. John the Baptist Tapanui , also Sacred Heart Church Heriot and St Carthage Church Waikaka Tapanui: Mary Sheddan 2010. Waikaka is now served through the parish of Gore. Father Damian Wynn-Williams assisted with information, as did Mary Sheddan, who sent several pictures, including one with Father O’Donnell in a family wedding photo.
20. Healy, John, Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum OR Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1890, 447-457.
21. The Age, Brisbane, 1st Aug.1929. Carolyn Nolan of Catholic Archives in Brisbane provided copies of this and other items pertaining to the Gordon Park church. Some sources give Father McCarthy’s name as Justin. Parry Colborne of St. Carthage’s, Gordon Park sent information and guided me on a visit to the old and new church buildings.
22. Father Carthage, The Story, vii. On the author’s name, see note 33 below.
23. My information on Father Norris comes primarily from the Index to The Advocate, available at the State Library of Victoria. Val Noone, Hidden Ireland in Victoria Ballarat: Ballarat Heritage Services 2012 and Patrick Morgan, Melbourne before Mannix Ballan: Connor Court Publishing 2012 give valuable accounts of the Irish-Australian context in which Father Norris worked.
This paper, part of a study undertaken with Professor Constant Mews of Monash University, began with questions about the patron saint of the Parkville church, and many people associated with that church and the Melbourne Archdiocese have been particularly helpful in providing advice and information. Rachel Naughton (Archivist, Melbourne Diocesan Historical Commission), Angela Gehrig (Director, St Mary’s Newman Academic Centre) and Philip Harvey (Librarian, The Carmelite Library) were especially helpful.
24. Both The Tribune (18 Oct. 1934) and The Advocate (18 Oct. 1934) give an account of the speeches at the laying of the foundation stone at St. Carthage’s, Parkville.
25. For the Carthage window in the Honan Chapel, Cork, see:
For the set of windows, see The Honan Chapel. A Golden Vision, ed. Virginia Teehan and Elizabeth Wincott Heckett Cork: Cork University Press 2004.
26. Contemporary records and personal communication from Geoffrey Down.
27. On Thérèse and her reputation, see Paul Chandler O.Carm, Unveiling a face: Thérèse of Lisieux. Carmelite Library Papers 1, Middle Park 2002. The A.C.T.S. booklet is ‘The Maid of Lisieux’ by Rev. A. Power S.J. 9 Nov.30, 1930. A copy is in the boxes of A.C.T.S. pamphlets at Dalton McCaughey Library, Parkville.
28. The quotation originates in the Vulgate (and ultimately the Greek Septuagint) version of Psalm 132:14 (Psalm 131:14 in Vulgate). The Hebrew version is different: ‘Here shall be my rest, for I have delighted in it.’
29. John Healy, Insula Sanctorum 453: ‘… and coming down the southern slopes of the hill he saw stretched before him that beautiful valley through which the Blackwater forces its way from Lismore to Cappoquin. ‘Here shall be my rest, for I have chosen it,’ exclaimed the saint, and crossing, not without miraculous aid, it is said, the swelling waves of the Avonmore, he crept up the wooded heights…’.
See also W Grattan Flood, ‘St. Carthage of Lismore’, in Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Volume IV (1898), 228-37.
30. The surviving portion of Archbishop Mannix’s library, including a copy of Healy’s Insula Sanctorum, is in the Nicholas O’Donnell collection at the St. Mary’s Newman Academic Centre. The O’Donnell collection has four other copies of this volume, suggesting its popularity and influence earlier in the twentieth century.
31. Jeremiah Doyle in 1885 wrote, as part of an argument in support of Constitutional Government for Australia: ‘By reason of the utter insecurity of their position, it is well nigh impossible for Colonial Clergy to look on Australia as their home, or to help, amid their miserable surroundings, from the oft unconscious prayer for the unspeakable blessing of leaving their bones in Holy Ireland.’ Kelly, My Cause is Just, 210.
32. Quoted by Brenda Niall, The Riddle of Father Hackett: a Life in Ireland and Australia Canberra: National Library of Australia 2009.
33. The name ‘Carthage’ appears several times for important members of this community, including Carthage Delaney, who was Abbot from 1894 to 1908, as well as the author of the aforementioned book on St. Carthage.
On Mount Melleray, see [Moloney, Stephen] A Cistercian Father, History of Mount Melleray Abbey. Cork: Paramount Printing House, [n.d. post-1952]. See also
34. Eileen Kelly, My Cause is Just, 8. This address followed Jeremiah Doyle’s appointment as Bishop of Grafton.