4 - Pennant Street (Victoria Road) 1889

A letter home to Callan

Convent of Mercy Villiers St Parramatta New South Wales December 1889 

Dearest Reverend Mother and all our loved Sisters at home in Callan, 

It is hard to believe it is nigh twelve months since we arrived here in Parramatta to begin our mission amongst our exiled countrymen and women. There’s not day gone by we don’t speak of your parting blessing as through our tears we bid farewell to you and our dear mother Ireland. 

After the long sea voyage, I’ll never forget the impressions on the day of our arrival in Parramatta– how in the summer’s heat we walked up from the railway station passing the grand new Town Hall and several fine stone churches and banks. Once we crossed the river, we could see St Patricks Church and opposite, a fine parish school, a convent of the Sisters of Charity and their new hospital. Around the corner in Villiers St was our own convent which we soon made comfortable. Though when we first arrived, we hadn’t the wherewith to boil water and the Sisters of Charity gave us the hospitality of a cup of tea in their nearly completed St Joseph’s Hospital. They told us it was already fifty years since their own pioneers had arrived here to work among the poor female convicts. 

Our Catholic people are sorely pressed to provide schools where their children will receive a grounding in our holy faith now that the Public Education Act has cut off all funding for Church schools. I can see there will be no end of the need for religious to come and labour in the vineyard.  

The parish school here continues to prosper, and we have opened a senior school in Villiers St. The Marist Brothers are instructing the parish boys in the school buildings behind the church. Our own little community has already sent Sisters to St Peters’ school in Surry Hills and each week Reverend Mother is receiving requests for us to open new schools. 

(Text created from historical context and primary sources)