This year marks 200 years of Catholic education in Australia. Moira Najdecki reflects on how the Sisters of the Good Samaritan have been a very significant part of the story.
Recently, as I took the short journey from Central Station up Glebe Point Road through the gates of St Scholastica’s College and into the Good Samaritan Education Offices, I reflected on those whose footsteps I was echoing and the links along that journey.
The iron gates leading into the College had from 1862 graced the entrance to St Scholastica’s Convent on Pitt Street. When the Pitt Street convent and school were demolished in 1901 to make way for Central Railway Station, the iron gates were retained – the past transferred to the present and inviting in the future.
This year we celebrated 200 years of Catholic education in Australia. In many ways the story of the Good Samaritan journey in Australia epitomises the story of Catholic education across the majority of these 200 years.
Coming from small and difficult beginnings, traversing wide areas of metropolitan, regional and rural Australia, venturing into isolated communities and busy cities, religious women, men and lay teachers devoted their lives to ensuring that generations of girls and boys would take their place in the social, cultural and spiritual life of our nation. Their faith in a future not then known laid the basis for the strong and remarkable Catholic education system we have today.
Sr Gertrude Byrne SGS.
The Good Sams have been a very significant part of the story. Within two years of their foundation with just five sisters in 1857, three of them, Magdalen Adamson, Agnes Hart and Gertrude Byrne, were sent to Parramatta to take charge of the overcrowded and dilapidated Catholic Orphan School. Shortly after, in 1861, the first Good Sam school was established in Sussex Street Sydney.
These bland facts on a page hardly do service to the enormous challenge of living in the rough environment of the Parramatta Orphan School. Take for example Gertrude Byrne, the youngest of 12 children from County Tipperary in Ireland. At 21, untrained, recently professed, with Matron Magdalen Adamson and sub-Matron Agnes Hart (who was all of 22), she was the girls’ teacher for the 300 institutionalised, destitute children of the Orphan School.
Similarly, in 1900 when the parish priest of `lawless Hughenden’[1] in far north Queensland begged the Mother General, Berchmans McLaughlin, to give him a community of sisters to run a school where, as Sr Bertrand Bourke noted, `Water is scarce and bad. We can scarcely get a drink of water and have very little for household purposes. Having a bath is, of course, out of the question.’[2], amazingly, she agreed.
The late 1800s were important and controversial years in education starting with the passing of the Public Schools Act in NSW in 1866, which imposed strict conditions on denominational schools including intrusive inspections, abolition of building grants and the requirement that all teachers were to be trained at council training schools. In throwing themselves into the political fray and finally eschewing the demands made on them to succumb to humiliating inspections, the early Sisters commenced their withdrawal from any connection with certified NSW Council of Education Schools.
Sister Magdalen Adamson.
Further Education Acts in Victoria, Queensland, NSW and South Australia between 1872 and 1880 withdrew all government aid from denominational schools. In response, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan committed to a program of self-funding their Catholic schools, expanding educational opportunities for Catholic children and, under Magdalen Adamson’s leadership, commencing high schools and boarding schools in both Sydney and regional areas.
Margaret Walsh noted in her wonderful book, The Good Sams, that “The miracle at the heart of Catholic schools post-1880 was the ongoing acceptance by the Catholic laity of the financial burden and the sacrifice of leisure time which support of the system demanded of them.” [3]
From the small beginnings in Sussex Street, the Good Sams taught in some 240 schools across all states and territories other than Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Wherever they went, the Sisters were greeted with appreciation and enthusiasm – communities were grateful to have a Catholic school in their area and regardless of their wealth or otherwise contributed to the school buildings and very often to the construction of the convent. Their coming was often recorded in the local press and marked by great crowds of welcomers as witnessed with the establishment of the first Catholic school in Canberra.
Rosebank, Five Dock, 1876,
In 1928, with the paint scarcely dry on the new Parliament House, the building of the first Catholic school and convent in the national capital gained interest across the nation. On January 30, 1927, a huge crowd witnessed the Archbishop of Sydney, Michael Kelly, lay the foundation stone of the school and the Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, lay that of the convent.[4] The crowd was estimated at 5000, while the population of Canberra was only 6000 at the time.
A year later when the school opened with 140 pupils from Kindergarten to Leaving Certificate, the Apostolic Delegate, nine bishops, the Prime Minister and his wife, parliamentarians and thousands of excited Canberrans listened to Father Haydon, the Parish Priest, declare that: “At last we have a school … which under God and the Good Samaritan Sisters will be of inestimable worth for the Catholics of Canberra.”[5]
St Christopher’s School, Manuka shared the school building for Mass and parish events but the Sisters were patient and long suffering despite the fact that, “Bingo made a frightful mess. Chalk and discarded number cards polluted the schoolrooms and inevitably there was war on Saturdays when the Sisters stood aghast to survey the ravages of a night’s Housie.”[6]
Good humour, tolerance, commitment to delivering quality Catholic schooling in the Benedictine tradition were the hallmarks of a Good Samaritan education. When in 2011, after a long period of consultation and discernment, the Sisters decided to move out of school governance and pass the baton to the newly formed ecclesial community called Good Samaritan Education (GSE), there were the 10 Good Samaritan schools that now thrive in educating some 10,000 students in 2021.
St Scholastica’s Primary, Glebe.
While Australia celebrates 200 years of Catholic education, we at GSE celebrate our 10th anniversary grateful for the legacy of the Good Sams, mindful of our place in the story, embracing our faith in the future, and looking with hope and optimism to the next phase in the life of GSE and of Australian Catholic education.
‘From Humble Beginnings: Commemorating 200 years of Catholic education in Australia’ features a history of the oldest existing Catholic school in each Australian diocese. Produced by the National Catholic Education Commission, this commemorative book is full colour and includes historical and contemporary images of the schools. It is available in paperback and hardcover. To order copies, click here or phone (02) 8229 0800.
[1] Walsh M, The Good Sams: Sisters of the Good Samaritan 1857-1969 (Mulgrave: John Garratt Publishing, 2001) p203
[2] Walsh M, p207
[3] Walsh M. p142
[4] Jeffery J Ringing in the Years: Canberra’s Catholic Schools- Celebrating the Centenary (Canberra 2013) p21
[5] Jeffery J, p22
[6] Jeffery J, p23
