Sisters of St Joseph celebrate 140 years since arriving in Lochinvar

Through the early work and vision of Mary Mackillop and Julian Edmund Tenison Woods in the Adelaide bush in 1866, the sisters were able to implement faith and teaching to people in need.

It was on September 2, 1883 when they took a train from Perthville, NSW and got on a boat to Morpeth before catching a buggy to Maitland, where they stayed with the Dominican sisters overnight.

They arrived on September 3 at the school in Lochinvar, to a warm community welcome.

Today, Sister Jan Tranter, Sister Maureen Salmon and Sister Patricia Egan who joined in the 1960s, are three of the 59 Josephites left in the area and say the rich legacy of their work remains intact through education and caring.

"It's the largely unwritten story, but we still meet people today who say 'my grandmother was looked after by the sisters for something'," Sister Jan said.

Lochinvar had an existing school with a teacher, but at the end of 1882 the government withdrew its funding for denominational schools and locals were unable to afford it.

That's when the sisters stepped in to bridge the gap, Sister Maureen said.

The Maitland Diocese Bishop James Murray called on the sisters to teach children who were in the mining towns of the Hunter Valley and outer suburbs of Newcastle.

"To the outback, children weren't being reached but some of those were also in the extent of Newcastle in Carrington and The Junction," Sister Jan said.

Sister Patricia said education was the motivator in their work, to teach children not only in faith but reading, writing and arithmetic.

"Other orders had more classical kind of education but ours was out in the bush in the country, in places like Merriwa, Denman, Wybong, Dungog, Cessnock and Kurri," she said.

"It was to teach poor disadvantage kids more than anybody else."

Initially the St Joseph's of Lochinvar School had a primary education but through the Bursary Endowment Act of 1912 it was registered as a secondary school in 1922.

"The sisters at Lochinvar looked ahead and said we need to bring our children up into high school standard and they started that ball rolling in 1915," Sister Maureen said.

At that stage it was a boarding school for girls who came from country areas like Sister Maureen, Jan and Patricia.

"I wouldn't have had secondary education in my day if I hadn't been able to board at Lochinvar," Sister Patricia said.

In 1992, St Joseph's boarding school finished when it almalgamated with Maitland secondary schools St Peter's and St Mary's and became All Saints College, losing its senior years.

It underwent a restructure again in 2019 with the return of the HSC and became St Joseph's of Lochinvar.

Part of the Spirit of the Order by Tenison Woods and Mary Mackillop was for the sisters to be close to the people and never above them.

"The sisters never ever just taught. If there was someone sick of families struggling in need, there was always a quiet outreach," Sister Jan said.

"We were to share the lives of the people that we worked with," Sister Patricia said.

"Even when we weren't in the schools, there was really a bond of friendship and equality," she said.

Equality was an important factor for the Sisters of Saint Joseph to move away from the tiered and hierarchical systems of the European orders who came to Australia.

"They had two congregations - lay sisters and choir nuns. The lay sisters did the domestic duties while the choir nuns taught," Sister Maureen said.

"But Mary Mackillop and Tenison Woods said no, ours was to be the one."

Sister Jan said the sisters were never bound by the social mentality of earlier years and that has remained.

"That has been with the sisters ever since, to recognise what's happening and to respond intelligently," she said.

In the 1960s there was a change in government funding causing Catholic schools to go on strike, taking their students to state schools who were unable to care for them.

"It showed the reality of the fact that through sisters and brothers in catholic schools, thousands of children were being educated without any help from the government," Sister Patricia said.

"There was a huge uprising at a sense of injustice among the catholic population because they were all paying taxes and they also had to carry their own school system since 1883," Sister Jan said.

Part way through the 1960s and gradually in the 1970s, the government started to fund the Catholic education system and employ people, and the number of sisters started to decline.

"There's only 59 left of us in the diocese now compared to the times when there was 200 of us but times have changed," Sister Maureen said.

"None of us are in very public ministry now but we still operate often supporting and encouraging Parish ministries and schools, we also try to be very hospitable."

"Those who are well enough to be out and about are all in a ministry of caring for others as much as possible and sharing the positive movement in life," Sister Jan said.

Over 140 years the Josephites established an impressive network of 50 parish primary schools and 10 secondary schools.

Sister Patricia said she came from a staunch catholic family in Merriwa and she was influenced by the sisters that taught her.

"I was very conscious of the fact that it was a good thing to do to keep the Catholic school system going. I wanted to teach," she said.

"It was a common thing in those days for young women, there would've been four or five girls from my class who went to the convent. Nowadays there are so many other opportunities for young people, they don't have to become a nun to teach in Catholic schools," she said.

Sister Maureen said she wanted to leave the world a better place than when she came into it.

"There was certainly that motivation to do something with my life," she said.

She said she was influenced by three young nuns when she was attending school at St Joseph's in Merewether.

"They were full of life and they were happy and they certainly had a big influence on me."

Sister Jan went to a Dominican school in Newcastle and secondary school at St Joseph's College in Lochinvar.

"After that I went to uni but in my heart I was seeking for the road that I felt called to take, and it really took a few years after joining the sisters to be really convinced that this was it," she said.

"What I felt with the sisters who taught me, they were really alive women and they were happy. There was a real sense of companionship and joy."

She recently attended a mass at St Mary's Gateshead which was founded by the sisters and said she felt accomplished in their mission.

"The children said the Our Father beautifully, and I thought, that's what we sought to do in seeing these children being given a good sound education in the whole way with faith implanted in it. That was an affirmation of what our sisters have done," she said.

"We are really reassured and happy that teachers are carrying on what we started and that's really important," Sister Maureen Pat said.

To mark the anniversary on Saturday, September 2 the sisters will gather at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Charlestown and on Monday, September they will join the community at St Joseph's College Lochinvar for a thanksgiving mass and the ringing of the school bell.

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