HERITAGE

Founders

Penola 1866 – The beginning of our story

The Sisters of St Joseph of Lochinvar have a heritage of foundation that began with Julian Tenison Woods and Mary MacKillop in Penola in South Australia in 1866. At that time, Australia was a very young country and people were struggling to make a living in an unknown land with an unpredictable climate that effected farming and the production of food. Julian and Mary were inspired to find ways of serving the poor primarily through education and the support of families in rural areas.


Perthville 1872
From those small beginnings in Penola, a foundation was made to Perthville in New South Wales in 1872. Though we were ‘founded with vision and courage to live as religious had not lived before and to work under conditions not experienced before’, many difficulties emerged sharing this vision with leaders of the church in the different dioceses that were being established in Australia at the time. Bishop Matthew Quinn, the Bishop of Bathurst wanted to control the activity of Sisters in his diocese. This policy differed from the approval for central government approved by Rome in 1873. Mary MacKillop withdrew the sisters from Perthville.
  
Sister Hyacinth Quinlan remained to share her experience of religious life under Mary MacKillop with Irish girls and other young women from the area wanting to join the Sisters of St Joseph at Perthville. It was a difficult time for Mary MacKillop, Hyacinth and for the fledgling order. It required great faith and trust in the Holy Spirit to make the decisions that were made at that time. Father Woods continued to guide the sisters at Perthville and to shape their formation with the original spirit of the order. The community was blessed with many vocations and it became the source of foundations of sisters known as ‘black Josephites’ to other dioceses in Australia and New Zealand. The foundations that were made from Perthville to other Dioceses, evidence the creative action of the Spirit in the early days of the congregation.


Lochinvar 1883
A foundation was made from Perthville to Lochinvar, New South Wales,
2 September 1883.

The founding sisters were
Sister Ambrose Joseph Dirkin 8/6/1865 - 5/1/1948
Sister Aloysius Cahill 17/8/1861 – 30/6/1947
Sister Baptist Dugan 17-11-1846 – 6/6/1921
Sister Imelda Flood 26/8/1862 – 18/2/1900