Anecdotes from the Archives

The Presentation Sisters 'go bush'

The first nine Presentation Sisters to arrive in Hobart in late 1866 were required to travel through wild bushland within several days to reach their temporary home at Richmond.

This was to be their first experience of the Tasmanian bush, but after the establishment of their Presentation convent in Launceston, many of the later Sisters were to work in bushland and rural settings and make do with sub-standard housing.

In the early twentieth century, for example, the Sisters established a school in the small town of Karoola, north-east of Launceston. The area had been settled mainly by the Irish who worked on the north-east railway and tried to carve out a living in the heavy bush. In 1863 a small church named St Margaret’s was opened at Underwood. 

In 1902, the Presentation Sisters responded to the calls of the locals to establish a school in what was then a wilderness, Karoola. There was much jubilation in the town as the locals welcomed the Sisters, who were provided with a small house made of rough-hewn logs which was neither weatherproof nor unwelcoming to all the spiders, snakes and animals who sought refuge within. At first the Sisters had to sleep in the church during fierce weather and rain. Nevertheless, the little convent housed the Sisters for more than 50 years.

In 1953, a new convent was built at Karoola and, needless to say, it differed greatly from the original house, suffocated as it was by bush and ferns.

The ability of the children to attend the convent school at Karoola was hampered by long distances and inclement weather. The Sisters tried to overcome the difficulties by organising for such children to board in the town during the school week, and this arrangement lasted until the 1930s.

In 1891, Archbishop Murphy laid the foundation stone of St Anne’s Church at Lilydale. During the 1950s, as the number of children in Karoola declined, the number in Lilydale began to swell, and the locals built a small school, St Anne’s. By 1958 the school at Karoola was closed, and the Sisters began to travel daily by bus to teach at the Lilydale school.

The Lilydale school was closed in 1971, and the students were absorbed by the Catholic schools of Launceston. By now, the wilderness encountered by the early Sisters was mostly cultivated, and the boggy and marshy roads were replaced by sealed roads and speedy journeys.