The cache is located down the road from Mount Saint Joseph’s School Milperra
Mary MacKillop was born in Melbourne in 1842. When she was in Penola she met Julian Tenison Woods and together they opened the first St Joseph's School in 1866.
Mary MacKillop and Julian Tenison Woods founded the Sisters of St Joseph to continue this work. Over the many following years, the number of Sisters grew as did their schools. Schools were opened as the needs arose: in country towns, mining towns, cities. The Sisters also became involved in other areas of need including setting up a refuge for women in need and orphanages for children, visiting prisons and working with the sick.
Mount St Joseph…
Sr Geraldine, Mount St Joseph’s first Principal tells the story of the school’s foundation as one of responding to the needs of Catholic education in the western suburbs. Young women and men who had completed their teacher education tended to come from the more established eastern, northern and inner city suburbs and were not keen to travel to the newly established areas in the western suburbs. So in 1959 Father Landers (Panania) and Father Carr (Revesby) accompanied Mother Leone Ryan, the Superior of the Sisters of St Joseph, in search of a suitable site for a new girls’ high school. At this time the population of the area was increasing rapidly and the parishes were unable to meet the costs of building such a school. The search ended with the purchase of the land on which the school now stands. The land was classified as Green Belt, so permission had to be sought and duly granted from the councils concerned. A school was built and in 1960 girls from the surrounding parish schools began their secondary education at Milperra. Since then, the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph has provided the necessary support for the ongoing development of the school.
Ensuring the Spirit lives on…….
April 20th, 1989, saw the beginning of a new era at MSJ with the inaugural meeting of the Mount St Joseph School Board. The Board was instituted following the incorporation of the school as Mount Saint Joseph Milperra Ltd.
Mary MacKillop…
Mary MacKilop's famous saying was "Never see a need without doing something about it"
Well..... there was a need, a geochache in her honour, and something has been done about it!
This is one of many caches placed in significant locations of her story.
Mary died on August 8th, 1909.
She was declared Australia’s first Saint in 2012.