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 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.
The location of the cache is near the site of the first stable school, which is now Mary MacKillop Park.
No need to go into the private property – accessible from the footpath. Residents are aware of the hide.
Early Catholic Education was an on-again, off-again affair in Penola.
The first school in Penola was run by a Catholic, but was not a Catholic School. It started in 1855 but closed a year later.
Fr Julian Tenison Woods became Parish Priest of Penola and district - an area of 20,000 square miles - in 1857. He saw the need for Catholic education for the children of his parish and looked for opportunities to bring this desire to a reality.
During this period Fr Woods met Mary MacKillop and saw her teaching prowess while she was governess to her cousins in Penola and when she was living and teaching in Portland. Mary was inspired by Fr Woods and shared her desire with him to be religious, but family circumstances intervened to prevent this from happening.
Over this period, they shared the dream of founding a religious order to educate young Catholics in remote areas. In 1861, a Catholic school run by two ladies was later established, but closed in 1865.
This opened the door for the dream to take shape.
Mary and her sister Lexie arrived in Penola in 1866. Her sister Annie had come in the previous October.
“They were faced with the problem of where to teach the children. Mary decided on the stable. … it needed considerable work and she had no money. However her brother John came to their rescue and changed the draughty, dirty old stables into a schoolroom by removing the horse stalls and lining the walls. It is interesting that the stable had originally been the schoolhouse.” (Parish History 6)
On St Joseph’s Day, 19th March 1866, Mary and her two sisters started St Joseph’s School Penola; the dream had begun to take shape! During 1866, Fr Woods had a stone building built on the corner of Portland Street and what is now know as Petticoat Lane.
The School House, which still stands as a testament to Fr. Woods and the early Sisters of St Joseph, was opened in 1867.
St Joseph’s School operated from 1866 to 1871, when the sisters were disbanded due to the excommunication of Mary. It re-opened in 1877 and functioned until 1885.
1936 was a year that stands out in the memory of the people of Penola for it saw the return of the Sisters of St. Joseph, members of the order founded by their now most famous resident, Mary MacKillop, who was beatified in 1995. The Sisters, who had been away since 1885, travelled back by train and the scene at the Station was remarkable and there were some who claimed they witnessed extraordinary signs in the sky that day. It was certainly a day that had very special meaning for the Catholics of the town.
The school operated under the name St Joseph’s School from 1936 to the Golden Jubilee in 1986, when to mark the unique place Penola has in the history of the Josephite story and of Catholic Education in Australia the name changed to Mary MacKillop Memorial School.
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 the second of many caches placed in significant locations of her story.
Mary died on August 8th, 1909.
She was declared Australia’s first Saint in 2010.