Naracoorte SA, Penola, Mary McKillop, St Josephs

Naracoorte SA March 28, 2015

Jumped out of bed early and got on the road by 8am, bound for South Australia. In may ways, this feels like the real start of the journey and we’re both keen to get on with it.

After a slow start wiggling our way through Geelong, we finally got going and headed up toward Hamilton. It’s an odd thing, but out here all the towns are named after places in Sydney… Penshurst, Mortlake, Camperdown, Hexham (ok so that’s Newcastle but may as well be Sydney). I wasn’t concerned about having taken a wrong turn, my trusty navigator was keeping us on the straight and narrow B140 all the way to Hamilton. Pretty good roads all the way actually

As we were on a roll, we pushed on until the car started bleating about needing fuel, so we cruised into Penola with our eyes peeled for the nearest servo. The car suitably replenished, we fed ourselves, and took some snaps of the lovely building in Penola.

Penola SA

Penola SA

Penola also happens to be the place that the newly created Saint Mary McKillop spent a far bit of time, so we spent a little time as well and wandered down past St Joseph’s church, which is where The Sisters of St Joseph got started with one Mary McKillop as the Mother Superior.

The current church, built in 1924, is the plainest thing, bordering on downright ugly, they should have kept the original one! 

St Josephs, 1850's style, Penola SA

St Josephs 1920's lack-of-style. Penola SA

Anyhow, they’ve got this whole big glass and steel interpretive centre which we didn't go into and the schoolhouse in which she taught for a short time. We went into the school and got abused for not paying the $5 entry fee into the aforementioned interpretive centre before coming into the school. We were nonplussed and kept our hands in our pockets and she went hurrying off back to her desk or wherever, leaving us to poke about the 3 small rooms. 

First schoolroom, Order of St Josephs. Penola, SA

Frankly, the whole place is bare, sterile, characterless and lacking in any sort of atmosphere and in short time we found ourselves back on the frog ’n toad heading for some place called Naracoorte.

Now a funning thing happened as we turned into the street that the van park is in, we both almost cried ‘jinx’ as we both realised at the same time that we had actually been here before - last year in fact!