On pilgrimage in Gippsland - Terry Synan

Pilgrimage is universal and ancient in concept.
In classical times, pilgrims visited pagan shrines in Rome, Greece and the Middle East. Jews journeyed to Jerusalem for the great festivals. In Asia worshippers in innumerable numbers flock to shrines of Krishna and Buddha. Hordes of Muslims travel to the sacred city of Mecca, birthplace of Muhammad, and circle the holy Ka’bah seven times.

From early times Christians embraced the idea of pilgrimage. There is a long and venerable tradition of visiting holy places. Pilgrimages are an aid and incentive to devotion. They assist Christian growth, ignite spiritual awakenings and support philosophical understandings of life’s journey.

English writer Hilaire Belloc defined the essence of pilgrimage as ‘an expedition to some venerable place to which a vivid memory of sacred things experienced or a long and wonderful history of human experience in divine matters or a personal attraction affecting the soul impels one’ (Hills and the Sea, 1906).

‘The pilgrim’, Belloc claimed, ‘is humble and devout, human and charitable, and ready to smile and admire.’ He advises the pilgrim to ‘comprehend the whole of the way—the people in it, the hills and the clouds, and the habits of the various cities’.

And the best way to travel, he says, ‘is on foot, where one is a person like any other person, with the sky above one, the road beneath, the world on every side and time to see all’.

What of pilgrimage in the area in which I live—the Gippsland? Does Gippsland have a sacred geography? Here are some initial observations.

In the mid-1800s, Christianity officially took root at Tarraville near Port Albert, some fifty kilometres south of Traralgon in Victoria. Here is a location worthy of pilgrimage. It contains the site of St Patrick’s, the first Catholic church and school and the beautiful Anglican Christ Church, built entirely without nails.

The Greenmount Catholic cemetery beyond nearby Yarram may be linked in also. It contains many early Gippsland Catholic graves including that of Fr Phillip Kavanagh, the first priest to die in the province.

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sale, was built in 1886, the creation of Fr James L. Hegarty, who foresaw that Sale would become an episcopal see. It is the burial place of four bishops and with its recent additions is a beautiful cathedral possessed of much to inspire one’s spirituality.

Sale’s Anglican cathedral, St Paul’s, is also a significant Christian building with beautiful stained glass windows and many historic Christian associations dating back to early Christian Britain.

Notre Dame de Sion Convent in Sale dates from 1893 and is now part of Catholic College. Here the early Sion Sisters provided an education for Gippsland girls that was for its time quite unique. Its first superior, Mother Maree Raphaela, died young and possessed a level of holiness yet to be fully appreciated. The chapel has National trust classification. Raphaela and many other Sion sisters are buried in Sale cemetery.

St Mary’s Church, Bairnsdale, completed in 1936, has a number of remarkable features, including its original marble high altar and the extraordinary paintings on the walls and ceiling by Italian immigrant Frank Floreani. Heaven, hell and purgatory are depicted high above the sanctuary and some 300 angels flit above the congregation.

Kooweerup has had an Italian community for almost a century. Many are from Sortino, Sicily, and the shrine to Sortino’s patron, St Sofia, stands in the grounds of St John the Baptist church. The Sofia festival is held each year on her feast day.

Gippsland’s early history reveals a local version of ethnic cleansing during the 1840s. At the time, the local Kurnai people and the early pastoralists clashed violently and repeatedly. The worst incident took place at Warrigal Creek, near Woodside. As many as 150 Kurnai men, women and children were killed and their bodies thrown into a waterhole. Might not Warrigal Creek become a site of pilgrimage where the consequences of evil are considered as they are at Auschwitz?

Gippsland may have no saints canonised by the church, but everywhere there is evidence of ‘ordinary’ saints—good people who lived their lives honestly and well and left us a legacy we enjoy today.

(First published in Catholic Life, June 2007. Terry Synan is the author of A Journey in Faith: A History of Catholic Education in Gippsland 1850-1981.)