Superlatives abound about country pubs. The oldest pub in Australia. The oldest pub in mainland Australia. The oldest licensed pub. The oldest continuously licensed pub on the original site. It may not get a gong as the chronologically oldest, but the most charming oldest pub in New South Wales, by a country mile, is The Settlers Arms, in St Albans.
You can’t miss it. To get there, drive through Dural and Wisemans Ferry, cross Webbs Creek on the 23/7 ferry (it stops from 2am to 3am) and power on into the 19th century. About 20 kilometres down a narrow twisting road skirting the Macdonald River is the Village of St Albans – which is mostly The Settlers Arms.
Part of its charm is that it is in the middle of the nowhere which is the Macdonald Valley and you get very thirsty in Nowheresville. In a pub built in 1836, you expect time-worn thresholds, broad floorboards and low ceilings, wood panelling, huge open fireplaces, and Victorian bric-à-brac. You don’t expect peacocks strutting around the picnic tables, certainly not a white peacock, and ancient tractors sinking into the lawn.
Fortified by a few leisurely beers and lunch under huge camphor laurels, I decided that a sunny day at The Settlers Arms is unbeatable. All this is by way of introducing, because this is, mind you, The Catholic Weekly and not The Beer, Wine & Spirits Weekly – buckle your seatbelt for more superlatives – one of the oldest Catholic Churches on mainland Australia, St Joseph’s.
This historic monument is on a hillside in St Albans about 10 kilometres from the pub, back towards the Big Smoke. Once upon a time church-goers could take a ferry, disembark on the riverbank below the church, and trudge up the hill for Mass. This could explain why it is so remote from the village and the pub.
Alas! Long ago St Joseph’s fell on hard times and practically disappeared in the bush. Its roof collapsed in bushfires; some of the massive sandstone walls crumbled; gum trees were growing in the nave.
In 2009 a local builder, Steve Kavanagh, bought it from the Diocese of Parramatta. He rescued it from total ruin and over three years transformed it into St Joseph’s Guesthouse, a popular venue for holiday accommodation, elopements and weddings. The roof is back; a steel steeple was added; the crumbling lancet windows have been repaired; the church portal is a massive 150 kg door of solid silky oak. In 2013 it won a “best heritage restoration” award from the National Trust.
There is a lot of history behind St Joseph’s. Pioneering Bishop Bede Polding OSB blessed its foundation stone in 1839. It’s a shame that it is not better known.
Back in 1839, St Albans was not nowhere. Settlers, many of them emancipated Irish Catholic convicts, flocked there to farm on the fertile river flats. It was a good time to build churches. The 1836 Church Building Act allowed the colonial government to subsidize the construction of churches of all denominations. And then a local, John Watson, donated five acres, £300, timber and stone to build a “cathedral on the Hawkesbury”. It was supposed to serve Catholics in the valley and surrounding districts.
Bishop Polding’s homily at the blessing of the foundation stone was full of praise for Watson, an emancipist, and optimism for the community. But progress was slow. In 1843 it was reported that “The splendid Roman Catholic chapel on the McDonald is now verging towards completion.” But it took another two years or so to add the roof.
The Gothic revival church could probably have accommodated a congregation of about 200, but it never seems to have had a resident parish priest. In any case, by the time it was completed, the best days of the Macdonald Valley were already past. The population fell from 1020 in 1841 to 681 in 1851 – and to 486 in 1901. The river was silting up; opportunity beckoned elsewhere; there were hugely destructive floods.
Bishop Polding made a pastoral visit in 1850. His secretary described it in his journal.
“On the following day a cheering spectacle presented itself – persons coming from every direction to assist at the Holy Sacrifice. This gave great joy to His Grace – but alas! That joy was quickly converted into sorrow when he found out the deplorable state of their souls. Some had never approached the sacred tribunal of confession. Others had absented themselves for years.”
In the early 1850s three Carthusian monks tried to establish a monastery at the church, Dom Odilo Woolfrey, his brother, Dom Norton Woolfrey, and Dom Xavier Johnson. Perhaps the monks believed that the church was already going to wrack and ruin and felt free to create a mini monastery inside it. They bashed holes in the sandstone walls and above the entrance of the church they built a sort of comfortable cubby-house with its own fireplace, which they accessed by a ladder.
The monks visited Catholic families scattered across the Macdonald Valley district. But one priest departed to work in Sydney and another died of cancer. Pastoral attention petered out. The last time that St Joseph’s appeared in church records was a wedding in 1870.
In the 1880s a bushfire gutted the church. Its sandstone blocks were pillaged for other buildings. Bit by bit St Joseph’s church disappeared into the bush.
No colonial church would be complete without its cemetery. To the lower left of St Joseph’s is the Books Ferry Catholic Cemetery, with dozens of graves dating from 1840 to 1971.
Some are quirky. One large headstone commemorates MARY AMBROS, who died in 1860. Unfortunately, the stone mason had run out of room to chisel the last letter of her surname, so above the ‘S’ he scratched a tiny ‘e’.
There are no First Fleeters buried there, as there are in the St Albans Old Cemetery across the river. But the Catholic cemetery can boast of Celia McLaughlin. She was an Irish-born “servant” who had been transported for seven years for stealing a pelisse, a gown, and two petticoats in London. She arrived on the William Pitt with 119 other women in 1806 at the age of 28. She died in 1852 after bearing seven children – “a true pioneer woman”, says the plaque on her headstone.
Kavanagh had been fascinated by the building for years and was elated when the Diocese of Parramatta sold it to him, despite its heritage value. “They weren’t one bit interested,” he told The Catholic Weekly. “You’d think they’d go, ‘Let’s make it a Catholic retreat centre, as it’s very cool building. Maybe there just wasn’t that insight in 2009.”
Forgotten pioneers buried near a forgotten church nestled in a forgotten valley. But they are part of the heroic story of how Australia and the Catholic Church in Australia grew and flourished. Lest we forget.
Updated 14 July
