Six Irish nuns spent two months travelling to the rural NSW town 140 years ago, pioneers that started a Catholic school and created a community of Brigidine Sisters that would spread across Australia.
abc.net.au/news/brigidine-sisters-140-years-in-coonamble-pioneering-nuns-nsw/102850380Sister Eileen Creagh can clearly remember the day she celebrated with the residents of Coonamble as the drought broke in the late 1940s.
In 1883, the Brigidine Sisters were greeted by the town's 800 residents after a two-month journey from Ireland. Classes began with 50 primary and 10 secondary students 17 days after the nuns arrived in the town. The first boarders took residence in February the following year.By 1924 the school was teaching classes for the leaving certificate.
She said her most memorable achievement as a Brigidine was transforming the library into something "beautiful, interesting and educational". "I can remember on hot summer days we'd be languishing in the heat, and my mother would say, 'Those poor nuns in their habits, go over and take them some ice creams'," Sister Maureen Keady said.
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