Page 1830 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 May 2005
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fine priest (ultimately the Parish Priest of Doonbeg on the west coast of Co Clare) and a great support to his widowed mother. And Ellen Cahill as Mrs Lynch had need of support from her family. She was not a native of Doora when she married Michael Lynch. She came from some 40 miles away and, in Doora, she was always treated as a stranger. When I first heard that story, I was inclined to take it with, at least, a grain of salt. But later I was to hear a similar tale from my own family. I was visiting my uncle Tom on his farm near Mitchelstown Co Cork. Tom’s son in law Seamus Goggin drove Tom and myself into town. We went into one of the better looking bars and each was served a pint of Guinness. After a few minutes Tom said “What are we doing here amongst strangers?” Seanrus explained to me that the people who owned the bar had been in Mitchelstown for only about 40 years. (At the time Tom would have been well over 70. He had been to Dublin once and to Cork city - about 40 miles from home twice).
Fr Lynch arrived in Australia in 1947. I wonder whether any in the Irish church appreciated what a valuable export they were making to Australia and for no material reward whatsoever. I’m sure that few in Australia realised what a treasure we had received. Fr Lynch brought with him a variety of resources -spiritual, ecclesiastical, practical, social - and others too, none of which had then been fully developed. But years of hard work and dedication to the tasks to which he put his hand honed those resources to a fine pitch.
Fr Lynch began his priestly life here as assistant priest in Goulburn where the then Bishop, Terrence McGuire, resided. In 1948, he was transferred to Crookwell. His PP there was Fr., later Mons. Alexander McGilvray, a man who, in my judgment, would have made an excellent “boss” for any young curate. Fr Lynch claims that it was in Crookwell that he learned, amongst other things, the game of hockey. It is perhaps debateable whether he ever learned the rules of hockey but he developed a great enthusiasm for the game, an enthusiasm that lasted long after he left Crookwell. In 1949, when he was only 28, the Bishop appointed Fr Lynch to be Inspector of Catholic schools in the Diocese.
In the latter part of 1952, I came to Canberra from Melbourne to “try it out for a few months”. In 1953, Bema and I were married in Melbourne but came back to Canberra, again for a few months.
When Fr Lynch came to Canberra in 1954, we were already here - not settled here but here. By this time, the former diocese of Goulburn had been made an Archdiocese - the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn. In 1953, Fr Eris O’Brien, was appointed our Archbishop. Initially, he lived with all the priests in Canberra in what was and still is, the Archbishop’s House. I think it is right to say that there were then only 3 Catholic Churches in Canberra - St Christopher’s, St Mary’s (then called St Patricks I think) and a somewhat make-shift Church in the Causeway. Most Masses were celebrated in halls wherever arrangements could be made for them. The development of Canberra was then starting to gain some real momentum; when tiny old settlements like Yarralumla, Deakin and O’Connor were expanding 20-fold to become full blown new suburbs and lose their grazing sheep in the process.
It was into this developing church and city that the young Fr Lynch, still only 33, came to exercise whatever talents he might have had and to make his contribution.
He was quickly aware that there were in the Canberra Hostels hundreds of young people many of them Catholics and all of them far from home, family and friends.
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