Story By: Sr Pat Quinn

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Missionary Sisters of Service and the 60th anniversary of their arrival in Toowoomba. In 1964, five sisters left their motherhouse in Tasmania to establish a foundation in this diocese. I, Sr Pat Quinn, was the youngest of the group. Our mission initially was to reach out to isolated families in regional areas and to provide a religious correspondence course for parents to educate their children in the faith. We visited remote parishes on a regular basis.

Sr Cecilia Bailey, another of our original group, recalls a story. In her early days in the diocese, she and another sister visited a property far out west. As she stepped out of the car, the mother of the family came out to meet them and threw her arms around Cecilia. She began sobbing. Cecilia simply held her, wondering if some tragedy had happened. When Cecilia asked how she was, the woman said, “With this drought, my husband has been away for months, cattle droving along the roads to find some feed. I am here with my five little boys and, I have not seen a woman in months”. This story paints a vivid picture of the isolation of some people and of what the visit of our sisters meant to them. In the 1960s and 70s, there were not the communication systems that there are today, nor well-formed roads.

Our Sisters would visit country state schools and gather the Catholic children for classes. Sometimes we arranged camps for religious instruction and activities for kids in places like shearer’s quarters as well as school holiday live-in camps at our convent in Toowoomba.

In 1982 Sr Imelda McMahon established The Family Bookshop at the request of the bishop and managed the bookshop for 18 years. The sisters also worked in youth ministry and trained catechists.

They established a permanent pastoral presence serving the individual parishes of Goondiwindi and Miles for some years. Sr Mary Cleary was appointed by the bishop as pastoral leader at Jandowae for 11 years and I set up the Portiuncula Centre for counselling and spiritual development which served the wider community for 27 years.

In earlier times, our sisters were often referred to as the “Rosary House Sisters” simply because that was the name of our convent, but our title is Missionary Sisters of Service.

Our congregation was founded by Fr John Wallis in 1944 when four women gathered in Launceston to begin their formation and subsequently travelled to isolated parts of Tasmania. Our numbers have never been large, yet our sisters also served vast, remote areas in New South Wales, in a number of Queensland dioceses and South Australia. Like many congregations, our numbers have dwindled. In 2010, our congregation set up a mission entity that enables our mission to grow and continue into the future. This mission entity is “Highways and Byways – Healing the Land – Healing Ourselves – Together”.

Clare Smith, foundation president of the local Highways and Byways branch, knew the sisters as a child growing up in Daymar. “On behalf of the Toowoomba Diocese, the Members of the Toowoomba Branch of Highways and Byways wish to thank all these ladies who ventured beyond to find people and sit around the kitchen table with them listening to their stories,” said Clare. “Meeting people where they were with their simple message of God’s love for each of us, made them welcome and their visits much appreciated.”

NEVILLE HUNT REFLECTS ON HIS ENCOUNTER WITH THE MSS SISTERS

We recall the “Yes” made by the Missionary Sisters of Service when, in 1964, they offered to be a source of God’s loving grace in the remote parts of Western Queensland. Amidst the challenges of the 1965 drought and the collapse of the Wool market in the 1960s, which saw prices plummet from 200 cents per pound in the 1950s to a mere 30 cents per pound in 1970, families found their longstanding properties insufficient to sustain them.

I recall being moved from my normal fieldwork in the Lands Department to a new role in rural reconstruction, with the aim of transiting wool growers into other enterprises or off their properties. An example is the family of Bert Harris, who set up a calf-rearing enterprise, with the family hand-rearing bobby calves from the Darling Downs dairies.

Tragedy struck the family when one of their children was hospitalised in Toowoomba. With few resources, Bert, Zita and the children were cared for by the sisters at Rosary House until the crisis lifted. Bert and I could then organise things in Toowoomba and on the property at Weengallon. Bert knew that the sisters’ commitment to serving the families of the outback could be relied upon when there was nowhere else to turn.

The sisters shared the isolation of bush life at the time when communication, if there was any, consisted of a wire strung through the bush and maintained by the families sharing the line. Roads were unreliable, and communication with the outside world was very limited.

The sisters’ role in this environment was highly valued by the bush community, irrespective of what church a family belonged to. Bringing companionship to the women and faith education to the children, sharing in the difficulties of travel on bush roads, living on the properties and in the back of the small churches, conducting faith camps for children and operating the correspondence course that the congregation developed to help isolated parents develop the faith with their children.

Times have changed, with power and communication available throughout rural Queensland, and roads and modern transport making life in the outback much easier. A new challenge awaits people who are willing to make the “Yes” of Mary their calling; the faith that was nurtured by the sisters needs to be resourced in new ways to awaken the beauty of the presence of God in all places, and especially in the quiet beauty of the Australian bush. Pope Francis has asked us to fulfil our baptismal mandate through the life we share and “get the smell of the sheep on us.”

INVITATION TO ALL

Our local Sisters along with our Toowoomba Highways and Byways members invite you to join us in celebrating our 80th and 60th on Sunday 14th July at St Anthony’s Parish with Mass at 2pm followed by afternoon tea.

For catering purposes please RSVP by 5th July Text Sr Pat on 0422 462 678.