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The Journey |  |
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| Orange
1890 - 1927
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The
school in Byng Street, Orange, was opened on the 1st of April 1890. The
first community was Brothers Anthony Lee, Fintan O'Neill, and Dominic
Rickerby.
The school was small: at its height it was able to boast 130 students.
In 1891 the Provincial visited the monastery and school and found everything most satisfactory. Later in the same year the Superior General visited the house and classed it as "unsuitable". Despite pleas to the Bishop the house remained "unsuitable", in debt, and unhealthy. The Brothers started a second school in 1914 at Croagh Patrick ("Patrick's Mountain"). This was a special development because it was also used as a novitiate where young men who wanted to join the Brothers were given training. Two very well known Brothers did their training here: Ignatius Barrett and Joseph Tierney. It was quite an occasion when Croagh Patrick was opened: about 2000 people and the town band turned out to show their appreciation and support of the Brothers. (Mr George Charlton wrote a history of the house in 1998 and is well worth the read; interestingly the house was built the same year the Brothers arrived in Australia: 1883.) Eventually,
as with the other
foundations of the Brothers in the country districts of New South
Wales,
the Brothers withdrew from Orange in 1927 and made a concentrated
effort
with education in the Sydney area. The Brothers realised that with
their
restricted resources, both financial and with personel, having Brothers
scattered all over the huge territory of the State was preventing them
from being as effective as they could be.
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