The Treacy Centre, Parkville, Australia
The Edmund Rice Tradition in Australia
Edmund Rice Legacy crosses the Indian Ocean
The Port of Melbourne Australia
Hobson's Bay Pier, Port Melbourne circa 1860. This was the first railway built in Australia. It opened in 1854, extended for two and a half miles from Flinders Street, Melbourne to this pier. Travellers arriving by boat disembarked here.
The First Christian Brother School in Australia - St Francis Church
A school building on the corner of the block became the starting point for the Irish Christian brothers’ vast Australian apostolate in 1869. The Brothers taught for two years here before moving into the bluestone building in Victoria Parade, East Melbourne.
Christian Brothers Schools in Australia
The new Christian Brothers School in East Melbourne was founded by the four Christian Brothers in 1871. They had taught for two years in a small school behind St Francis’ Church in Lonsdale Street before moving into the bluestone building in Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. The school's official name was CBC East Melbourne but it was generally known as Parade College. About one hundred boys enrolled on the first day and this number grew steadily over the years. This building was affectionately known as the "Old Bluestone Pile" and the school song takes its name from this building.
Parade College, as well as being the oldest Christian Brothers' school in Australia, is also the last survivor of the early group of schools that once operated around Eastern Hill. It was from this college that Brother Patrick Treacy and his colleagues expanded their influence across Victoria and interstate, thereby advancing the Catholic education system across Australia.
In 1843 at the invitation of Sydney’s first Catholic bishop, Archbishop John Bede Polding, the Irish Christian Brothers first arrived in Sydney to assist in schools. However as this was a time of simmering sectarian tension in the young colonies between Irish Catholics and the English, the problematic outcomes resulted in the brothers returning to Ireland in 1848.
The Christian Brothers returned to Australia in 1868. This despite the bungled assassination attempt in Sydney in the same year, of Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred Ernest Albert.
The events that followed the assassination attempt at Clontarf included an outpouring of prejudice and racism towards Catholics and Irish.
Arriving in Melbourne at the invitation of Bishop James Goold, the Brothers included Patrick Ambrose Treacy, Dominic Fursey Bodkin, John Barnabas Lynch and Patrick James Nolan. In 1869, the Brothers began teaching at a small primary school behind St Francis' Church in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.
One of the brothers, Brother Ambrose Treacy, after establishing a presence in Melbourne in 1868 then moved in 1875 to Brisbane to do similarly.
In 1872, Victoria became the first Australian colony to pass an Education Act providing for free, secular public education. The other colonies followed over the next two decades. With the subsequent withdrawal of state aid for church schools around 1880, the Catholic Church, unlike other Australian churches, put great energy and resources into creating a comprehensive alternative system of education. It was largely staffed by nuns, brothers and priests of religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers
With help from the Irish Catholic Church, The Christian Brothers acquired a parcel of land along the wide boulevard of Victoria Parade in East Melbourne. In 1871 their dreams were realised when a new bluestone college was blessed by Bishop Goold in the presence of the venerable Archbishop of Sydney, the Archbishop Polding. They called their new school Parade College, after the name of the street it was built on, and dedicated it to Mary Immaculate.
The building is an imposing three storey bluestone structure that was built to the designs of Melbourne architect William Wilkinson Wardell (1823 – 1899), who also designed the nearby St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
On the school’s first day, more than one hundred boys were enrolled and the number increased steadily as accommodation became available. As time went on, more Brothers arrived at Parade College from Ireland, and so the number of boys attending the school could increase. In 1902 the school building was extended yet again and finally completed William Wardell’s original designs. It is this building that we see today.
The building was affectionately known as the "Old Bluestone Pile" and the school’s song takes its name from it.
St Joseph Technical College, East Melbourne, Australia
From the Kelty Archives comes this photograph showing three Brothers at a very unusual vantage point in Melbourne. They were next to the Cross that sits on top of the Spire of St Patrick’s Cathedral. There are three spires, and we are not sure which one they were on top of, but the tallest one is 105 meters above the ground. The three men – Matt McGrath, Kiaran Byrne, and Berchs McDonogh – were teaching at St Joseph’s Technical School, Abbotsford, at the time and living at Victoria Parade, just a Stone’s throw from the Cathedral. They would have attended Sunday Mass there regularly.
The Cathedral was built over a long period – the foundation stone was laid in 1858, it was consecrated in 1897, but was not completed until 1939. The photo of the three men was taken in 1938. How they managed to get permission to be where they were or why they had taken such a keen interest is unknown. However, as they were all interested in technical work, we can assume that they had a natural interest in the construction work.
Christian Brothers - St Joseph’s Technical College
In 1893 St Joseph’s school in Nicholson Street opened its doors to 400 boys, later becoming St Joseph’s Technical College providing inner-city technical education until 1990. It was then home to the Sophia Mundi Steiner Primary School until 2012 when the building started to be used as creative studios.
St Joseph's Technical School, Abbotsford traces its beginnings to the opening of St. Joseph's Primary School on the same site in 1893 and was operated in the tradition of the Christian Brothers as a school for boys.
In 1930 its function changed to that of a technical school. The school was formally closed in 1990.
It was to be the second Catholic technical school to be established in Melbourne following St. Joseph's, South Melbourne. Its establishment, supported by Archbishop Daniel Mannix, was designed to cater for the needs of Catholic youth from the north of the city who were seeking a trade.
In arriving on Australian shores and spreading throughout the Oceanic region, the essential mission of the Christian Brothers, was as Melbourne's Archbishop Daniel Mannix defined, to build a future where "Catholics might hope to secure, without fear or favour, their due and proportionate share of the good things that Australia has to offer".
By 1900, when Br. Treacy retired after thirty years as a provincial superior, he had established twenty-seven schools in the principal cities of Australia, and one in New Zealand.
St Joseph’s Technical College Abbotsford, VIC, Australia 2012
In 1848, the same year the first Christian Brothers’ contingent left Sydney and returned to Ireland, construction began on St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne. Archbishop James Goold, having secured the Eastern Hill site from the colonial government for the Catholic Church, commissioned William Wardell to draft plans for the cathedral.
Construction on St Patrick’s followed a stop-start pattern given the size, expense and volatile economy (a severe depression hit Melbourne in 1891) of the fledgling gold-rush city. Under Thomas Carr the cathedral was consecrated in 1897 but remained unfinished.
Daniel Mannix, who became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1917, maintained a constant interest in the cathedral, which he was determined to see finished after the long delays during the previous 30 years. He oversaw the addition of the spires and other elements in the late 1930s.
Wardell had included plans for spires in his original designs. Dr Mannix decided to add the spires but called for new plans which would give the spires greater height than Wardell anticipated. In 1937 the construction of the spires began and they were blessed upon completion in 1939.
Dr Mannix announced that the spires celebrated the 100 years of Catholicism in Melbourne since Father Geoghegan arrived and celebrated the first Mass in the city in 1838. Mannix dedicated the spires to the memory of his two predecessors.
Archbishop Mannix died in his 99th year, just four months short of his 100th birthday. The spires, pictured with the three Christian Brothers in 1938, endure as a lasting memorial to him.
St. Patrick's Cathedral with scaffolding at front, and St. Patrick's School, Eastern Hill, Melbourne, ca. 1866
The Congregation grows
William Wardell left behind a rich legacy in Australia, not only of the commercial and ecclesiastical buildings that he created, but for the numerous private houses and mansions that he designed.
Cathedral Church and Minor Basilica of Saint Patrick
Based on the great medieval cathedrals of England, in response to the revival of Gothic architecture, St Patrick's has the distinction of being both the tallest and, overall, the largest church building in Australia.
Learn about our history
The Oceania Province assists people wishing to source material about the Christian Brothers and more specifically about the Brothers in the Oceania Region.
Since 1802 the work that Edmund Rice started has spread to 30 countries….
The Christian Brothers first came to parts of the Oceania Province in 1843. The presence of the Christian Brothers in Oceania began in Sydney and quickly spread throughout Australia, to New Zealand and then later through Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Timor Leste.
Wilson’s Promontory, Australia