In January 1942 seven Brigidine Sisters came to Western Australia at the request of the Archbishop of Perth, the Most Rev Dr Redmond Prendiville, to take over, from the Sisters of Mercy, the teaching at St Joseph’s Parish School on the corner of McCourt Street, West Leederville, and Salvado Road, Subiaco/Wembley, and to establish a secondary school in the parish.
It was a challenge, in the middle of the Second World War with all the wartime restrictions, necessity for air raid shelters and countless other hardships - not to mention isolation from their NSW Province - but they were nothing if not committed.
The sisters established their convent at an old dairy farmer’s cottage at 12 Salvado Road. It was very basic in layout, totally unfurnished and not in the cleanest of states. Enter a Good Shepherd Sister, who came down with a scrubbing crew who cleaned the place, after which local priests, the Christian Brothers, and the Sisters of St John of God all generously pitched in and furnished both the convent and the school.
In 1943 Mothers Mary Imelda O’Brien and Catherine McNamara began the secondary school the Archbishop demanded, and taught secondary girls in the only place available – the shed at the back of the convent. As a former dairy farmer’s cottage, the girls schooled there proudly dubbed themselves ‘the Cowshed girls’.
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Images from the Sister Dorothea Hickey (1955) Photographic Collection and the Town of Cambridge Local History Collection.
