Sister Anne Gardiner has one wish while she’s still alive – to see the first church where she served as a nun on the Tiwi Islands, off the coast of Darwin, restored to its former glory.
At 92, the retired nun looks to the run-down Catholic church, that sits on land overlooking the pristine waters of the Aspley Strait on Bathurst Island, with a mix of fondness and angst, fearing time is running out.
“At 92 I’m knocking on God’s door, and I guess I’m tempting God because I’m running around on my bike trying to get money to fix the church,” she said.
“It worries me because I’d like to see it all done before God calls me.”
The Tiwi Islands icon and former Senior Australian of the Year recipient arrived on the Tiwis in 1953, from Gundagai in New South Wales, to serve with the Bathurst Island Mission when she was 22.
Her first posting when she arrived as a young nun was to teach local Aboriginal children beneath Saint Therese Church — a charming wooden church built in 1941 in the community now known as Wurrumiyanga.
“I had my own classroom, and these beautiful children were sitting there looking at me,” she said.
“There was no cement floor, no electricity, so it meant no fans, but the children made the place. You just walked in, and you were full of happiness when you saw them.”
The retired nun is now spearheading a campaign to restore the ‘old church’, as it’s known around town, to the way it looked when she arrived in the community 70 years ago.
“The church was immaculate and kept clean inside,” she said.
“The outside was painted brilliant white, the stairwell was intact.
“It was a building that you were proud of.”
Sister Anne said the church’s structure, modelled on Queensland architecture, stood out like nothing else around it.
“I used to travel along [on] the mission boat, the Margaret Mary, and as it entered the last part of the strait coming into the mission area, the first and only thing that you saw glistening in the sunshine was that white palace, the church,” she said.
‘It’s not just a church, it’s a Tiwi Catholic church’
The mission on Bathurst Island was founded in 1911 by Francis Xavier Gsell, better known as the “Bishop with 150 wives” for his strategy of bringing Tiwi women into the faith by promising to marry them to a baptised local man of their choice according to Tiwi culture and law.
Bishop Gsell lived on the Tiwi Islands for 28 years before leaving to become Darwin’s first Catholic bishop.
He was instrumental in establishing the old church by securing a lease over the land with the South Australian government, which governed the Northern Territory at the time.
Services at Saint Therese stopped in the early 2000s when a new church was built in Wurrumiyanga, but its affiliation with locals on the islands still runs deep.
“People will say ‘oh that’s where my mum and dad were married, that’s where my grandfather was buried from, that’s where I made first communion and where I was confirmed’ — they remember that church,” Sister Anne said.
“Those older Tiwi people loved that church, and I think that the most glorious things that I ever experienced in my life here were the masses for the dead in that old church.”
Fusing Aboriginal spirituality with Christianity
Inside the church, local Tiwi paintings and storytelling adorn the sanctuary and altar, and stained glass — typically found in traditional Catholic churches — has been replaced with hundreds of wooden louvres to suit the tropics.
Sister Anne said the church was ahead of its time in fusing Aboriginal culture with Christianity, which was made possible when Pope John XXIII “opened the gates for culture in the church” in 1973.
She remembers when Tiwi singing and dancing was allowed in and said the church adapted to local Tiwi customs, including the way Aboriginal men and women engaged in public.
“When I came here, all the men sat on the right-hand side, and all the women sat on the left-hand side. Men and women never sat together in those days when I first came,” Sister Anne said.
The church featured in the Australian film Top End Wedding and has become a popular stopover for tourists visiting the islands.
Tour guide Douglas “Vivian” Warlapinni Karinauia has taken thousands of tourists through the old church and said it surprised people every time.
The sistergirl, who locals call “Buffy”, remembers dressing up for Sunday mass and said the church was “always packed”.
“I feel proud because I grew up in the church and I would go and ring the bell,” they said.
“I still consider myself as a religious person that likes to pray, and I feel connected to that church … it’s hard to let go of it.”
Eighty-year-old church built against all odds
How the church came to be built on a far-flung island, off the northern coast of Australia, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, is at the forefront of Sister Anne’s mind.
She casts her mind back to the man who oversaw the build — Peter de Hayr, a Queensland tradesman who arrived on Bathurst Island in 1934, and who built the church with a group of Tiwi workmen.
Defying all odds, the men sourced timber from across the Tiwi Islands, crossing the strong currents of the Aspley Strait to bring the planks of wood over to Bathurst Island to build the church.
“To think that church was built by a man who was in his late 60s to early 70s, with six Tiwi men, with no modern equipment,” Sister Anne said.
“Going out on the boat to find timber, bringing the timber down the strait, and putting it through a sawmill which Peter de Hayr built himself, it’s remarkable.”
The same timber was also used to build a nearby presbytery and radio room, which proved instrumental when the Japanese bore down over the north-west of Australia in 1942.
It was the church’s priest, Father John McGragh, who got the first message out to the rest of Australia that the Japanese were flying over the Tiwi Islands.
“He ran down those stairs when he heard the planes going and he raced over to the radio room and he sent the message that the Japanese were coming, and the message was heard but unheeded,” Sister Anne said.
Push to raise $120,000 to restore church
The land where the church sits is now owned by the Aboriginal Land Trust on the Tiwi Islands, but opinion is split on whether the site should be nominated for heritage listing.
“I’ve been listening of late about heritage, and you get the one-off grant but then once you start building you can’t change it,” Sister Anne said.
“We’ve got some great ideas for under the church when we get it reconstructed … if we get it heritage-listed now we can’t change underneath the church.”
Catholic priest Niran Veigas is helping with the fundraising effort and says he estimates $120,000 would be needed to restore the old church.
So far $19,000 has been raised locally, but Father Veigus isn’t deterred, believing the spirit of the Tiwi people will prevail.
“It isn’t the structure, it isn’t the building, it is the hearts of the Tiwi people and their strong faith,” he said.
“How 80 years ago, people, without having much of the tools, they could build this building — that made me to think that Tiwi people are very strong people.”
Sister Anne looks to the old church as a canvas to her long life on the Tiwi Islands and said she’s “praying for a few more years” to get the job done.
“That church means so much to me and I think it means so much to the older Tiwi, but if we don’t fix it up, it’s not going to mean anything to the younger ones,” she said.
“I think that some of the old boards of the church that are a bit loose, I can go inside and say ‘look, I feel the same, some of my bones are a bit loose as well’.
“We’ve grown old together.”