St John the Baptist

(Random walkies)

Last week the old wooden buildings were gone from the 1914 brick church grounds. They're not in my Hist List and the NSW Heritage Office has only this to say about them:

"Timber framed school buildings and hall on site of some note."


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View from Blackwall Road. Pre demolitions.


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View from Regina Close of the back of the church and the gap where this building was.


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A strange little building on the corner across from the chuch, facing the Thai restaurant.

I think it's a classroom and was an extension of the school (housed in the old wooden buildings recently demolished) before the school was moved to Woy Woy South.


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Don't know the current status of the Presbytery or whether it's occupied at the moment. I do know there's a new Presbytery being built or built out at Springfield.

This Presbytery is immediately to the left of the little fifties building above.


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Immediately to the left of the Presbytery above.

Can't find any reference to this old house in my notes or online. I've a feeling it was or is used as a some sort of boarding house and called Mary McKillop House. It seems to be empty now. No idea what it's fate is.

The Mary McKillop connection is through the Josephite Sisters who run the Catholic Primary School at Woy Woy South. McKillop was their founder and the school was once in the grounds of the church. This building is part of the church buildings on the Blackwall Road-Victoria Road corner.


The trapped miners & little Sophie

Little Sophie was run over on a crosswalk (zebra crossing) on Friday and is still in a critical condition in hospital. The driver has been charged.

Sophie is now five. When she was two she was badly burnt when a car ran off the road and into her child care centre. Quite a few kids were hurt and Sophie lost both feet and ear and a couple of fingers.

Sydney Morning Herald article.

The miners trapped a kilometre (0.62 miles) underground after a rock fall in a Tasmanian mine are still down there after 12 nights.

The last bit of the rescue tunnel is a bastard. The rock is the last couple of metres (6.56 feet) is as hard as buggery and far harder than expected. The last section of the tunnel has to be done by hand with small drills & pick axes to due to the danger of another rock fall. It's 1.5 metres (4.92 feet) wide and goes upwards. So it's a bloody tricky width and angle to work.

The tunnel will come out in the floor where the miners are trapped. They're in the cage of the machine they were operating and there's a very small space just outside the door of the cage. That space is where the tunnel will come out.

Due to the tiny work space and the hardness of the rock, this last tiny section of tunnel could take all of today to complete. The rescue has to be slow and careful in case of more rock falls.

The miners are still in good nick and good spirits. They've been getting food, air and newspapers through a narrow tube drilled the day after the fall. One of their mates, Larry Knight, was killed in the fall. These two guys are sitting there in a small steel safety cage with a big slab of rock on top of it.

Sydney Morning Herald article.