Convict Priests Bring the Mass
First British priests to come to Australia were convicts. They were Irishmen transported to New South Wales for alleged participation in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Father Peter O'Neil
The three "convict priests" were Fathers James Harold, James Dixon and Peter O'Neil. They arrived on the transports Minerva (January 11, 1800), Friendship (February 16, 1800), and Anne (February 21, 1801) respectively.
As convicts they had no official status, were even punished and were not allowed to exercise their priestly functions on arrival.
An Irish cemetery contains this monument to Father James Dixon, one of the three "convict priests" who were in Australia from 1800 to 1810. Father Dixon said the first officially-sanctioned Mass in Australia. He returned to Ireland in 1809 and died there in 1840.
By 1802, Australia's Catholics numbered more than 1700 — mostly Irish convicts transported after the 1798 Rebellion. They still had no ministering priest.
But on April 19, 1803, Governor King granted Father Dixon limited facilities and authorized public celebration of the Mass.
Father Dixon offered the first officially-sanctioned Mass in Austrlia on May 15, 1803, in the "Rocks" district of Sydney.
Governor King, who gave permission for the first public celebration of the Mass in Australia. Angered by the Irish convict’s rebellion at Castle Hill in 1804, he immediately withdrew his sanction and forbade any public expression of the Catholic Faith.
In March, 1804, following the Castle Hill Rebellion, permission to celebrate Mass was withdrawn.
Unable to perform their duties, and having eventually gained their freedom, the three priests returned to Ireland. Father Harold, the last to leave, departed in 1810.
Except for 1803-1804, when Father Dixon ministered publicly, Catholics prayed in private and formed secret cells of the Faith. Authority was occasionally defied when one or other of the convict priests secretly administered the sacraments. When the last convict priest had gone, the pioneer Catholics faced the Dark Age of 1810-1817, in which there was no priest in Australia.