The Grim Years 1788-1800
From 1788 to 1880 there was neither a resident priest nor a Catholic Church in the penal settlement of New South Wales.
Sydney Cove As it appeared in August, 1788. The primitive beginnings of the largest city in Australia are seen at left and right of the picture.
The Grave at St. John's, Campelltown, of James Ruse, convict, who planted the first wheat in Australia. He married a Catholic and was converted before he died.
Catholics were not only deprived of a priest, but they were also threatened with reduction of their already meager rations if they did not attend the Anglican Sunday service.
On November 30, 1792, five Catholic settlers at Parramatta petitioned Governor Phillip's assistance in their efforts to officially obtain the services of a Catholic priest. Their petition was presented to the authorities by Phillip on his return to England. But it was ignored.
It is believed that Mass was celebrated in Port Jackson by a Catholic chaplain on one of the two Spanish ships, Discovery and Intrepid, which arrived at Sydney on March 12, 1793. It is also possible that the Spaniard said Mass in a temporary observatory, which the commander of the expedition set up on Benelong Point.
A "Memorandum About Sending Two Catholic Priests to Botany Bay," dated 1796, is in the Public Records Office in London. It shows that repeated attempts were made to get Catholic priests officially appointed to serve in New South Wales. All efforts were unavailing.
Thus no facilities for Catholic life and worship existed in Australia at the turn of the nineteenth century. For baptisms, marriages, or burials, Catholics had either to use the services of the Anglican chaplains or do without.