Sr Anne Gardiner OLSH, 92, heads campaign to save Tiwi Islands church

From Cathnews

Sr Anne Gardiner OLSH has one wish while she’s still alive – to see the first church where she served on the Tiwi Islands, off the coast of Darwin, restored to its former glory. Source: ABC News. (Audiences who watched the report on ABC TV heard Sister Anne referred to as ‘Former nun’!! They have corrected this for the article, well worth Googling, she is now a ‘retired’ nun.

At 92, the retired sister 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 St Therese Church — a charming wooden church built in 1941 in the community now known as Wurrumiyanga. 

Sr Anne 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.

Services at St 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.

Bishop FX Gsell MSC

Parish priest Fr 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 Fr Veigas isn’t deterred, believing the spirit of the Tiwi people will prevail. 

The ceremony at the end of the film, Top End Wedding, was filmed in the old church with many locals as extraz. St Anne and Fr Pat Mara MSC, PP at the time both have credits at the end of the film for advice

“It isn’t the structure, it isn’t the building, it is the hearts of the Tiwi people and their strong faith,” he said.