Parish History

Halfway through the 20th century, the Syndal district was poised on the cusp between its older small farming and orchard role on Melbourne's fringe and burgeoning suburbia. Young couples contributing to the post-war baby boom found this part of the Shire of Mulgrave attractive on several counts. A single line railway from Glen Waverley linked with electric trains at East Malvern for feasible commuting to the city, where jobs were abundant in businesses of every type and in a proliferating public service. Locally there were factories, schools and other institutions set to expand on open sites.

House blocks on subdivided farmland were relatively cheap, with some set aside for returned servicemen. The area was pleasantly undulating and threaded with small creeks. Access streets might be raw slashes of dirt or mud, but main routes like Blackburn and High Street roads had a central strip of bitumen affording reasonable road links north, south, east and west.

A grocery store, a butcher's shop, the Syndal dairy, a petrol station, and Syndal primary school were grouped near the Syndal intersection by 1954, an eloquent sign of new residents flooding in. Some were New Australians, people 'displaced' by the War in Europe. From 1947 the Shire's population grew by 2000 a year to 1954, and then by 3000 a year to reach just under 45,000 in 1961, the year that Mulgrave became the City of Waverley (Monash since 1995).

Catholics among the newcomers found themselves, until January 1955, in the vast Oakleigh parish, with Fr Curran and his assistants embarking on an extensive Sunday Mass round to outposts such as Glen Waverley's forty year old St Leonard's Church, then located south of Waverley Road. Few Syndal people had a car, making St Leonard's geographically impossible, especially for pram pushers. Instead they took the train to the Mt Waverley Mass, held in the Park Lane primary school, where homilies were trimmed to tie in with the return train 45 minutes later.

Syndal dairy was the venue for Saturday evening confessions (Reconciliation), which might end with pleasant social chat and football analysis but only if Fr. Curran's team (North Melbourne) had won. Otherwise he left for home quickly.

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With St Leonard's as an independent parish from 1955, and Mt Waverley working to achieve similar status in 1958, Syndal Catholics put intense effort into their Association, formed in 1954 to lobby Church authorities and build up funds. New recruits were gathered through a notice board on the station platform, giving Mass times and locations, and promoting attractive community events. For about 18 months the Ebert home in Matthew Street was the Mass venue, but with 60 families in the Association by 1956 this was nearing bursting point.

Fund raising was centred on house parties, advertised as 'a night out with a difference, close to your own home'. They might feature Bingo, cards, a spinning wheel, dancing and other attractions. A Spring fete, held on a vacant lot where Schultz supermarket was later built, built up to grand heights, notably the fresh fruit and vegetable stall.

The Ebert family bought at the Victoria Market before dawn to have the freshest produce on sale by 9am. Their eye for quality led to many pre Fete orders.

St Christopher’s Parish began on a 1.5 acre site in Doon Avenue just west of Syndal dairy, March 1957, in time for Bishop Fox to bless it following his visit to open the Mt Waverley church school.

Seeding a New Parish

It took less than four years for Syndal to grow into a stand-alone parish separate from Holy Family Mt Waverley. This was encouraged from 1959 by the well-remembered parish priest Fr. Curley. With parish classes at bursting point, he and Kevin Moloney looked to convert the Syndal building into a second school. A teacher from Thornbury, who enquired about a position in the suburb where she and her fiance were planning to build, was astonished but excited to be asked to pioneer a wholly new school.

School began in February 1960 with about 45 children in a composite class of Preparatory, Grades 1 and 2. Parents, mostly but not always mothers, were vital aides for the sole teacher, not just in class but outside where the initial play area was bare dirt in a sea of long grass and blackberry, while the ‘rather strange’ toilets were some distance away.

With income rising comfortably and a second teacher in prospect for 1961, still no priest could be found for yet another new parish in the ballooning archdiocese. For the administrator and for Syndal, it seemed prayers were indeed answered when the Pallottine Society advised it was willing to staff a parish as a complement to the training centre which the Society was building at Millgrove in the Yarra Valley. And so in January 1961 there came the famously informal arrival of Fr John Hennessy SAC, in casual dress on a 350cc BSA motorbike with his worldly possessions in a knapsack on his back and a Gladstone bag on his lap. Finding and funding a presbytery for their new priest provided some vivid and entertaining memories.

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St Christophers in the 1960s

The Pallottine ethos with its emphasis on ‘community for mission’ chimed particularly well with the times. The Second Vatican Council 1962-1965 had a similar emphasis on renewed lay participation. Fr John brought Syndal into the vanguard at once. His congregation was memorably startled by being told in one of his first homilies that ‘YOU are the Church’. By July a sound system was being installed to prepare for the new dialogue form of Mass, and music began with the purchase of a foot-pedalled harmonium. Betty Dixon, one of the founding four organists, remembers how Fr John’s own sure voice coached people in new Mass music and hymns.

The early church-school of St Christopher's

‘Bursting out all over’ was the theme of the 1960s. St Christophers school expanded to take all primary grades, with development of its grounds and adjuncts like the famed Bot Spot. It had cost just over 2000 pounds to divide the hall into three with folding partitions, the section near the altar being kept as a chapel. Every Friday evening for a more than a decade, teams of parish men moved furniture, packed away school equipment into wall cupboards, cleaned the hall and then reset it for school after the last Sunday Mass. The labour and the camaraderie became ingrained in parish memory.

Regional secondary colleges opened Avila in 1965, Chavoin in 1966 and St Thomas More in 1968 all requiring personnel and funding input from parishioners. The underlying focus, nevertheless, was getting a church built, which in turn pointed up the need to acquire more land. It took Fr Hennessey nearly five years of ‘shoving with the help of the Lord’ on levels up to Federal government departments and the Diocesan funding office before the present 5 acre site was secured. Architect Paul Archibald was commissioned and planning for the new church began.

(Pictures show the church-school of St Christopher's, the new church under construction, and the blessing of the new church by Cardinal Knox in 1973.)

To be continued!

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