Short History of the School

St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School possesses a proud heritage and a 126 year old tradition of community-building and service in the Blayney region.

The origin of the school and the foundation of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph's are closely linked.

The Australian-New Zealand Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph sprang from the community which gathered around Father Julian Edmond Tension-Woods and Mother Mary Mackillop at Penola, South Australia, and lived according to a rule which Father Wood wrote in Adelaide in May, 1867. From this distant beginning a foundation was made at Perthville, on 16th July, 1872, and in 1881.  Eight years after the foundation of the Convent at Perthville, four sisters arrived in Blayney to open a School.

The sisters laboured among the people with true charity, humility, dependence upon God’s providence, and much selfless love to spread the Good News as apostolic followers of Christ. In the present day absence of active sisters in the school community, the role of continuing the challenging work commenced and carried on by the sisters now rests in the hands of dedicated and committed lay teachers.

This courageous beginning and the intermediary years provide St. Joseph’s with a vital and on-going sense of mission and a dynamic and creative response to the challenges of our times. Perhaps the following extract, taken from the "First Draft Federation Constitutions, 1969", draws not only upon the achievements of the past but gives substance and direction of the future:

We were founded with vision and courage precisely to undertake a new experience, to live as religious had not lived before and to work under conditions that they had not experienced before. The first Sisters of St. Josephs sensed the spirit of a new world in a way that has left its mark...