Former St Mary’s Catholic School Castlemaine pupils, Bill and John Sikora, visited the local school on Thursday June 11 to make a special presentation of a commemorative frame featuring a collage of historic images.
The local twins started at the school in Grade Prep, 65 years ago, back in 1961. They attended St Mary’s for six years and then completed two years study at St Gabriel’s Secondary College which was located just across the road.
Bill told the Mail some time back they were invited to attend an after-school function at St Mary’s School and had the opportunity to meet teachers, children and parents. They also had the opportunity to view some of the work completed by students at the school.
Bill later said to his brother John, on the way home, that something was amiss at the school. When asked what he meant by that, Bill noted that today the teachers at St Mary’s are all lay teachers but during the early history of the school they were taught by the Sisters of Mercy.
“Being nuns they wore the traditional Sisters of Mercy habit and long dresses. I believe the last of the nuns finished up around 1974,” Bill said.
Over the years Bill had collected many photographs of students and the nuns and displayed these during the combined St Mary’s and St Gabriel’s School Reunion in 2019.
Former students which attended the reunion proved a fantastic help in recalling names and captioning the photographs in the collection.
Keen to acknowledge the contribution made by the Sisters of Mercy, Bill and John, sorted through this collection of images and passed these on to a local picture framer to create a collage of images celebrating this historic connection for posterity, and gifted this to the school.
The frame now hangs proudly in the school foyer.