Carmel Around Australia
The Carmelite Nuns of Varroville
By Carmelite standards, the past fifteen years or so have been rather eventful ones for us. In the latter part of the 1980s we closed two
Monasteries, one at Dulwich Hill and one at Parkes in the Central West of NSW.
The Monastery at Dulwich Hill had been established in 1911, after
many painful vicissitudes, by an intrepid community of French Carmelite Nuns, who came from a Monastery in Angouleme, arriving in Sydney on
30 July 1885. The Prioress of the founding community was Mother Mary
of the Cross, a saintly women who died just five years after their arrival in Australia, leaving the small struggling group at what seemed, from the human perspective at any rate, the worst possible time.
 Providence had an equally challenging task ahead of the community that remained in Angouleme. Due to deterioration in the political climate in France in 1901, the Sisters went into voluntary exile in Enghein-les-Herinnes in Belgium, rather than risk any interference in their life by the Government of the day. When it became possible for them to return to France the Carmel settled in Tourcoing, because their Angouleme property had been illegally seized in their absence and auctioned by the Government. They suffered much hardship during the Second World War, as of course did many others caught in the path of armies of Europe. At the invitation of Bishop Fox, nine sisters set out for Parkes, arriving on 10 July 1949. They were told not to bother bringing vases, because they would see no flowers or grass, but only drought.
So, when negotiations were begun in 1984 between the two Carmels then
at Dulwich Hill and Parkes, to look into the possibility of merging
the two communities, it was as if we had come full circle. The two parts,
separated in 1885, were being put back together again in a new venture,
which we hoped would be a new beginning for us. But, it was certainly
a costly exercise. Costly, not only in terms of practical effort, but costly in terms of the emotional wrench of leaving well-loved homes. We moved into our present Carmel in July, 1990. We had put a lot of thought into the design of the Monastery, trying to get a nice view and sunlight in all the rooms. We used sky-domes to avoid the dreary dark corridors that are inevitable in large buildings.
The move also gave us the opportunity to review our living of the life in a radical way. While remaining faithful to what we see as the essential aspects of the charism, we have tried to look at other elements in a new light, following the guide of the Second Vatican Council. However, renewal is not a task that can be accomplished in a matter of days or years, but it is a daily effort to live out our lives in allegiance to Jesus Christ, in accordance with our Carmelite Rule.
The Prioress
Carmel of Mary & Joseph
St. Andrews Road
Varroville NSW 2565.
Telephone 02 9820 3048
Facsimile 02 9820 3711
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