MOUNT ST. MARY’S

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 98, 19 January 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

MOUNT ST. MARY’S

The Greenmeadows Mission

A REMARKABLE HISTORY

Story of Reconstuction

For eighty years now, Mount St. Mary’s has been known in Hawke’s Bay as the Mission Station, and the Mission Station it will remain, though it is not a mission and hardly a station, even if by station you mean a place devoted to the pastoral care not of souls, but of flocks of sheep and herds of cattle.

TN ISSO Father Lampila, with Brothers A Basil and Florentin, were sent from Wellington to establish a permanent station in Hawke’s Bay. Their boat was driven from its course and they were landed at Turanga-nui (Gisborne). They laboured for some time there till Bishop Viard drew their attention to the fact that they were working outside the territory assigned to the Marist Fathers. They then worked their way south along j;he coast through Wairoa and established themselves at Pakowhai, near the Ngaruroro River, making the last part of their journey by boat up the Tutaekuri, and one of its tributary creeks. A raupo whare there was the mission station till 185 S, when the fortune of inter-tribal war made it necessary to seek a new location. A section was selected on what is now Church Road, Taradale, but to meet the wishes of the then Commissioner of Lands, Mr. Tiffen, this was exchanged for an area of 326 acres of rich toi-toi land on the Meanee flat and 80 acres at Jerviostown, a little nearer Napier. The land was purchased from the Crown at the

The Work Goes On.

has given in the mortgages which it is now called on to bear. It is a long road that has no turning and th® mission still looks to its land as its earthly hope for the future. The main source of revenue has been the ten acres of vineyard. The first mission vineyard was planted by Father Lampila when he established himself bymistake at Turanganui. Business has been to all intents and purposes suspended since July, 1929, and it was with some trepidation that the market was recently tested. The response, however, soon allayed all anxiety. Its old customers had not forgotten the mission. But the real work of the mission, is not wine-making nor farming, but the education of priests for the Marist Society in New Zealand, Australia and the .South Sea Islands. The house was built up by the early French missionary priests and brothers, but is now staffed in the main by New Zealanders and Australians. Built on Hillside. Mt. St. Mary’s is built on the side of the. hills which flank the Heretaunga

Plains about five miles from Napier. The handsome buildings are set in & frame of varying greens—meadows and vineyards, willows and pines, shot here and there with the gold of the acacias, the deep violet leaves of the Bougainvillia and the bright red of the flowering gum, above banks of ivy geranium—while the whole picture stands out boldly against the khaki of the dan-thonia-covered hills. It was here the earth-wave rolling over the soft silk plains first met the shock of the rockbound hills. No man-made solidity was of any avail in the clash of those titanic forces. The first message of the disaster to reach the outside world contained the words, “All buildings de-' molished,” and indeed that judgment was confirmed and emphasised by builders and architects who visited the in-!

stitution. Everything must come down.' If that were so, then the Mission was! doomed. The work would start again | in a small way in a safer district, but; the old historic Mission would be ai thing of the past. But, as the repre-! sentative of this paper learnt when he visited the place, the Mission had a stronger hold on its home than the! foundations of its buildings. The stu-! dents were hospitably received elsewhere. but the lay brothers were em-) phatie in their desire to remain where ; their life’s work had been spent.

The actual work of restoration was begun by two old and infirm members of the community. While others were engaged in the care of the injured and the endless tasks necessary for bare existence, they—quite unnoticed and quite unauthorised —had set to work with wedges and piles and restored the little chapel in the smaller of the two houses devoted to their use. It was not set square, it was not plumb, but it was solid, and the daily round of life could again radiate for them from its accustomed centre. The mission had taken a fresh grip on its soil. Then, too, there eame the news of help from outside —messages of sympathy and encouragement with which they were inundated, donations, some small, some great, all generous and all of infinitely greater -worth than their monetary value. If those to whom the mission was not home could do so much for it, surely it must be saved. And it has been saved. The key to the position was the threestory ferro-concrete wing which had just been compleetd and which comprised refectory and kitchen aecom-