A LONG JOURNEY

New Zealand Tablet, 6 July 1911, Page 1259

A LONG JOURNEY

. Catholics in .the city and in the country districts who live within a hundred miles of their priest, can scarcely realise (says the Adelaide Southern Cross) the difficulties, experienced in time of sickness by the Catholics in the Port Lincoln parish, some of whom live 560 miles from others, and, at times, the same distance from their priests.- - The difficulties experienced by the late Mr. John Cash, furnish a typical case. His first difficulty was to find the whereabouts of the priest. This was settled by a reply to Streaky Bay from headquarters in Port Lincoln, stating that he was somewhere in the Franklin Harbor district. Immediately after receipt of this reply, another difficulty, quite unexpected, arose the telegraph line became interrupted near Sheringa, rendering telegraphic communication with Cowell impossible for the greater part of a day. Eventually the telegram got through to Cowell, only to find that Father Kelly was thirty miles away in the back country between Clove and Arno. ‘ Deliver message at all costs ’..settled that difficulty; a motor car was secured and the message as delivered to the priest at Mr. Leonard’s home. Mass was here celebrated for the dying man; then the priest, having thrown aside all superflous weight, fodder, etc., set out alone towards the western sandhills. To race death with a pair of horses for 170 miles cross-country Was. how the proposition. Everything depended on the pair of horses, lor there is no house, no sign of habitation on -the lonely heavy sandy span of 62 miles between Cleve and Terre. At midnight the pair had passed through the sand, and before snniise they had pulled up at the Talia eating-house. * Money couldn’t buy those horses now,’ said the priest, as he unharnessed the pair, after travelling 112 miles in nineteen hours over a villainous track. At Talia Messrs. H. Crowder and P. Boylan supplied a fresh pair for the thirty-three-mile stage to ‘ Oakfront,’ the house of. Mr. Denis Murphy. Here all difficulties were ended, for that largehearted pioneer, all the year around keeps a pair of Father Jocrgensen’s horses, in the pink of condition, ready at a moment s notice to run to the far West Coast. There was not ten minutes’ delay; little time was taken for the last twenty-five miles over a splendid, road; the well-known chestnuts soon dashed into Streaky Bay, to the delight of the dying man, who from the verandah was the first to see ami announce the arrival of the priest, who had been driving continually for 29 hours. The last Sacraments were ad! ministered eight hours before, death came along. At tho rune raj next night in Galea, Father Kelly referred to the Imautitul ending to the well-spent life of his dead friend who had endeavoured during life to be faithful in every particular to the teachings of the Church. He was rewarded at the end by overcoming all difficulties, and, living tor a day longer than the doctor declared possible, he was enabled to receive the last Sacraments when, humanly speaking, such seemed impossible.