FR Denis Long has memories of taking up pick and shovel to toil with his parishioners building Our Lady of the Way Church, Petrie.
That was almost 45 years ago when he was a young man in his first appointment as a parish priest.
“I’d get up in the morning and work on the church before having a shower and saying Mass,” Fr Long said.
He would sometimes be back labouring under floodlights with parishioners who there after a day’s work.
“Some would only have four hours’ sleep before they’d have to be up for work the next day,” he said.
Fr Long said it was a delight to see the church built, and he was proud of the end result when it was ready for opening in 1970.
Now retired, he served in Petrie parish for 10-and-a-half years, and said it was “close to his heart”.
“It was a wonderful community, because they were all in the same boat working for the one thing,” he said.
“There was a great spirit there (and) there’s a beautiful spirit there still at Petrie.
“The parishioners were wonderful to me. I can never thank them enough.”
Fr Long said much of the work in building the church was done by volunteers “because we didn’t have a lot of money”.
He said the growing parish “couldn’t even pay interest on loans”.
When he started in the growing parish in 1968, the parish school had “already outgrown the original building”.
The original building at the school had sliding petitions and there was a chapel at one end.
“A work sacristy, during the week, was the nuns’ lunch room and the priest’s sacristy was the principal’s office,” Fr Long said.
That’s when the decision was made to build a stand-alone church.
Fr Long, in his memoirs, gives details of Petrie parish developments.
The parishioners had built two classrooms out of second hand materials and had them ready by the 1969 school year but, by 1970, more teaching space was needed.
The parish decided to build an industrial shed as a “temporary church” so the school could use the chapel area of the original building.
“I envisaged that when the parish could afford to construct a permanent church this temporary building could serve as a parish and school hall,” Fr Long wrote.
As a result of hard work and prayer the “temporary church”, wider than the original building, became the permanent one that was blessed and formally opened on November 15, 1970.
