News & Photos

Father Julian Tenison Woods Celebration 16-18 November 2008

A happy group of travellers arrived at Penola by bus and car on Monday 17 November, as part of an Adelaide-based celebration of Father Woods’ life and achievements as priest, educator and scientist.  

Father Woods’ great-grand-niece, Pam Tobin of Sydney, organised the programme, which incorporated a Woods family reunion dinner attended by Bishop Greg O’Kelly.

On this occasion he also launched Yrs Most Afftly, a book of Julian’s letters to his brother and sister-in-law, Terry and Sarah Tenison Woods. Published by the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Brisbane, it features an introduction and meticulous annotations by Anne Player rsj, and illustrations by Sylvia Louth rsj.

Woods’ scientific achievements were highlighted by Dr Elery Hamilton-Smith at Waverley homestead, Willunga, and by Christopher Goudey here at Penola. Both scientific gentlemen had been integral to our 2007 celebration of Woods’ arrival here in the bush 150 years previously.

The celebrants, who included Sisters of St Joseph from South Australia, New South Wales and New Zealand, as well as Woods family members and friends, enjoyed a delicious lunch prepared by our volunteers.

They then boarded another volunteer’s school bus, for an historical and literary tour of Penola and immediate environs, with Margaret Muller on the microphone and Norm Tobin at the wheel.

On their return they gathered in the Schoolhouse, where Judith Georgeson sang ‘A Woman for Today’. They viewed our exhibitions, visited the church, and strolled down historic Petticoat Lane before their informal dinner at Heyward’s Royal Oak, where Mary MacKillop had met Father Woods on his return from Tasmania in 1876.

It was a happy and inspiring day for us all.

After a visit to Father Woods’ tree at Limestone Ridge the next morning, the celebrants returned to Adelaide via Robe and the Coorong, having spent two days in the district where he had lived for ‘ten happy years of many sunny memories’.