Page 27 - Port Douglas Magazine 36

THE STORY

OF A VERY

SPECIAL

LITTLE

CHURCH

WORDS by Amie Thompson
“You simply do not take 100 years of history to the dump!”
This was Virginia Donavan’s response when she was told the old St
Mary’s church on the hill would most likely be turned into scrap and
taken to the tip. Port Douglas was growing and the Cairns Catholic
Diocese had just sold their land on Grant St, which housed the historic
St Mary’s.
Virginia, along with her friend Judi Piat, decided to band together
and rally community support to save Port Douglas’s original and
only remaining historical church. Over the next few years these two
remarkable ladies, along with many others, relentlessly persevered to
relocate, restore and revive the long and colourful history of St Mary’s
Church.
Fast-forward a few decades and it is clear, sitting across from these two
women within the very walls of St Mary’s, that the passion that they felt
in preserving Port Douglas’s sense of history is still there and as strong
as ever.
St Mary’s Church was originally built by the Catholic Church in
1880 and officially opened on 8 March 1881. In 1911 the church was
destroyed during a cyclone that devastated Port Douglas and Mossman
and later was rebuilt using the scattered debris of the original structure.
However, not all the timber could be located or reused so the whole back
wall of the church was replaced with corrugated iron.
St Mary’s remained in this state for the next 70 years, ageing and
deteriorating. Despite all this the church still held the original beauty
and charm that resonated with its long history, and so in early 1986,
when Virginia and Judi discovered that the Catholic Church was having
to sell the land to fund their new school and church in Reef Park, they
decided to act.
PORT DOUGLAS MAGAZINE 29