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pp. 141-142.
“.....At the pretty town of Woollongong [Wollongong] is the port of the district, and an artificial harbour has been cut in the rock. A neat church has been erected at ‘Dunlop Vale,’ but is, as some think, disfigured by a cross, which is stuck over the entrance, and certainly looks rather forlorn. Some of the settlers are much scandalised by its presence as if it were a crucifix, and, thinking it savours of Popery, refuse to subscribe to the building. A wooden church is in progress at Kiama, twenty-five miles south of Woollongong, and is also adorned, or disfigured, as people may think, by the same emblem. This is the last church on the coast south of Sydney. In the year 1836 there were only thirteen churches in the colony, and thirty-seven parsonage-houses [rectories or glebe houses]. During the four years that Ulladulla was my headquarters, we were once visited by a clergyman of the Church of England, once by a Presbyterian minister, and once by a Roman Catholic priest. The Presbyterian minister came to solemnize a wedding, and was conducted up and down the coast by a regular cavalcade, as also was the Roman Catholic priest when he made his progress, which he did carrying a very suspicious-looking black book in one hand. If the settlers can and will subscribe half the expense of building a house of worship and maintaining a minister (of whatever denomination), the Government supply the residue; but farmers in the bush cannot pay down money, and, therefore within the so-called nineteen counties (to say nothing of the districts beyond the boundaries), men live and die, and children are reared, without any degree of religious instruction. At one place, the settlers offered to pay in kind, one subscribing a pig, and another a bullock; but tithes in kind were not acceptable to the clergy. Indeed, it was not to be expected that the wishes of the settlers could be gratified on such terms, as the clergyman might have thus been left destitute of some absolute necessaries. I have known a medical man receive a cow-fee; and cow-points, at whist, were once not uncommon in the bush. Cheese-hits, at backgammon, I have myself played. Having been led to mention the clergy, I may add, that the colony acknowledges no state church, but all denominations are on an equal footing. The Roman Catholics have, however, this advantage; they have the only ring of bells in the colony; and these used to strike up, in Sydney, just as the Protestant bishop began to preach. The congregation fancied this was done to annoy them. ‘The tinkling, the jingling, and the clangour,’ excited their indignation, and, for a time, ‘their only conversation was ding-dong.’ But the fact was, the bells were new; the Roman Catholics were glad to be let out of chapel, and flew to the belfry as a child to its new toy. Ultimately, the practice was discontinued.”
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