Their first convent and school was a small slab church where they taught children up to fourth grade.

Within a few years and after the completion of a building project, they offered accommodation to the first boarders.

The school and boarding facilities expanded through the years with young women being educated to Leaving Certificate and, later, Higher School Certificate level.

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The high school section of St Joseph’s closed in 1967 and the boarders travelled each day to the Diocesan Catholic Girls’ High School (now MacKillop College) in Bathurst.

However, students continued to live at St Joseph’s College, Perthville until the end of 2017.

St Joseph’s Primary School closed in 1972.

This year the writing of the history of the college has been undertaken by myself, an ex-student.

I am seeking information from any ex-students of the college, but especially from descendants of the first pupils of the school and the first boarders.

In particular, I am looking for memorabilia of any kind – photographs, exercise books, reports, letters, certificates, artworks, needlework and all varieties of manual work.

Among the recorded names of the first boarders are girls from the McKenny family, Rose Snooks, two girls from the Millhall family from Cow Flat, the four daughters of a Mr Terry from Bathurst, two Dawson girls, Margaret Head, Mary and Ellen Hanrahan, Nora Dwyer, M. Buckley and Eliza Mulhall.

Among the recorded day students of the school are Mary Kent (married name Jones), Edward Bourke, Rose McFadden, James Keegan, Elizabeth Punyer, Rachel Chaney and children from the Turnbull, McGrath, Gleeson, Gummer, O’Regan, Pearce and Healy families.

I can be contacted on 0439 938 504 or at mariecrowley@bigpond.com