Mary McBride
Mary McBride is the visual arts specialist at St Joseph’s Tobruk Memorial School, Beenleigh. She is an accomplished artist, graphic designer and photographer.
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Mary’s passion for visual arts is evident throughout St Joseph’s School. She expresses her spirituality through various art forms and mediums. With a strong Josephite identity, Mary McBride has breathed life into the story and wisdom of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop throughout St Joseph’s school grounds, celebrations and events.
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In 2009, Mary travelled with Sr. Jenny Scari rsj and Principal, David Boulton, to Melbourne and Portland and Penola in South Australia on a pilgrimage to seek the spirit of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. The experiences they encountered and stories they heard became inspiration for the contextualisation of the Catholic Identity of St Joseph’s, Beenleigh. The art installations, banner boards, and bespoke art work has embedded the story and wisdom of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop throughout the school.
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Year Six children design and create unique ceramic crosses that become a treasured memento of their time at St Joseph’s. Students produce hand-modelled, glazed ceramic lady beetles that are used to bless visitors, special guests and new families. Walking around the school you will encounter St Mary’s dog, Bobs, as well as evidence of the abundant love streaming from her providence bag. No visit is sweeter than one to Sr Jenny’s Cuppa, a tradition honouring the hospitality of the Josephite order and the subject of an art installation at the back of the hall.
Mary McBride is always there with her camera at the ready to capture the special moments at St Joseph’s. She keeps the spirit of Mary MacKillop alive through art and story. No one visits St Joseph’s without leaving with a little blessing from Mary Mackillop. She is the heart of St Joseph’s.
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Mary Mackillop Pilgrimage
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By Mary McBride
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We left Brisbane on Sunday 9th May in the year of the canonisation of Mary MacKillop, bound for Melbourne and South Australia. We were pilgrims journeying together in the footsteps of Blessed Mary. Apart from this journey being, personally, a spiritual one I was also there to record the process in a very visual way. I am a photographer and I was going to document our experiences in images and bring them back to our school community to share.
Armed with cameras and accessories of questionable value, as Ansell Adams would say, I undertook this task. Everywhere we went I was looking through the lens recording our story, seeing it through my eyes but also endeavouring to see it how Mary MacKillop would have viewed it. We stood where she would have stood and looked at what she would have looked at and I tried to capture the environment, the landscape. Imagining, in some cases, how things would have been over 100 years ago.
Sally Mann, an American photographer, said that photographers open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future. We saw evidence of Mary’s history but also saw the legacy she left behind in the work of the Sisters of St Joseph today – Mary MacKillop’s future. It was good to know that we were part of that future also.
We met some incredible people on that journey filled with the spirit of Mary. As Sister Colleen O’Dwyer, our guide, would say, some ‘mighty’ people. Colleen was a ‘mighty’ person herself.
We stood at the edge of the ocean at Port MacDonnell in South Australia and imagined Mary standing there waiting for a boat to take her to Adelaide. There isn’t much there now. What would have been there then? We had spent hours in a car travelling from Melbourne. Mary would have travelled through rough country in a coach or less. Such distances and women travelling on their own! What stamina they would have needed to endure the conditions. Endure it they did and more...
I saw the beauty of the landscape - the colours of the vegetation shimmering across the surface with almost a silver glow, the blue of the water, almost cobalt blue in parts – and I marvelled, as Mary would have marvelled. I thought that, no matter what her mission was, she would have relished in God’s beauty and it would have made her heart sing.
We stood at the site of Mary’s birthplace in Melbourne before a memorial stone. It was a cold day and the place was devoid of any sort of pomp and ceremony. I was almost disappointed. Then I thought ‘Mary wouldn’t have wanted the fanfare’. She was a down to earth woman, humble and devoid of an ego to warrant an ostentatious installation. We quietly laid flowers on the site and prayed.
We travelled to Penola, the place of Mary’s first school and experienced the hospitality of the Josephites there. I stood in awe of the Red River Gums standing so tall and majestic. Did Mary look at these very same trees in her time? She rode on her horse across the plains from the station property where she lived to church for mass on Sundays. You could almost see her there if you looked hard enough. You could almost feel her exhilaration.
A pilgrimage isn’t just about the journey. It is also very much about the travellers. I will always be grateful for the precious company of my fellow travellers –Sr Jenny Scari, David Boulton, Michelle Koszarycz and Sr Colleen O’Dwyer. Such easy companions on the journey. ‘Gratitude is the memory of the heart’. Such memories and what a privilege.
