Download or read book Saltwater Hearts written by Jeff McGill and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of one of Australia's oldest girls' schools, published for their 150th anniversary. Some nuns hid behind convent walls, but not the Good Sams. In 1873, Mother de Sales Maloney started teaching at the small timber hut by St Xavier's Church on South Beach. To start with, the sisters had some trouble taming the barefoot colonial girls of Wollongong, but in a decade, St Mary Star of the Sea girls were regularly passing the annual university entrance exams. Over the decades the school grew and added buildings, the curriculum expanded, and skirt hems rose and fell. Through world wars, strikes and depressions, St Mary's encouraged young women to challenge social constraints of their time, while championing compassion and social justice. The magnificent frangipani that adorned the entrance to the College has toppled over, and the last of the nuns has retired. The Benedictine spirit lives on in a school community that changes with the times, nurturing girls of all backgrounds and helping them grow into women of faith and integrity. This is the story of one of the finest and oldest schools in Australia.