St Michael’s Catholic Church, Teralba-Booragul
Researched by Clive Read, 3 January 2008
Catholics were holding services in Hodge’s Hall in Teralba in 1902 (NMH 26/2/1902). Hodge’s Hall, near the Great Northern Hotel, was built by the hotel proprietor, John Hodges.
Around 1903, The Primitive Methodists in Teralba sold their church to the Catholics (Colonies of Heaven, DH Lightfoot & AJ Radford). St Michael’s Catholic Church was in Railway Street, near Teralba Station. Church records indicate that it wasn’t dedicated until WWI. (Diocesan Property/Archives Office 26/9/2007).
After purchasing land in Booragul in 1961, St Michael’s opened in Primrose Street in June 1963 in a renovated hut from Greta Army Camp. Another hut from Rathmines Air Base was erected and renovated and stood behind the church to serve as a hall (Westlakes Advertiser 21/1/1981). The Teralba property was sold.
A new St Michael’s Church, a brick building in Ranclaud Street Booragul, was dedicated on 30/3/1985. The former church building (the Greta hut) was occupied by the St Vincent de Paul Society whose volunteers operated the second hand business. In May 1998 the Ex Rathmines hut serving as a hall was destroyed by fire (NH 18/5/1998). A new brick hall was later erected on the site.
This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License