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Tasmanian Anglican

December 2003

 

 


A photo from 1953 showing the bulldozer and volunteers moving the wooden church to its new location in Maydena.

 

The little church that moved

by Jean Hayes

 

 

In 1934 the little wooden Anglican church at Fitzgerald in the upper Derwent Valley was destroyed by a bushfire. It was rebuilt in 1936 by George Roberts on land donated by Mary Pitfield.

In time the main population centre became the town of Maydena, some twenty kilometres up the line as the Australian Newsprint Mills began logging in the adjacent rainforest area. It was decided that if the people didn't come to the church, the church would have to go to the people.

Bulldozer

Accordingly, in December 1953, using volunteer labour, the church was loaded onto a sledge and pulled by a bulldozer along a firebreak next to the railway line to Maydena, where it was installed on a piece of land donated by the Newsprint Mills. Dedicated to St Boniface, the church is still in use, though of late services have not been very frequent, and the people of Maydena will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in December of this year with a shared evening meal followed by an ecumenical carol service.

The church came complete with a bell, which has since been identified as one of those missing from Port Arthur, and has since been returned.