The Evangelist
Catholic Church
1836
Australia's Oldest Existing
Catholic Church
MASS TIMES
1st & 3rd Sunday
of the month 8.30am
2nd, 4th & 5th Sunday
of the month 11am
Before going inside, I was thinking the 1836 year seems quite late for an "oldest" building, so I pulled a bit from the Archdiocese of Hobart website to give some background:
Until 1821, the Catholic residents of the colony - convicts and free settlers - had no priest. In that year Father Philip Connolly arrived. His flock, scattered over a wide area, must then have numbered about 1,000 people. Until 1835, the Father Connolly laboured alone. In that year, the Most Rev John Bede Polding arrived at Hobart on his way to Sydney to take up his appointment as Bishop. The Holy See had appointed him Vicar-Apostolic of all Australia. Tasmania remained part of his Vicariate until the coming of the first Bishop of Hobart, the Most Rev Robert William Willson, who landed in May 1844.
And if you're wondering where they went in those early years, from a second page Previous Bishops and Archbishops of Hobart:
The story of the Catholic Church in Hobart began in 1822 when the pioneer priest, Father Philip Conolly, built Tasmania’s first Catholic place of worship just a stone’s throw from the present [St Marys] Cathedral. Dedicated to St. Virgilius, it was a poor building of the simplest style and construction.
And there's the cemetery, which from this direction looks like a typical country town cemetery.