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| Watercolour painting : Our Lady of the Way Grotto, St Columba’s college, Springwood. Local Studies collection, Blue Mountains Library "The Grottos in the grounds of the former St Columba’s Seminary and their access tracks have historical significance at the State level as examples of elaborate facilities created in bushland for Catholic devotional activities. They have aesthetic values at the State level as rare examples of successful integration of constructed and natural features for spiritual purposes. The grottos and their access tracks also have social value at the local level for those priests educated at St Columba’s and the older local parishioners who recall the active use of the site. The once high social values of the site are beginning to be rediscovered by local Catholics. St Columba’s College was opened on 4/10/1909. The first students began study in 1910. Father Joiner wrote in a letter that ‘the Bower’ was discovered by the students on St. Patrick’s Day 1910. However, this could be a reference to the second (St. Joseph’s) Grotto. In Lourdes France in 1858 visions of the Virgin Mary were experienced by (later Saint) Bernadette. Pope Pius X made February 11 an international Catholic feast day, commemorating this appearance of the ‘Immaculate Conception’, in 1907. It appears that, in the early years of St Columba’s, Marian devotion by the teachers and students led to the construction of a replica of the Lourdes Grotto in the seminary grounds and the building of an elaborate walking track to access it. The first dated photograph, by Harry Phillips, was published in 1917. This photo shows an introduced willow tree at the grotto that could well have been planted in about 1910. In 1927 local parishioners erected 14 ‘Stations of the Cross’ along this track with stonework and flower plantings surround two metre high bush pole crosses with the traditional images of Christ’s last days attached to the intersections of the crosses. There was a revival of interest in the Grotto by local and Sydney Catholics after Bernadette’s canonisation in 1933. To the N.E. of the Seminary a second grotto, ‘St Joseph’s’ was constructed with a less elaborate track to it. The Catholic Bushwalking Club had been looking for a site for a shrine to the club’s spiritual patron ‘Our Lady of the Way’ since 1947. Enthusiasm for this project probably rose after Pope Pius XII raised the status of Mary among Catholics with the declaration of the doctrine of ‘The Assumption’ in 1950. In 1953 St Joseph’s Bower became ‘Our Lady of the Way Grotto’ with an official blessing and the replacement of the statue of St Joseph with a newly commissioned marble statue of Mary. This grotto was ‘decommissioned’ due to vandalism in 1982. Vandalism at the Lourdes Grotto had been reported since 1923 and eventually its statue was removed. The Lourdes Grotto track is unique for the amount of stone which has been carried into the site to line the track, probably from the same quarry used for the main building and for the elaborate dry stone walling around the grotto. Two wooden bridges, a ‘summer house’, extensive exotic plantings and numerous religious statues of saints, angels etc were further additions to the site. The religious significance of the site was revived in 1997, with parish priest Eugene Stockton conducting a ‘Ritual of Reconciliation’ there". (Blue Mountains Heritage Register Review 2016)  Postcard from Local Studies collection |
The Lands Department indicated a willingness to grant permissive occupancy of the land in Rocky Creek but doubts were raised because of the possibility of vandalism. Other sites were explored and eventually a Club sub-committee recommended a grotto in Blue Gum Swamp Creek, Springwood, at the outer edge of the St Columba’s College property, then the minor seminary for students for the priesthood. The site was known to the students as St Joseph’s Bower.
Providence intervened when in August 1952, timber getters making a road through the bush in an effort to get timber out of Lynch’s Creek, mistakenly cut a road into St Joseph’s Bower. The Spring that followed was dry and Club members took advantage of the conditions to place the statue in position in the Grotto on 30th November 1952. It was officially blessed by Monsignor Duane on Sunday 27th September 1953 in the presence of a large gathering of Club members.
It is perhaps significant that the formidable task entailed in the planning for the installation and the actual installation of the statue at the Grotto involved a large contribution from the late Jack Murphy. After the tragic death of Frank Cooper in New Zealand early in 1955 and Jack Murphy’s in Glenbrook Gorge later in that year, plaques were erected at the shrine site (as it came to be known) in their honour.
After the installation, in September of every year until 1983, the Club honoured Our Lady with Mass at the shrine site followed by a picnic. By 1983 however, concerns were being expressed as to the safety of the statue: regrettably, the Club was spending little time each year in visiting the shrine site. A motion was put and after discussion it was passed, not without strong opposition, that the statue be removed from the site and transferred to a safer venue. The venue ultimately decided on was the property formally owned by Fr Coughlan, ‘Wooglemai’, near The Oaks.”
References: The Catholic Bushwalker, Fifty Years. Barrett, Jim, 2008.
Article by John Merriman, Local Studies Librarian, Blue Mountains Library (revised October 2026)
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| Jim Kohlhardt, his cousin Alison and her father Howard Roper taken about 1956 in front of the Catholic Bushwalkers' memorial at St Columba's. The location may be Our Lady of the Way Grotto. Photo from Frank Hawkes. |
Article by John Merriman, Local Studies Librarian, Blue Mountains Library (revised October 2026)
