Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/262

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248
THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

of St. Augustine in the Piazza del Popolo in Eome, Dr. Ullathorne pourtrayed so vividly the need of labourers in the distant Australian mission-field, that Father Goold did not hesitate to volunteer his services on the spot. It was this providential rather than accidental meeting in the Eternal City, that gave to the Church in Victoria its pioneer bishop. For, when in the course of a few years the Port Phillip district of New South Wales became prominent and promising, the Holy See, on the recommendation of Dr. Polding, decided to erect it into the bishopric of Melbourne, and to appoint Father Goold as its first prelate, though he was then but thirty-six years of age. After his consecration in St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, Dr. Goold undertook the long drive of 500 miles through the roadless bush to Melbourne, and accomplished the distance in nineteen days. He will live in history as the first man who had the hardihood to essay that then perilous, but now comparatively easy feat. Many Catholic citizens of Melbourne went a long way into the country to meet their new bishop, and he was escorted into his cathedral city by an imposing cavalcade. He found his diocese extending from the River Murray to the Southern Ocean, manned with less than half a dozen priests, and possessing but a few scattered places of worship to meet the requirements of so large a district. He immediately commenced the work of organising the church in a land that, he foresaw, was destined to make marvellous strides in the immediate future. In the early years of his episcopate, he did an enormous amount of rough bush travelling, the era of roads and railways not having yet arrived, sleeping out at night camped under the gum-trees, officiating in primeval huts during the day, and personally visiting