Biography

St. Mary Magdalene Church - George Town

Christian worship began in northern Van Diemen’s Land with the arrival of the first settlement. Lieut. Paterson’s company had no ordained minister so he asked Edward Main, a former lay missionary, to read the first service - the first official religious ceremony in the north.
The first Anglican minister at George Town was Reverend John Youl who conducted services in a small brick church that also served as a school. This was located on Cimitiere Street opposite Regent Square. After John Youl’s departure from George Town in 1824 there were difficulties in finding a replacement minister and services virtually ceased and the church and schoolhouse fell into a state of disrepair.

A former blacksmith’s shop on Anne Street which was converted into a church between 1838 and 1841. Apparently, this building was the one pictured in the Fereday painting, and was poorly built from the beginning, a storm in 1854 badly damaging the roof. The steeple had been removed by the late 1850s, and by 1881, a decision had been made to build a new structure because of the poor foundations of the old church.

The replacement weatherboard church was opened in 1884 and consecrated in 1886. The church and parish struggled through times of growth and decline, as outlined in the linked booklet by the late Peter Cox, but in 1994, the weatherboard building was destroyed in a disastrous fire. A surplus dormitory building had been bought from the nearby aluminium factory, around the time of its completion in 1955, and converted into a parish hall. This building had to be used for services of worship until the new, modern St. Mary Magdalene building was dedicated in September 2000. 

The George Town congregation became part of the Riverlinks Parish, established in 2004, and incorporating smaller centres on the East Tamar, along with St. David’s Riverside, St. Oswald’s Trevallyn, St. Barnabas Newnham and St. Aidan’s East Launceston. The Riverlinks Parish itself was merged with St. John’s Launceston and the parish of St. Leonard’s in 2019 to become All Saints Anglican Network. At the time of writing, St. Mary Magdalene and Barney’s (St. Barnabas) Newnham form “All Saints North”, one of three administrative centres of the Network.