By Wendouree: Memories 1951–1963
Australian History Memoir Regional History Illustrated Non-Fiction Spirituality Post-War Social History Christian Biography Catholicism
“By Wendouree: Memories 1951-1963” is the book collectors reach for when they want the warm, vanished Australia of post-war Ballarat. Over 343 illustrated pages, historian John N. Molony revisits the twelve years he served as parish priest in the shadow of Lake Wendouree, turning everyday encounters—footy on a frozen ground, smoky presbytery kitchens, Lenten missions in gold-rush churches—into a luminous spiritual memoir. The result is part autobiography, part social history, capturing small-town Catholic life just before Vatican II reshaped the Church and the nation.
What makes this 2010 Connor Court paperback so sought-after is the voice: Molony writes with the narrative pull of a novelist yet the exactness of the academic who would later become Professor of History at the Australian National University. Readers come for the nostalgia—tram bells, hen-and-chook parish finances, midnight calls to the hospital—and stay for the quietly profound reflections on vocation, doubt, and the Australian landscape. The 27 black-and-white photographs, many never reprinted elsewhere, are a bonus for genealogists and Ballarat locals hunting visual records of 1950s streetscapes, school groups, and clergy.
Condition-wise, this copy is clean and tight inside, with no owner names, gift notes, or ex-library marks—only light cover scuffing and a tiny dog-ear on the first two pages. It sits perfectly on standard bookshelves at 210 mm high, making it an ideal gift for anyone interested in Christian biography, Australian social history, or the spiritual formation of one of the country’s most respected historians.
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