This house, which has been in Penola for more than a century, can be seen from the main drag. It’s now used as a hay shed for horses, but it was once a home that was given to locals and refugees to use for free. 

These two Franciscan Sisters of St Anthony visited Penola on their way from Adelaide to Melbourne in January. Sisters Lisle and Luneme are both originally from the Philippines, but both speak the sisterhood’s common tongue, Italian.

Penola’s historic district is made up of sandstone and whitewash buildings and this style seems to have been adopted as de rigour around town. This now closed service station is a prime example. 

Luke Mills (front) attends mass at the Penola Catholic Church. Luke runs the Aussie Camino, an eight-day walk from Portland, SA, that touches on sites related to Saint Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison-Woods. For more info go to: www.aussiecamino.org

Penola’s Catholic Church. 

Currently Father Peter Fountain leads mass at the Penola Catholic Church three times a week. 

Penola’s first house was built in 1850 by Christopher Sharam, who came to Penola to set up his blacksmiths business.

Australian Geographic writer Natsumi Penberthy walks past one of Penola’s many places of worship. 

Peter Rymill, founder of Rymill Estate winery, at his Coonawarra vinyard just outside of the Penola township. The Coonawarra is famous for its red dirt and Peter himself coined the one of the names for the region, the Limestone Coast, named for the underlying bedrock of the area. 

Guy Detot is a local artist and owner of Detot’s Le Max Gallery, named after a famous Penola resident poet and publisher Max Harris. Guy made the reliquary for Mary MacKillop, Australia’s only saint. A reliquary is an object or container that houses a relic of a saint – often a piece of hair, bone or even clothing. 

In the historic district of Penola locals share in the spoils of a communial herb garden. 

Penola is right on the border of South Australia and the region there is well known for lighning strike fires. Dirlls for the volunteers at the Country Fire Service are held weekly. 

Many locals volunteer at for Penola’s branch of the Country Fire Service, young and old, male and female. 

Claire Larkin runs the full time volunteer staff at the Mary MacKillop interprative centre.

The two story mansion at Yallum Park was finished in 1880, and in June 1881 Prince George and Prince Albert were entertained here. 

Owners Anne and Andy Clifford walk down the central staircase of their private residence, Yallum Park. 

Andy Clifford’s Grandfather William A Clifford bought 2258 acres of Yallum park including the two-story homestead in 1914. Of that, Andy (pictured) used 1800 acres is still used for beef farming. 

Andy’s grandaughter and grandson have the run of the place, and play surrounded by origional wallpaper designed by influential 18th century British textile designer and social acitvist William Morris. 

Finished in 1881, this historic house hosted two of Queen Victoria’s sons Princes George and Albert Victor. 

A Mary MacKillop toile designed by a local Penola resident is used to make quilts and curtains at MacKillop centres as far away as northern Sydney, but it is in short supply these days as a limited amount was made. 

Sister Sue McGuinness, a Sister of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, reads at a Thursday mass. Most ‘Brown Joeys’ no longer wear the brown habit from which they got their moniker.  

A replica of the reliquary that Guy Detot made for saint Mary MacKillop with a few strands of her hair encased at its centre. 

Penola’s Catholic Church lit up in the calm right before a storm.