Over the past year, the Murwillumbah and Tweed Heads parishes have bid farewell to three of their smaller church communities in Uki, Burringbar, and Bilambil. While the closures followed a thorough process of discernment and prayer, the buildings leave behind a rich history. Catholic Life speaks to the parishioners who called these churches home, to celebrate the faith and vibrancy that lived within their walls.
St Brigid’s Church, Burringbar
For 121 years, St Brigid’s Church was at the heart of village life in Burringbar. Baptising generations of local families and serving as a home for the Sisters of St Joseph, it was known as a simple but well‑kept yellow timber church.
Few people embody the church’s story more than 89‑year‑old Leo Kelly. Baptised there as a baby, Leo learned the organ at the age of five and went on to play the church’s liturgies there for over seven decades, including the final Mass before the church’s doors closed.
“It was a real privilege to be asked to play the last Mass. I’d been there all my life, so it meant a lot. St Brigid’s was a beautiful old wooden church. It was always being repaired and looked after — people truly cared about it.”
Aileen Lewthwaite was one of five sisters who was married at the church between 1946-58. Aileen was married in 1958 by Fr Bede Parker.
“It was Easter Saturday and it was a wet day,” Aileen says. “We were going to get married at midday, but we had to put it back a bit, because most of the people coming were farmers — we had to have it all over and done with, so the farmers could go home by three o’clock to do the milking!”
St Camillus Church, Bilambil
Opened by Bishop Carroll in 1934, St Camillus’ served the Bilambil community for nearly 90 years. Jenny Kirby’s parents had been going to the Bilambil church for over 25 years.
“It was a very small, close-knit community. There was usually only about 30 to 50 people, so you really got to know the other parishioners. My parents were very sad when they heard the church was closing, especially Mum — she’s 101 now — because they’d been going there for so many years.”
For others, the church was the setting for major sacraments. Colleen Gordon, who moved to the area from Sydney, felt an instant connection to the building’s humble charm that she had her wedding there in 1998.
“It reminded me so much of the church where I grew up. It was small and intimate, and we knew immediately that was where we wanted to get married,” Colleen says. “The church was full of our family and friends; it was beautiful.”
Colleen attended the closing Mass of the church and said she was moved by what Bishop Greg Homeming mentioned.
“The bishop said that it isn’t the physical building that makes it a church, it’s the people inside it. That comforted me. We have our marriage certificate, our faith, and it means that it really doesn’t matter where you are.”
St Columba’s, Uki
Nestled at the foot of Mount Warning is St Columba’s, which opened in 1911. For Christine O’Brien, the church was a place of worship for three generations of her family. Despite the church feeling like “a freezer in winter and a sauna in summer,” it was where our community gathered to praise and honour God, and then “shared a cuppa, a bite to eat, and plenty of stories.”
Christine was involved in the music ministry for decades, often playing the church’s foot pump organ. She recalls one Sunday in 1990 when a pedal snapped mid-Mass, forcing her to pump “furiously” with one foot to keep the music going.
“Thankfully the organ was repaired a few days later when Helen Dobbyn and I successfully managed to replace a broken piece of strapping with a length of old car seat-belt material,” Christine says. “Amazingly, the organ is still operational over 30 years on!”
She also remembers a humid Christmas Eve when the congregation grew so large that Mass was celebrated in the shade of the trees outside. “Our trusty pump organ was carried outside by a couple of men and once again provided the musical accompaniment,” Christine recalls.
“St Columba’s was a space in which generations of God’s People came to be together,” she says. “Regardless of our numbers, we praised God together, we sang, we were joyful, we shed tears; we celebrated Baptisms, Confirmations, First Holy Communion, weddings, funerals, ecumenical prayer services and more. At times we just came — bringing our emptiness, our fears, our hopes, our dreams.”
While the physical doors have closed, Christine, along with others from St Columba’s, now worship at Sacred Heart Church, Murwillumbah.
