Peninsula's Past: Men who made their mark

In celebrating International Men’s Day today, we take a look back at two ‘men of the cloth’ who left a lasting Peninsula legacy – Reverend John Sutton and Monsignor Bartholomew Frawley.

IMAGES: Courtesy of City of Moreton Bay. Reverend John Sutton_RLPC-000 000293. Monsignor Frawley_RLPC-001 001817. 

SOURCES: History Redcliffe; Peninsula Phenomenon: The Metamorphosis to Southern Cross; Monsignor Frawley: The Mastermind of St Bernadette’s.

Reverend John Sutton

In 1860, at the age of 43, he and six other clergymen, accompanied new Bishop for the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane Reverend E W Tufnell on a voyage to Australia from England.

His first assignment in Queensland was to establish a Church of England in Gladstone. He returned to Brisbane in early 1861 and married Frances Johnson, whom he met on the five-month voyage to Australia.

Reverend Sutton is said to be responsible for the location of Redcliffe’s ‘Central Business District (CBD)’.

He bought 21 acres of seafront land in September 1865. This purchase sparked his lifelong passion for the Peninsula’s development.

The land reportedly cost £21 and was on the northern side of what is now called Klingner Rd and extended west from the foreshore to Oxley Ave.

In January 1869, he bought two more farming properties on the Peninsula, one of which is now the site of the Redcliffe CBD.

Within a few years, he had acquired all of the seafront land between MacDonnell Rd and the mouth of Humpybong Creek. Most of it was bought at a cost of £1 per acre.

Rev Sutton had a small house built on the land, which he and his family used when they visited the Peninsula, but his intention was not to develop it into a farm.

In 1878, he had the land sub-divided into small allotments and streets. In May, the Brisbane Courier published an advertisement for the auction of “60 large marine villas, each having a frontage to the Bay”.

The result was the sale of a number of allotments where hotels, boarding houses and shops were soon built. It was the forerunner to a land boom from 1880 which lasted several years and resulted in farms being sub-divided into housing estates.

Sutton sold more of his land during this period, including 602 “marine residence sites” in 1886.

He and his family moved to Redcliffe when he retired in 1882.

In 1885, the family had a new house built in front of their existing home at Redcliffe. It was named Hurley House and later Sutton House. In February 1886, he began holding Anglican church services at the house and launched a building fund for a church. He had already donated land for the structure in 1882.

From 1886-87, Rev Sutton was a member of the building committee which succeeded in establishing the Redcliffe Provisional School. He served as Redcliffe Divisional Board Chairman for two years from 1889.

In April 1897, he revived the church building fund but died on June 9 that year aged 80 years.

Rev Sutton’s name lives on in Sutton and John streets, and Suttons Beach.

Monsignor Bartholomew Frawley

Widely regarded as a caring, generous and humble man with boundless energy who could juggle numerous ventures at the same time, Monsignor Frawley shaped Catholic education on the Peninsula while ensuring his parishioners had social and recreational outlets to thrive.

The then Father Frawley arrived on the Peninsula in 1946 after serving as a chaplain, from 1941-45, with the RAAF during WWII.

Prior to that he had been a teacher at Charleville State School for three years, before entering a Seminary in the Blue Mountains to begin study for the priesthood in 1923 at the age of 19.

He was sent to Rome in 1926 to complete his theology and was ordained as a priest in Rome in 1930.

Fr Frawley was instrumental in the creation of what has become Southern Cross Catholic College, and his community-building efforts sparked much of the expansion and development at the northern end of the Peninsula.

He arrived at Scarborough as Parish Priest at Scarborough in January 1946, still wearing his RAAF uniform. At that time, there were two parishes – Sacred Heart, Redcliffe and St Bernadettes, Scarborough.

To establish who were his ‘flock’, Fr Frawley visited every house in the parish and was reportedly welcomed in homes of Catholic and non-Catholic residents.

The first presbytery was a room at the Scarborough Hotel, provided by the Lesberg family who also allowed a small building at the rear of the hotel to be used as a church.

St Bernadette’s had no money, land or assets at that time and with a small number of parishioners, the ability to finance a new parish was limited.

Fr Frawley launched Scarborough Art Unions which raised money to finance the purchase of land and a church building, as well as the parish primary school and the beginnings of the Brigidine and De La Salle complexes.

The St Bernadette’s church and school opened in 1948, Our Lady Help of Christians opened in 1950, Soubirous College in 1951, De La Salle primary and secondary in 1955, Our Lady of Lourdes in 1969 and Frawley College in 1973.

After the Redcliffe parish was centralised in the 1990s, the schools he established combined to become Southern Cross Catholic College.

Fr Frawley, a visionary man who “dreamed a dream and made it a reality”, became a Monsignor at his silver Jubilee in 1955. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1966.

While his contribution to Catholic education on the Peninsula was profound, so was his impact on the broader community.

He conducted Redcliffe’s ANZAC Day Dawn Service for 38 years, visited patients at Redcliffe Hospital every week and served as chaplain at Boggo Road Gaol in a bid to help rehabilitate prisoners.

Monsignor Frawley died in January 2002, aged 97.