“Yes, I have,” she says, in response to whether she has been part of the parish her whole life. “Well, all my 85 years, except for three years when I was first married… But then we came back to Boolaroo.” 

Eighty-five years in one parish is a story that stretches from pram to pew, from baptismal font to graveside. 

Anne’s earliest memories are of the old church on Seventh Street, where she went to school and received her First Holy Communion and Confirmation. In fact, her connection began almost as soon as she entered the world. 

“I actually was a home birth in those days,” she recalls. “Mum always told me that Dad wheeled me up in the pram up to Seventh Street to get baptised and I was three days old.” 

Three days old, carried up the hill for her first encounter with the Church that would shape the rest of her life. 

That story stayed with her. When Anne and her sisters later had children of their own, their mother would remind them: “Let your first outing with your new baby be to the church.” Faith, in the Clancy family, was not something occasional or abstract. It was part of the rhythm of everyday life. 

Over the decades, Boolaroo became the backdrop to every season Anne would experience. She was married in the current church in 1964. Two of her children were baptised there. Her parents’ funerals were celebrated there. 

And, in the hardest chapter of her life, the parish carried her family through the death of her eldest son, who died of leukaemia at three and a half. 

“We had a little funeral from the current church,” she says quietly.

“My faith has kept me strong. I relied on my faith, and my husband did too. It kept us very strong. It helped us through a lot.” 

When I ask what the parish means to her, she doesn’t search for polished language. 

“Oh, it means everything to me. Oh, it does. It means everything to me. The Church and the Catholic religion and everything.” 

“It feels like home.” 

She comes from a big family, and within those walls there have been “a lot of marriages, a lot of funerals, and a lot of baptisms.” In other words, every season of life has unfolded there – joy and grief, beginnings and endings, all held in the same sacred space. 

Boolaroo was never just somewhere Anne attended; it was somewhere she served. Her father once ran boxing tournaments at the old Lake Cinema to raise money for the church. Anne herself served as sacristan for more than 40 years, quietly preparing the altar week after week. Even after stepping back last year following a diagnosis of bladder cancer, the parish remains the steady centre of her world. 

“It’s always been there,” she says. “Always a big part of our lives.” 

She describes the community as welcoming and friendly, a parish that felt cooperative and close. But more than that, it was a place of refuge. 

“It’s been a place of celebration. It’s been a place of refuge in sad times. It’s just where I’ve always felt at home… and the peace it brings me being there.” 

When she heard the Church would close after more than a century, the loss felt personal.  

“Oh, I’m sad about it. I really am. My whole life’s there and I thought I could be buried from there… I’m really sad about it.” 

Preparing to say goodbye, she says simply, “It’s awful.” 

And still, what rises to the surface is not anger. 

She remembers her uncle, Father Joe Brennan, who was parish priest at Kurri Kurri many years ago. Before he died, he left the family with words that have stayed with her ever since: “Stay faithful to the Church and the sacraments and you will be okay.” 

“That’s what he left us with,” Anne says.

“Be faithful to the Church and the sacraments and everything will be okay. And we’ve tried to live by that.” 

When asked what the walls of Boolaroo might say if they could speak, she pauses for a long moment before answering. 

“Keep the faith,” she says. 

It feels like a summary of her life there. 

When the conversation turns to what faith has ultimately taught her about life, Anne doesn’t hesitate.  

“With God on your side you can cope with anything,” she says. “The sad times and the good times, he’s just always there.” 

For Anne Clancy, Boolaroo has been where she was baptised at three days old, where she married, where she buried her child and her parents, and where she returned week after week to find peace. 

The doors may close, but the faith that shaped her life remains.