In truth we hadn’t gone to the library merely as tourists. We had gone to find Valiant Women: Letters from the Foundation Sisters of Mercy in Western Australia, 1845–1849, by Geraldine Byrne. Geraldine was yet another of Ros’s co-cloister nymphs from the Golden Age of Perth Catholicism and was expecting us for dinner that evening. It seemed to Ros that we could only be the richer as historians and the more gracious as dinner guests if we spent the remainder of the afternoon acquainting ourselves with her friend’s work. I didn’t disagree. What else would ever have got me interested in the W.A. Sisters of Mercy between the years already mentioned but good old social obligation? So I sat looking out of the window on the fourth floor, imagining Perth before the millionaires had got at it, before the Aborigines had been dispossessed of it, before even the Catholics had built their convent schools all over it, while Ros whispered me extracts from Geraldine’s book.

The letters told a rich, fantastic tale of misplaced missionary zeal, of heroism and altruism and impertinence, but above all of the most bizarre expectations and conjunctions. Sister Ursula, writing from the Elizabeth which set sail from England in 1845, described how the ship resembled a little city – a little holy city, she must have meant – having aboard a Bishop’s residence, a Convent of Mercy, a Benedictine Monastery, a Congregation of French Priests of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a College of Ecclesiastical Students, and a school of the English language, ‘the duties of these establishments being regularly performed every day’. All this – one Bishop (Irish), seven priests (two Spanish, one Australian, three French, one Irish), one Sub-Deacon (English), one Novice to the Priesthood (French), seven student catechists (all Irish), three laymen (two French, one Italian), plus the six Sisters – for a colony of some three and a half thousand souls of which no more than three hundred would have been Catholic.

But then those figures do not include the Aborigines, towards whom the sacerdotal fleet harboured its most rapaciously philanthropic intentions. ‘They are dear good-natured little pets,’ Sister Baptist noticed of the native children. ‘They have almost completely forgotten their native language which we hope will secure them from joining their people.’ Fitted up with brand-new names, two Aboriginal boys, Francis Xavier Conaci and John Baptist Dirimera, accompanied Father Salvado to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Cava, Italy, where they were to study as Benedictine monks. Francis Xavier managed to stay alive for four years. John Baptist Dirimera a further two. But even they fared better than Mary Catherine, an Aboriginal girl taken to Rome by Sister Ursula in 1850, where she spent her time sewing and learning Italian. She died a year later in the care, for some reason, of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury.