(1887-1979)
The
financial crash of the 1890s took The Mentone Coffee Palace down with
it, and enabled the Sisters of St Brigid to acquire a fully furnished
home in 1904 for £2050 for a school. In 1933 it was named Kilbreda College.
The second principal of the school, who was appointed in 1927 and remained
in the position until 1965, was the Irish-born Brigid Bourke, who had
taken the name Margaret Mary on entering the Brigidine Novitsat at Albert
Park in 1910.
Margaret Mary Bourke was a woman of exceptional culture and independence
of mind. Educated at the Ursuline convent in Brussels, she had followed
the normal school routine in the mornings, while receiving special tuition
in the afternoons in French, Italian, physics, astronomy and botany.
Having decided to enter the religious life, she set sail for Australia
and enrolled at the Teachers’ Training College and the University of
Melbourne in 1908. She graduated with first class honours.
Bourke believed strongly in the right of women to education and in
their leadership potential. Her own scholarship in a specific educational
field was honoured in 1971 when she received from the Italian Consul
a medal, struck in Rome, acknowledging her pioneering work in Italian
language education in Australia.
One of Kilbreda’s best known alumnae is Morag Fraser, newspaper columnist
and editor of Eureka Street and books including Save Our ABC (1996)
and Seams of Light (1998).
