On 2 February, Kyabram Parish closed the doors of St Sebastian’s Church, Merrigum for the last time. Just moments earlier, the Church had been overflowing with parishioners past and present who had come to give thanks for the 122 years of their Church at a decommissioning Mass presided over by Bishop Shane Mackinlay and concelebrated by Fr Uday Marneni, Parish Priest of Kyabram.
While attendance at Mass had dwindled in recent years, with only a small number of regular worshippers, St Sebastian’s remained Merrigum’s last living Church. It now joins St Matthews Church (Anglican) and Merrigum Uniting Church, contributing to the historical landscape of the town.
Over the past two decades, the decline in attendance, coupled with rising costs for maintenance, insurance and other bills, made it impossible for the parish to continue operating the church. The decline reflected broader societal changes, including secularisation, rural population shifts, and the impact of technology. Some parishioners noted that many now seem to prefer travelling to nearby Kyabram or Mooroopna for Mass.
St Sebastian’s was built with a bequeath from a local Merrigum Hotel Keeper, John Sebastian Smith who died in 1901. Interestingly, John Smith was an Anglican and, as there was already an Anglican Church in town, he bequeathed land and £3,400 for a Catholic Church to be built in Merrigum. Impressed by this gesture of generosity and ecumenicalism, Bishop Reville suggested that a memorial window in John Smith’s memory be installed above the altar.
In April 1902, architect Augustus Andrew Fritsch* visited the Merrigum site and drew plans for the Church, and a call for tenders to construct a brick church at Merrigum soon followed.
In November 1902, Bishop Reville laid the foundation stone dedicating the Church to the honour of God under the invocation of St Sebastian.
In February 1903, St Sebastian’s Church was opened by Fr Thomas Mulqueen, the first Parish Priest of Kyabram, because Bishop Reville was overseas at the time and the Vicar General, Fr Sylvester Barry, was detained in Bendigo.
The Merrigum District lies within the traditional lands of the Bangerang Aboriginal peoples. The name “Merrigum” is believed to come from an Aboriginal word meaning “small plain,” a fitting reminder of the deep history beneath the town’s modern layers.
For more than a century St Sebastian’s had been a hub of community life. It was a place not just of worship but of connection, hosting picnics, dances, and tennis matches. Generations of families had walked through its doors, bound together by faith and tradition. For locals, St Sebastian's has been a small church with a big heart, which had nurtured strong family and community ties through the generations. Over the years, the church community has looked after many farmers, factory workers and townspeople and welcomed post-war migrants.
Though St Sebastian’s may now be closed, its spirit and the memories it held for the people of Merrigum will endure.
More about Merrigum
The Merrigum District came within the lands of the Bangerang Aboriginal peoples. Prior to the 1869 Land Act which was intended to ‘put the small man on the land’, Merrigum was part of a large squatters run. It is thought that its name was derived from the Aboriginal word meaning small plain.
The Merrigum township was established in 1886-87 when the Tatura to Echuca section of railway line was constructed and when J.S Smith, the benefactor mentioned above, purchased land near the railway line and built a brick hotel.
The irrigation system in the Goulburn Valley was completed by 1890 and this enabled the growth of Merrigum, as dairy farms were extended and orchards and lucerne crops were established. The Merrigum butter factory opened in 1895 and, within a month, was producing 4 tons of butter a week and exporting to England.
Census data shows that Merrigum achieved its peak population around 1954 with 726 residents, many of whom were post-war immigrants: thus, people from the predominantly Catholic countries of Italy, Holland, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Germany and France, settled the area cementing Merrigum as a multicultural township.
The Carnation Milk Factory opened in 1952, taking over the butter factory site, and was the largest employer from the 1950s until the 1980s.
*St Sebastian’s Church remains a building of local historical and aesthetic significance. The building is a fine and substantially intact example of a rural brick church, of which there are many throughout the municipality. It is, however, distinguished by its association with prolific Melbourne-based ecclesiastical architect, Augustus Andrew Fritsch, and is probably one of his earliest works.
