“If you’re overseas and you can’t find a Catholic Church, it’s okay to go to an Orthodox Church”, my Scripture Teacher told me at the age of eight (or thereabouts). It’s one of my strongest memories of Saturday morning “Scripture Class” (in preparation for my First Holy Communion).
At the time, I had no idea what an Orthodox Church actually was. Growing up in Lismore, the most exotic things got when it came to religion were Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons. Oh, and one of my cousins married a Jehovah’s Witness, which was pretty exciting and much discussed in my large, extended Catholic family. Oh, and I did go to Presbyterian Sunday School with my cousins for a while, though I got a little bored with it after a while.
But back to the Orthodox Church. After not knowing what they were then, thirty-something years later I have three within close proximity. In fact, I’ve got a LOT of churches in my neighbourhood, and one of the things I’ve been wanting to do for a while is document the many places of worship which I have locally. And so today, as I went for a walk around the area in which I live, I began to take photographs of some of them.
A quick check with Google reveals there are many, many more places of worship in Surry Hills which I’ll eventually get around to taking a photograph of and including here.
Thus, this page remains a “work in progress”.
So many churches in Surry Hills is slightly ironical now.
Not really. It’s not just poofs who live in Surry Hills. And even then, there’s quite a few of us who believe. And besides, all of the atheists (they’re a vocal bunch for such a small group of people) seems to live in the inner west and other chattering class suburbs… :)
We’ve got a hill song church close by also.
http://jamesobrien.id.au/2006/07/13/surry-hillsong/