A country town’s ‘little treasure’ gets a new lease of life

When Win Mapley thinks of the small Anglican church in the town of Eurobin, she recalls the modest nativity play she staged in 1968.

Local kids played the three wise men. And a friend’s baby played Jesus, nestled in straw in a cane washing basket.

The church that’s born again: Alison Wren at St Clement’s in Eurobin.Credit: Jason Robins

Even now, it makes her laugh. Yes it was off-beat, but it brought Christmas to life. “It looked authentic,” she said.

The church, called St Clement’s and built in 1910, was deconsecrated in 1971 but remains dear to Mapley, as it does to many people in Eurobin, a farming community in the Ovens Valley, in north-eastern Victoria.

In the past year, its current owner, Alison Wren, has spent almost $100,000 restoring it, to run it as a wedding venue and wellbeing centre.

Mapley, a retired farmer who lived at Eurobin for 60 years until recently moving to Myrtleford, has planted zinnias around the church that should flower at its reopening ceremony on March 15, when she will help cater for 150 guests.

The wedding of Emilie Mary Walkear and William McDonald on October 24, 1911.Credit: Walkear Collection of Myrtleford & District Historical Society.

“I feel really excited and pleased with all Alison has done,” Mapley said. “It means it’s going to be there a lot longer. It’s not going to fall down. It’s like a new building.”

In the 1960s, when Mapley worked in Eurobin’s hops fields, she drove her mother-in-law, Rita Mapley, two kilometres to fortnightly Sunday services.

After the church closed in 1971, its new owners, Rupert and Josie Saines, would hire it out, and in the 1990s Mapley attended the wedding of the grown-up baby “Jesus” from her 1968 nativity play.

Wren, a former police officer and flight attendant who now runs a bed and breakfast in an adjacent 1980s house, said she was captivated by the church before buying the property in 2021.

“It was never going to fall down on my watch,” she said.

The weatherboards were rotten, there were no downpipes and the floorboards were bowed and termite-infested.

Wren and a local tradesman repainted the exterior in cream with red trim, restored a “beautiful” walnut altar rail, and cleaned the pink and green stained-glass windows.

Wren, who has Parkinson’s disease, says the project has given her a sense of purpose.

Win Mapley gardening on Sunday outside the church where she worshipped in the 1960s.Credit: Alison Wren

“It’s something I wanted to do not just for myself but for the community,” she said.

She loves hearing stories about the church, including one related to its first wedding, between Annie Greer and Mark Lowerson on March 15, 1910.

According to Annie’s 1942 obituary, the night before the wedding, Mark was helping to finish construction of the church.

But all was well, with the local paper dubbing it “a very pretty wedding”.

A wedding photo of Annie and Mark Lowerson, who were the first couple married at St Clement’s, on March 15, 1910.

The couple’s granddaughter, Lois Fitzpatrick, says the family story she heard was that it was the very morning of the wedding that Mark cycled 15 kilometres from Myrtleford to Eurobin to help finish the church.

Fitzpatrick said it was wonderful the church had been restored and would be used for weddings.

“I think it’s a little treasure, and it would be sad to lose it,” she said.

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