The lives of Grammar Women are richly diverse, and alumnae of the School pursue their interests, skills, and personal calling to all corners of the earth.
Grammar Woman, Sister Mary Magdalen OCD, is a Girls Grammar alumna who followed her faith and conviction to the Carmelite monastery in Papua New Guinea, staying for almost 53 years as a Sister of the Carmelite Order.
Born Desley Frost (1960), she attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School in 1957 and 1958, completing 3rd and 4th Forms. Sr Mary Magdalen remembers her time fondly, saying ‘our class had a good spirit, and I am still in touch with a few friends made at Grammar’.
Her interests led her into a range of co-curricular endeavours: wintertime sports—including running, captain ball, leader ball, tunnel ball; school choir; drama club; and the bookbinding club, where she was ‘one of four members—a very select club indeed!’
In her young adult years, Sr Mary Magdalen worked in Life Assurance, while continuing to follow her passion for the performing arts—she was part of the Brisbane Choral Society—took singing lessons at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, and performed with the Twelfth Night Theatre.
At 22, in a significant step in the journey that she says had been ‘developing internally since she was about six’, she became a Catholic. In July 1966, she flew to what was then Papua, to enter the Carmelite monastery on Yule Island—roughly 60 miles west of the capital, Port Moresby.
During her six-year novitiate, which took place within the monastery, Sr Mary Magdalen was acquainted with Melanesian and Micronesian people and culture—learning hymns and songs in English, Pidgin, and other local languages; how to make cord for traditional ‘bilums’ (carrying bags); and local dances from PNG and Kiribati.
‘Our novitiate, like the community, was multicultural, with all the riches and precious learning occasions inherent in that! I especially had to learn new skills, like how to husk a coconut—cut it open and grate the flesh, then squeeze it to extract the milk (for cooking); or how to cut grass (oh, the blisters!) with the long knife everyone used (a sarif, necessary for the sort of terrain there—rough grass on hills and in gullies).’
Over the decades, the Carmelite monastery served the community in various ways: primarily through prayer—the raison-d’etre of the Order; making goods such as embroidered and smocked baby clothes (in the earlier years); both hand-painted and screen-printed church vestments; craft-work in leather; as well as letterpress printing of cards; and screen-printing of table-cloths to earn their living—and even using the bookbinding skills she gained at Girls Grammar to bind Altar Missals for the convent.
Sr Mary Magdalen says that in all interactions, the interior life was essential in having something of worth to offer others. People from all walks of life would come to share troubles or problems and young Sisters or seminarians would come to share questions about their prayer life.
‘As St Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “…our life is a matter of faith, not of sight”. The Carmelites who have gone ahead of us are an inspiration on the way, and each generation has plenty to learn from the experience of those who preceded us.’
After relocating from Yule Island to Port Moresby in 1972, the monastery closed in 2018 as its membership had reduced to four remaining Sisters. Reflecting on her journey, and the PNG Carmelite Order, Sr Mary Magdalen said she had a greater understanding and empathy for refugees, and people displaced from their homes around the world.
‘We had to leave our home, and though we gave away most of what was in the monastery, we were able to choose at least a few things to bring with us, and had the security of knowing we would be accepted by our Sisters in other Carmels. They, the displaced peoples, left their homes without any security or belongings.’
‘Yet for all of us living on this earth, there is only one Security, to Whom we go at the end of our lives. Whatever our achievements, the only one we can take with us is who we have become. Our whole lives are a steady, unfolding preparation for that total transformation.’
Sister Mary Magdalen (Desley Frost, 1958)
Sr. Mary Magdalen (third from the left) with a Mendi man in local dress, and other missionaries
Sr. Mary Magdalen (back row, third from the left) with other Sisters of the Carmelite Order
