Fr James Fitzgerald January 1944 - December 1951 was appointed on 12th February 1944. By this time the Parish had grown to almost 500 including 70 children at the school. Building a church and school and then paying for them is one of the most significant aspects of Australian Catholicism. Fr. Fitzgerald started work on the church debt and he attacked it with a series of glory box raffles. He then turned his attention to the much needed school and ran fetes and raffles to that end. In the Report of Episcopal Visitation in 1945 he stressed the need for a new school. The report lists 25 baptisms, 15 marriages (the youngest bride was sixteen) and seven funerals in the previous three years. The church debt was 400 pounds. Archbishop Gilroy pronounced "everything satisfactory".