LEADER OF THE pack
By Joe Novella Photos Yanni
T
here’s a lot more to the Reverend Father Geoff McIlroy than a life of prayer and preaching. Sure, as the Parish Priest at Saint Macartan’s in Mornington, Father Geoff spends a lot of his time doing God’s work, but when he does get some spare time, he often swaps his priestly vestments for leathers and heads for the wide-open roads of the beautiful Mornington Peninsula on his Harley Davidson Softail Heritage Classic. I asked Father Geoff what his parishioners think when they see him in his riding gear. “First impression, I suppose, is I look a little scary, like a rebel maybe, not as a Priest should look like. But then they see it’s me with the big fluorescent cross on my back, and they know I’m riding for pleasure on my day off.” Father Geoff’s life journey into the priesthood, and eventually to Saint Macartan’s in December 2019, has been one full of twists and turns. “I came out from England in 1968 aged five with my father, mother and sister and we lived in Sydney for four years before moving to Keysborough, Melbourne. It was a new estate with no church. So my family and others became the foundation members of the new Keysborough Parish of the Resurrection.” continued next page...
E ssence
12 | PENINSULA
May 2021