Xavier College and St Patrick’s College have had a close relationship almost from start to finish in the history of our College, and that connection has continued beyond that time.

Back in the 1870s, student boarders transferred from SPC to Xavier where there was appropriate accommodation. Over the subsequent decades, many hundreds of students followed that path until St Pat’s closed and Xavier accepted 250 or more students in 1969.

On numerous occasions throughout the lifetime of the Colleges there were many sporting exchanges between various teams – their greater student numbers to draw from often presented a challenge for us, but we were more than up to the task and celebrated victory on many occasions. In addition to these team events, Xavier’s sporting facilities were always available to us and there are many photos of St Pat’s teams using the cricket oval or athletic track appearing in the Patrician yearbooks and elsewhere.

In more recent times, SPOCA has been collecting quite a collection of memorabilia which Patricians had retained and recognized the importance of such items. It became important to find a way of firstly bringing it all together and then finding somewhere to store it. For quite a while, that tended to be the garages of Committee members and others, until discussions began to develop between Xavier and SPOCA personnel. The outcome was a generous offer by Xavier to arrange for the large collection which we had amassed to be catalogued and stored in a purpose built facility on their site, along with their own memorabilia.

A formal “Deed of Gift” was drawn up between the two groups (SPOCA and Xavier) to hand over our material so that it can be stored in their Archive facility. The document notes that the “strongest and longest standing linkages of SPC and SPOCA are with Xavier College which was opened within 13 years of the Irish Jesuits arrival at SPC in 1865, and with which it shared APS membership and other activities, especially during the first half of the 1900s”. This document, and the custodianship of memorabilia which Xavier accepts, continues to hold the two institutions together for many decades to come. A draft copy of the Deed (file name: 187025 Deed of Gift SPOCA ...") can be seen in the Committee section of the website.

Please refer to the following weblink for further background –  https://xavier.vic.edu.au/xavier

ANZAC Mass

Another illustration of the ongoing connection between Xavier and SPOCA is the annual ANZAC memorial service. Xavier includes SPOCA and Patricians generally in their invitation to attend. Our President and others are involved in parts of the ceremony.

In recent years, after the Commemoration Service and a morning tea (supplied by Xavier), Xavier, through Catherine Hall (Archivist), open their Archive rooms to enable us to hold our AGM.