CATH NEWS REPORT: When Sister Bridget Harley left Australia for Ethiopia in 1967, she had already had a long career in the Daughters of Charity order and thought she was going to Africa for only four years. It was 38 years before she came home, leaving behind a mighty legacy of education in the poverty-stricken country.
Delia Harley, who has died aged 91, was born on July 24, 1919, in Broxburn, near Edinburgh, the third of seven children of Owen Harley and his wife, Mary O'Donnell.
In mid-1926 economic conditions in Scotland led the Harleys to emigrate to Australia and make a better life for their then five children (aged four months to 10 years). They were not ''£10 Poms'' but financially unassisted and proud to offer energy, character and courage to their new country.
The family settled initially in Lithgow, where Owen worked with the state mines. With one breadwinner and an increasing number of young mouths to feed, life was hard.
Then, in October 1931, things became worse when Mary died of cancer, aged 38, leaving Owen and seven children, aged 18 months to 15 years. When Mary and Owen knew that she was dying they agreed that come what may he would keep the children together. He did, with the help of daughters Josephine, 13½⁄ and Delia, 12.
Delia's schooling began with the Sisters of St Joseph in Lithgow. Later she went (on a bursary) to Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, and then to teachers' college at Sydney University on a scholarship. She served her bonded period at government schools in NSW before entering in 1943 the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, an order dedicated to helping ''the poorest of the poor'', taking the name Bridget.
Her first 24 years with the order were spent teaching disabled children in Melbourne, serving as directress of novices at Eastwood and, finally, teaching and providing pastoral care in the Woolloomooloo/East Sydney area from 1956 to 1966.
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