"John Hawes, priest and architect, arrived in Geraldton in 1915 after a varied life in England and America until he was ordained. He had been accepted for the diocese by the first Bishop of Geraldton - Bishop Kelly. Here he designed and built St Francis Xavier's Cathedral. He was later appointed to the Mullewa-Yalgoo parish. He built many smaller churches in this diocese, but his special joy was his own church in Mullewa. Hawes eventually left Western Australia for his old parish in the Bahamas, where he intended to become a hermit." - Epigraph to Philip Salom's poem Hawes.
