The first peoples and traditional custodians of the Woy Woy Peninsula are the Darkinjung and Guringai peoples. For thousands of years they exercised careful stewardship of the land and waterways. Their lives, law, and culture were shattered with European contact (beginning here as early as March 1788).
Today's church seeks to acknowledge the pain and dispossession of this past and, in working with the growing Aboriginal community in the area, to do its part in bringing about just Reconciliation and a positive future which honours all.
As European settlement on the Central Coast proceeded, today's Anglican community originally grew out of the Church at Gosford, with the first clergy visiting by boat from 1826 onwards. Woy Woy itself then expanded considerably after the coming of the railway in the 1880s. The year 1912 saw Woy Woy created as a Provisional District and it became an independent parish in 1945.
The original church still stands on Blackwall Road but is now used as an Environment Centre. For as the population grew, it was replaced by the present church of St.Luke's Woy Woy in 1975, and by St.Andrew's Umina in 1985 (superceding the Ocean Beach Hall which was used for worship from 1934). There were also at one time churches in the suburbs of Ettalong and in Patonga (from which two stain glass windows were removed to St Andrew's when this was built).
There have been nine Rectors since 1945, including Cedric Dickson (1951-1981), George Browning and Arthur Jones (who became bishops in Canberra & Goulburn, and in Gippsland, respectively), and most recently Murray Johnson (1992-2005).
In the midst of the many changes of today, we give thanks for the spiritual life of the past and look forward with faith and expectation to the future.