Top 100 Irish Australians - Irish Echo 25th Anniversary Edition

25th Anniversary Edition

AUST RALI A’ S I RI S H N E WS PA P E R

THE TOP 100 June 5 – 18, 2014 | Volume 27 – Number 13 | AUS $4.95 (incl GST)

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IRISH AUSTRALIANS

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

Congratulations to the IRISH ECHO on its 25th Anniversary Wishing you continued success FROM

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

A message from the publisher MORE than one million Irish have come to Australia since 1788. Some came in chains, convicted of often trivial crimes that were a consequence of their poverty, not their criminality.

Many more came as free settlers, looking for a better life than the one their home country could afford them.

More recently, we have come here predominantly as skilled immigrants, accepting Australia’s invitation to seek out opportunities and stay for the lifestyle.

It is a rich history. The Irish have played a significantly greater role in the development of Australia than they have in, say, the United States of America.

So much so that the Irish Australian identity has been largely subsumed into the mainstream culture. In America, the Irish are also part of the mainstream but have maintained a separateness that, in many ways, defines their influence.

Of course, there are important differences between the countries that also must be taken into account when assessing the role and perception of the Irish.

America is a republic that got rid of its colonial rulers.

Australia remains a constitutional monarchy with the flag and the crown and the monarch of its colonial rulers intact.

The Irish in Australia have thrived, despite historical challenges of sectarian isolation or jingoistic suspicion.

Too often, the story of the Irish in Australia is clumped in with British-Australian history.

How often have you heard the lazy, catch-all expression Anglo-Australia used to describe those Australians that hail from ‘the UK’?

But the Irish have their own story to tell.

It is important for us – as the current wave of Irish immigrants – to honour those Irish who came before, to know and understand their stories and to honour and celebrate their legacy. But it is also important for Ireland itself to embrace their achievements and to cherish their life stories. This Top 100 Irish Australians list puts faces and names to our diaspora.

We have chosen 100 individuals who have been conspicuous in their contribution to their adopted country. We could have chosen hundreds more.

It is a magnificent list, full of characters whose talent, imagination, fortitude and hard work helped to build this country into the thriving, wealthy, peaceful nation it is today.

Their common denominator is that they – or their parents, grandparents or ancestors – one day boarded a ship or a plane, left the country of their birth to come to this one.

That experience of leaving is one that connects the present and the past.

We, who have chosen to come here as immigrants, should draw strength from these stories as we seek to write new chapters in Irish Australian history.

Best Wishes, Billy Cantwell Publisher

CONTENTS

Top 100 Irish Australians

Page iv A–C Barlow, Mary Kate Brennan, Gerard Cahill, John Joseph

Page vi

Carmody, Kev Darcy, Les Duhig, James

Page viii

Dunphy, Myles Durack, Patsy Fahey, John

Page ix

Fitzgerald, Nicholas Gillen, Francis Hartigan, Patrick

Page xi

Hogan, Edmond Keating, Paul Knowles, Marian

Page xii

Lyons, Joseph Martin, James Minogue, Dan

Page xiii

Moran, Patrick Neeson, Doc O’Connor, Cy

Page xvi

O’Farrell, Patrick O’Reilly, Maurice Pottie, Eliza

Page xviii

Prendergast, George Rudd, Kevin Smith, Thomas H

Page xxi

Stynes, Jim Torrens, Robert Whitty, Ellen

Page xxii

Cremin, David Malone, Michael Stephens, Ursula

Barry, Redmond Brennan, Louis Calwell, Arthur

Bates, Daisy Buchanan, Nathaniel

Bourke, Richard Buckley, Vincent

Chifley, Ben Deane, William Dunlop, Eliza

Costigan, Frank Deniehy, Dan

Curtin, John Duffy, Charles Gavan

Durack, Elizabeth Dwyer, Kate Fihelly, John

Durack, Fanny Dwyer, Michael

Durack, Mary Fanning, Mick

Flynn, Errol Gleeson, Murray Healy, Mary

Foy, Mark Greene, Anne

Frayne, Ursula Hanna, Paddy

Hogan, James Francis Kelly, Isabelle Mary Lalor, Peter

Jageurs, Morgan Kelly, Ned

Johnston, Trent Keneally, Tom

MacDonagh, Oliver Mccaughey, Samuel Moran, Herbert

Mahon, Hugh Mcdonagh, Isabella

Mannix, Daniel Meehan, James

Moriarty, John Neill, Lucas O’Dowd, Bernard

Murphy, Kerry Nolan, Sidney

Narelle, Marie O’Carroll, Maureen

O’Leary, Cornelius O’Shanassy, John

O’Neill, Paddy O’Sullivan, Dr John

O’Reilly, Bill ‘Tiger’ Plunkett, John Hubert

Quinn, James Savage, Michael Stoker, Harry

Rice, Peter Scullin, James

Ronan, Mary Sexton, Hannah

Therry, John Joseph Travers, Pl Worrall, John

Tisdall, Bob Treacy, Patrick

Toohey, James Wentworth, William Charles

Jimeoin O’Sullivan, Sonia

Joyce, Alan Potbelleez

C–D

D–F

F-H

H–L

L–M

M–O

O–P

P–S

S–Z

Irish Migrants – The New Wave Kennelly, Tadhg Power, Tom

A message from the President Of Ireland, Michael D Higgins I WOULD like to send my best wishes to all involved with the Irish Echo newspaper as you celebrate your 25th anniversary.

Here in Ireland we are very proud of our diaspora. The Irish community in Australia is a large and dynamic member of that great global family.

Many have made new and successful lives in Australia; contributing to both their communities and their workplaces, while remaining profoundly connected to their Irish homeland.

Publications such as the Irish Echo play a significant role in allowing our diaspora to retain that strong bond with Ireland, and with other members of the Irish community abroad. The Irish Echo is not just an important source of news and information for the Irish living in Australia; it is also a sense of home and a valuable hand of friendship for those who may have arrived recently to your shores from Ireland.

I thank you for 25 years of dedicated service to the Irish living in Australia, and I wish you every success as you continue with your important work.

Michael D. Higgins Uachtarán ne hÉireann

A message from An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD IT GIVES me great pleasure to congratulate the Irish Echo as it celebrates 25 years since its first publication in 1989. In that time, it has acted as a bastion of the Irish community throughout Australia, playing an important part in maintaining links between Ireland and the diaspora in Australia.

Throughout its history the Echo has worked tirelessly to engender a true sense of community amongst the Irish in Australia, keeping its readership informed about community news and encouraging them to come together and get involved with Irish organisations and associations. The Echo has been an important supporter and sponsor of countless events, festivals and community initiatives. It has also kept the community up to date with political, economic and social developments in Ireland.

The Embassy of Ireland in Canberra and the Consulate General of Ireland in Sydney have a long and fruitful history of co-operation with the Echo, which is an important partner in the promotion of Ireland and Irish interests in Australia.

Over the past 25 years, the Irish Echo has evolved to meet the changing needs of the Irish community in Australia and in a world which has become, in many ways, a great deal smaller and more connected.

I am delighted that the Echo remains just as relevant today as it was 25 years ago as The Irish Exile, and would like to take this opportunity to wish Billy Cantwell and all the team the very best in the coming years.

Enda Kenny TD Taoiseach THE TOP 100 IRISH AUSTRALIANS is published by the Irish Exile P/L Editor Billy Cantwell | Contributor Pádraig Collins | Graphic Design Diarmaid Collins | Advertising Lorraine Heneghan IRISH ECHO: Email: mail@irishecho.com.au | phone: +61 2 9555 9199 | www.irishecho.com.au All rights reserved. No part of this feature may be reproduced without the written permission of the publishers.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

MARY KATE BARLOW

RICHARD BOURKE

1865-1934 Philanthropist, Women’s Activist

1777-1855 Governor of NSW

BORN in Co Limerick, Barlow (née McDonagh) emigrated to Sydney in 1884. In 1887, at St Mary’s Cathedral, she married architect John Bede Barlow and they lived at what is now Waverley College. They had two daughters and a son who was killed at Gallipoli.

She became active in fundraising for institutions designed by her husband such as the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying and St Vincent’s Hospital Nurses’ Home. In 1911, she joined the new Catholic Women’s Association of New South Wales and was president from 1914 to 1934.

Barlow supervised the opening of a library, visited hospitals and prisons and raised funds by organising lectures, social evenings, and concerts at St Mary’s Cathedral.

During the Eucharistic Congress of 1928, she presided over the first Catholic women’s conference, attended by 500 delegates who set up the Australian Council of Catholic Women.

For her work she was created a dame of the Holy Sepulchre.

REDMOND BARRY 1813-1880 Victorian Judge BARRY was born at Ballyclough, Co Cork, and had a very successful legal career that included being a barrister and judge.

However, everything the Corkman did in his career has largely been overshadowed by his part in one of the defining moments of Australian history.

Barry will forever be known as the man who sentenced Ned Kelly to hang in 1880.

Barry was brought up an Anglican and graduated from Trinity College in 1837 before being admitted to the Irish Bar a year later.

He emigrated to Australia in 1839.

Barry did a huge amount of work for Aborigines even though he rarely received a fee for his services. His interest in Aboriginal affairs lasted throughout his life.

He died suddenly on November 23, 1880, outliving Kelly by a mere 12 days.

DAISY BATES 1863-1951 Aboriginal Activist, Researcher BORN in Co Tipperary to James and Marguarette O’Dwyer, Bates arrived in Australia in 1884 where she married legendary Australian poet Harry “Breaker” Morant.

This marriage did not last long, however, and in February of 1885, she married Jack Bates, a cattleman, in Nowra, NSW. Within four months Daisy had divorced Jack and married Ernest Baglehole in Sydney, but she was soon back with Bates and their son, Arnold, was born in 1886.

She moved to London in 1894, leaving husband and son behind, and worked as a journalist there for five years before returning to Australia.

Having become interested in Aboriginal life through reading about allegations of atrocities against them in north-west Australia, in 1904 the Western Australian government appointed

BOURKE was born in Dublin on May 4, 1777, to a Limerickborn father, John, and mother, Anne, from Co Tipperary.

Educated at Westminster School and Oxford University, he spent holidays at the home of his distant relative, Edmund Burke, becoming acquainted with his friends and Whig politics.

After serving with the British army in the Netherlands and South America, he worked in various colonies.

He was appointed Governor of New South Wales when the Whigs took office and arrived in Sydney with his family on December 3, 1831.

Despite strenuous opposition, he managed to bring in civil rather than military juries in most NSW criminal cases, and reduced magistrates’ power to inflict unfair punishments on convicts. The Sydney Herald dubbed this Bourke’s “soothing system for convicts”.

A liberal Anglican, he abhorred sectarian intolerance and was sensitive to the needs of Catholics, Presbyterians and dissenters.

In 1839, Bourke was appointed high sheriff of Co Limerick, where he died suddenly on August 13, 1855. her to research the state’s tribes. Living in camp with a local Aboriginal community, Bates recorded valuable data on language, myth, religion and kinship.

She wrote 270 newspaper articles about Aboriginal life and helped move governments into action in medicine and childcare.

SIR GERARD BRENNAN 1928Chief Justice of Australia THE grandson of an Irish immigrant, Brennan was born in Rockhampton, Queensland. He did so well at school that when he finished aged 16 he was deemed too young to go to university.

So he waited a year before going to the University of Queensland to study arts and law.

Brennan was admitted to the Queensland Bar in 1951 and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1965. In 1976, he was appointed as the first President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Five years later he was made a Justice of the High Court and in 1995 was appointed Chief Justice by the Keating government.

Perhaps his best-known judgment came in the Mabo case of 1992, which recognised native title in Australia for the first time. Brennan rejected the common law doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) as offensive to “the values of justice and human rights (especially equality before the law) which are aspirations of the contemporary Australian legal system”.

LOUIS BRENNAN 1852-1932 Engineer, Inventor BORN in Castlebar, Co Mayo, Brennan’s parents took him to Melbourne with them when he was nine.

After being apprenticed to an engineer, Brennan, then aged just 22, invented a coastal defence torpedo which could be retrieved if it missed its mark.

After getting a grant of £700 from the Victorian government, Brennan patented his invention in England on September 4, 1877.

In 1880, British government experiments with the torpedo were so successful that he was awarded £6,000 a year while the invention was tested. After five years of tests the torpedo

was accepted by the War Office, and in 1887 Brennan was granted £110,000, a huge sum which caused a stir in the press.

He later worked for the British government on a monorail locomotive, a helicopter and other inventions.

In 1892 he married Anna Louise (née Quinn) and they had two children. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in January 1932 after being hit by a car

NATHANIEL BUCHANAN 1826-1901 Pioneer BORN just outside Dublin in 1826, Buchanan came to Australia as a young man with his family where he first settled in Rimbanda in New South Wales.

Just over 10 years later, Nat and his brothers Andrew and Frank joined the rush to the Californian goldfields but returned emptyhanded, at which point Nat began his work exploring the Australian wilderness. He was a great bushman and a good explorer and after years of exploring he knew the country from northern Queensland to Western Australia very well. He was a pioneer on Bowen Downs in north-central Queensland, on the Barkly Tableland in far west Queensland, on the Roper River in the Northern Territory, and on the Victoria River in the far west of the Northern Territory, while he also pioneered the trail from the Kimberley towards Perth.

When he died in 1901, he owned almost no land, but he made it possible for other men to reap fortunes on the back of what he had pioneered.

VINCENT BUCKLEY 1925-1988 Poet, Academic THOUGH born in rural Victoria, seven of Buckley’s greatgrandparents were Irish, and Ireland was a constant presence in his life and work. Educated by the Jesuits in Melbourne and later in Melbourne and Cambridge universities, Buckley’s abiding interest in Ireland’s politics, culture and history led him to spend much of his later years there.

He was appointed professor of English at Melbourne University and was central to the style of poetry which developed there in the 1950s and ’60s. His seven volumes of poetry range from the intensely personal to reflections on Ireland and its politics. He also published books of essays and criticism.

By the end of his writing career Buckley aimed to write “poetry without attitudes”, but he was a man of firmly held beliefs and convictions. He was a key figure in Catholic intellectual debate at a time when the Australian Labor Party was divided by the splitting off of the Catholic-led Democratic Labor Party. His writing on these subjects in Quadrant magazine was both polemic and influential.

In 1992, the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize was established in his honour to promote connections between Australian and Irish poets and poetry.

JOHN JOSEPH CAHILL 1891-1959 Premier of New South Wales CAHILL was born to Irish parents Thomas and Ellen in the Redfern area of South Sydney.

A committed trade unionist and champion of the ordinary Australian worker, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for St George in 1925.

In 1944, he was given the local government portfolio, and proving more than equal to his demanding duties, he set up the State Dockyard at Newcastle, the State Brickworks and supervised the establishment of the Electricity Authority which brought electricity to much of rural New South Wales.

He was elected Labor Party leader and commissioned as premier in 1952 and he won a landslide victory in the 1953 elections.

He triumphed in the 1959 elections when Labor, against all odds, narrowly clung to power and in June of that year he became the longest continuously-serving NSW premier.

In his final years he grew increasingly in public stature, receiving honorary doctorates from the University of Sydney, the University of New England, and from the New South Wales University of Technology.

He died of myocardial infarction in October 1959.

ARTHUR CALWELL 1896-1973 Politician CALWELL’S maternal grandfather, Michael McLoughlin, was an Irish Catholic who is thought to have deserted ship in Melbourne in 1847.

His paternal grandfather, Davis Calwell, was an American whose father was an Irish Protestant.

Calwell attended the Christian Brothers’ College in North Melbourne and later, as secretary of the Young Ireland Society after the 1916 Easter Rising, came under the scrutiny of security authorities.

He joined the Victorian Public Service after high school and was a prominent trade unionist and member of the Labor Party.

His first wife, Margaret Murphy, died in 1922 and a decade later he married Irishwoman Elizabeth Marren, who was social editor of the Tribune, a Catholic weekly newspaper.

Calwell won the federal seat of Melbourne in 1940 and in 1945 he became Australia’s first Minister for Immigration.

He promoted mass immigration, and sought the help of the Australian Jewish community in arranging passage for Holocaust survivors.

He became ALP leader in 1960 but was never prime minister.

He received the Papal knighthood in 1964 before passing away in 1973.

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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BUSINESS MENTORING “HORIZONS GROUP” The IACC are proud to announce the launch of their new initiative for 2014, aptly named the ‘Horizons Group’. The group was the brainchild of Bill Winter, one of our most experienced mentors within the business mentoring program. Bill is a Senior Consultant with experience managing CEO forums and during his participation on our 2013 program, he believed that a group should be established to support the young executives within the Chamber in a similar format to that of a CEO Forum. We are piloting this initiative for 2014 and hope to offer it to a wider group in 2015.

Congratulations to Billy and the Irish Echo team on its 25th year anniversary edition from the Board and members of the Irish Australian Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

The IACC also celebrated its 25th anniversary since in October 2013. The IACC was formed in 1988 as a forum for networking and developing business opportunities amongst the Irish Australian business community. We are delighted that the Chamber has continued to grow and remains highly relevant today, with members benefiting from networking and thought leadership events, together with our Business Mentoring Program. The Irish Echo recently published a story about this Program providing practical support to some of our more recent arrivals.

The Irish Echo and the IACC have many shared histories over the years. Events such as those captured across the page of welcoming Presidents, Taoisigh, Prime Ministers, Premiers, Treasurers and others to Australia having featured in the Irish Echo.

The IACC are proud to be part of the Irish community here in Australia, which is served so well by the Irish Echo. Here’s to the next 25 years!

Colin Egan, President

The board of IACC.

Bill is the organiser and facilitator of this group which is made up of 15 young executives from a range of different industries that are sharing knowledge and experience to help one another become more successful within their careers. The group hold 5 two hour breakfast roundtable meetings over an 8 month period and participants are drawn from the previous year’s business mentoring program. The feedback to date from Horizons participants has been excellent. This is primarily down to Bill sharing his knowledge and supporting the group and to the support of our sponsors Grant Thornton who have hosted these early morning gatherings.

UPCOMING EVENTS 12th June Victorian Parliamentary Lunch 18th & 25th June Business Mentoring Program 26th June EOFY Networking Drinks 24th July Business Breakfast 8th August “Building Prosperity” Corporate Lunch 14th August Business Breakfast 9th October ”The Business of Racing” Corporate Lunch 21st & 28th October Business Mentoring Program

“As part of the Horizons group, we share our knowledge and encourage each other with career aspirations. Each meeting is thought provoking, interesting and enjoyable.”

Aoife Kealy, VicTrack “Horizons has helped me progress as a leader. Having a support group of like-minded people from such diverse backgrounds and industries really helped me develop and focus on what I want to achieve. The group is a great environment to get some honest and open advice from some experienced and future leaders.” Rory Carty, ANZ “The IACC Horizons Group meetings continue to help me advance my career and life here in Australia by allowing me to connect with like minded young Irish business people. Our meetings both challenge and inspire me; they help build my leadership skills and business acumen.” Martin Lynch, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream “The format allows everyone’s voice to be heard and leads to meaningful discussion where we can learn from each other. There are no right or wrong answers and everyone’s opinion is respected. Building a supportive business network is so important here in Australia, and this is another step towards doing that.” Susan Tutty, Buncorp Pty Ltd

MUCH MORE THAN A ST PATRICK’S LUNCH While having hundreds of members and their guests in attendance makes our annual St Patrick’s Lunch a “must attend” year after year, there is so much more that goes on in our calendar to appeal to you.

We have a series of speaker-led lunches in the diary for Melbourne and Sydney, including “The Business of Racing” in the lead up to the world famous Melbourne Cup Carnival where our keynote will be Bernard Saundry, CEO of Racing Victoria and will feature panellists to (hopefully) find us a winner or two for the big races while building our understanding of how the industry operates.

With so many members involved in all aspects of infrastructure, property and construction, we will host a “Building Prosperity” corporate lunch in August hosted by James Kirby from Business Spectator and featuring the likes of Brendan Lyon, CEO of Infrastructure Australia and subject matter expert for the main media outlets.

We will also be looking forward to the arrival of the Ireland team who are in Australia in November for the latest instalment of the International Rules series. When they were last here, in 2011, we packed the famous MCC Members Dining Room for lunch with the team and were treated to some entertaining tales of what went on when Messers Liston, Stynes, Brereton and Daniher took part compared to today’s modern, business-like approach.

Away from the large events, we are delighted with the popularity of our Networking Breakfasts.

These small group events seat guests at tables of six to help conversation run smoothly and feature two members at each breakfast speaking about innovation and developments in their sector. These breakfasts are open to members and their guests so provide an excellent way to try a Chamber event or to introduce a new member to the group

Many photos and reports of IACC events down through our shared 25 years have featured in the Irish Echo.

“Congratulations to Billy and all those at the Irish Echo who have contributed to 25 successful years in the business.

It’s a great achievement and on behalf of our members we wish you all the best for the next 25!”

D M www.irishchamber.com.au i w

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

KEV CARMODY

JOHN CURTIN 1885-1945 Prime minister

1946Musician, Songwriter

BORN in Cairns, Queensland, to a second-generation Irish descendant and an Aboriginal woman, Carmody is one of Australia’s greatest songwriters.

His family moved to southern Queensland in 1950 and lived on a cattle station in the Darling Downs.

His parents worked as drovers, moving cattle along the stock routes, which no doubt influenced his song Droving Woman. Aged 10, Carmody was taken from his parents under the assimilation policy and sent to a Christian school, after which he returned to his rural roots and worked for 17 years as a labourer.

He began university at 33, completing a Bachelor of Arts degree and later getting a Diploma of Education and a PhD. While at university, Carmody used his guitar to tell stories of indigenous history in tutorials. This eventually led to his career in music and his first album Pillars Of Society.

Released in 1989 when he was 43 years old, Rolling Stone magazine described it as “the best album ever released by an Aboriginal musician and arguably the best protest album ever made in Australia”.

His most famous song, From Little Things Big Things Grow, was co-written with Paul Kelly.

BEN CHIFLEY 1885–1951 Prime Minister

CHIFLEY’S mother and father were both born in Ireland, but he himself was born in Bathurst, NSW, the eldest of three sons.

He seldom commented on his Irishness, but an outburst in 1950 was revealing, when he said: “I am the descendant of a race that fought a long and bitter fight against perjurers, pimps and liars.”

Chifley, who became the youngest locomotive engine driver in NSW, married Elizabeth Gibson McKenzie in 1914 and in doing so he defied the Papal decree, ne temere, which forbade Catholics from marrying outside the Church. In 1928, Chifley won the seat of Macquarie for the Labor Party, and after John Curtin’s death he was sworn in as Prime Minister on July 13, 1945. He led the ALP to victory again a year later, with a mandate for post-war social reconstruction.

Chifley died of a heart attack on June 10, 1951, in Canberra.

FRANK COSTIGAN

CURTIN was born in Victoria on January 8, 1885, the eldest of four children of Irish-born parents John and Kate and was a keen footballer and cricketer.

His working life was a journey from journalism, to militant trade unionism, to a role as a pragmatic Labor MP and prime minister.

Curtin was a heavy drinker, but gave up alcohol for 10 years after marrying Elsie Needham in 1917. The couple had two children.

Having twice run unsuccessfully for parliament, Curtin was finally elected to the Federal seat of Fremantle, WA, in 1928. In 1935, he was elected as Labor leader after promising to totally abstain from alcohol. On October 7, 1941, Curtin was sworn in as prime minister after the collapse of the Liberal-led government under Robert Menzies.

Curtin visited Ireland in 1944 after a trip to Washington to discuss the war with Roosevelt but ill health, including high blood pressure, neuritis and a heart attack, began to take a serious toll.

Curtin died on July 5, 1945. widespread links between the union and organised crime, including robberies, horserace fixing, international drug dealing, and prostitution run from the office of the crown solicitor in Perth. Costigan also made allegations involving both drugs and moneylaundering against media and gambling tycoon Kerry Packer. Packer always strenuously denied the allegations. In 2005, Costigan was appointed chairman of the Australian branch of the anti-corruption group Transparency International. He will long be remembered as a tireless campaigner against corruption.

LES DARCY 1895-1917 Boxer BORN at Stradbroke, NSW, Darcy’s grandparents were from Tipperary.

He left school at 12, and was an apprentice blacksmith at 15.

He first boxed professionally at 14 and his folk hero reputation was established upon his first Sydney fight in 1914. In January 1915, he fought American Jeff Smith for the world welterweight championship – a fight he sensationally lost after a foul blow the referee did not see, but which only added to his fame. After that defeat he remained unbeaten, winning 22 consecutive fights up until his retirement in September, 1916. He left Australia in controversial circumstances on October 27, 1916 – the day before a referendum on conscription – to continue his career in America.

On April 27, 1917, he collapsed and was admitted to hospital with septicaemia and endocarditis. His tonsils were removed, but he developed pneumonia and died on May 24.

SIR WILLIAM DEANE

1931-2009 Lawyer

1931Governor-General, High Court Judge

FRANCIS Xavier Costigan was born in Victoria to an Irish Australian family. He was educated by the Jesuits in St Patrick’s College and got his law degree from the University of Melbourne. He became a solicitor in 1953, a barrister in 1957, a Queen’s Counsel in 1973 was also admitted to practise in Ireland.

He came to national attention with the Costigan Commission into organised crime.

The commission centred on the activities of the Painters and Dockers Union. It revealed

AN Irish Australian who is proud of his roots and studied at Trinity College Dublin, Deane was born in Melbourne on January 4, 1931.

In 1955, he was briefly a member of the Democratic Labor Party, the predominantly Catholic and anti-Communist breakaway from the Australian Labor Party.

Though he was soon disillusioned with the DLP and played no further part in active politics, Deane was strongly influenced by progressive

Catholic doctrines of social justice and opposition to racial discrimination.

Highlights of his legal career included being appointed a judge of the NSW Supreme Court in 1977 and being appointed to the High Court of Australia in 1982 where he was part of the majority which recognised native title in the landmark Mabo case of 1992.

In August 1995, then Prime Minister Paul Keating appointed Deane as Governor-General and he was sworn in on February 16, 1996, less than a month before Keating lost power.

In 2001, Deane was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize “for his consistent support of vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians and his strong commitment to the cause of reconciliation”.

He and Lady Deane have two children, Patrick and Mary.

DAN DENIEHY 1828-1865 Politician BORN in Sydney to Irish parents, Deniehy was an orator, man of letters, lawyer and politician.

He showed high intelligence from an early age and his parents recognised and cultivated his talents. At school he studied French, Italian, classics and English literature, and teachers admired his sharpness and ability to retain knowledge.

At 14, he went to England with his parents and also spent some time in Ireland, where he met and was deeply impressed by leaders of the Young Ireland Party. After returning to Sydney he became a solicitor and was soon involved in radical politics. He was elected to parliament as “an extreme liberal” on February 13, 1857. He spoke in favour of immigration and argued that “the first great aim of statesmanship in a new country should be to people the soil … to create a great community”.

CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 1816-1903 Premier of Victoria DUFFY, who was a Catholic but was educated at a Presbyterian academy, had quite the colourful life over the course of which he worked as a barrister, was a renowned poet and Irish nationalist, was the Premier of Victoria and had three

wives and 11 children. Born in Monaghan to a shopkeeper, and representing New Ross in the House of Commons from 1852-55, he sailed for Australia with his second wife (the first having died) and three children (including one from the first marriage) after his plan for creating an Independent Irish party failed. He set up as a barrister in Melbourne but was soon persuaded to stand for the Victorian parliament.

In 1868 he helped to found the Advocate, a Catholic lay journal, and having led the opposition to a plan to introduce a land tax, Duffy became Premier of Victoria from June 1871 to June 1872.

After his second wife died he married for a third time, in Paris, in 1881. He died in Nice, France, in 1903, having also survived his third wife.

JAMES DUHIG 1871-1965 Catholic Archbishop BORN near Broadford, Co Limerick, James, along with his mother and five of his six siblings, settled in Brisbane in 1885. His father had died years before, an older brother had moved to Chicago and the family had lived for a time in England before going to Australia.

His youth and catechetical work caught the attention of the then archbishop of Brisbane, Robert Dunne, and Duhig began his studies for the priesthood at the Irish College, Rome, in 1991. Returning to Brisbane five years later, he rose through the ranks and succeeded Dunne as archbishop in 1917.

He travelled constantly through the vastness of Queensland, becoming one of the earliest passengers of Qantas and other new airlines.

His driving energy and lively community interests brought him an intimate knowledge of religious and socio-economic problems.

He spoke often and passionately on themes of justice, urban development, artistic opportunity, land settlement and higher education.

Archbishop Duhig will be remembered for his belief in the power of education, along with his kindness and gentleness, fondness for children and compassion.

ELIZA DUNLOP 1796-1880 Ethnographer, Poet BORN in Co Armagh to Solomon Hamilton, a former judge of the Indian Supreme Court, Dunlop’s second husband was Co Antrim man David Dunlop. The couple and their four children arrived in Sydney in February 1838.

A year later, her husband was appointed police magistrate and protector of Aborigines at Wollombi and Macdonald River, and she wrote poetry and song lyrics there. Some of her early verse was published in such magazines as the Dublin Penny Journal and she continued to publish in the Australian press and the Maitland Mercury.

Her lyrics were set to music by Isaac Nathan, and from 1842 appeared in his Australian Melodies series. A volume of her collected works, The Vase comprising Songs for Music and Poems, was published.

Dunlop took great interest in the welfare and folklore of the Aborigines in her husband’s charge, and was something of a pioneer in appreciating the literary worth of indigenous songs and poetry.

vii

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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viii

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

MYLES DUNPHY

MICK FANNING

MICHAEL DWYER

1891-1985 Environmentalist, Academic

1981Pro-Surfer

1772-1825 Irish Revolutionary and Political Activist

DUNPHY was the eldest of seven children of Irish-born Myles Arthur Dunphy, draper, and his Tasmanian-born wife Margaret Mary, née Johnson.

Though he had a successful academic career in which he taught architectural engineering at Sydney Technical College and the University of New South Wales, Dunphy is better remembered for his services to the wilderness cause.

In 1914, he formed the Sydney Bushwalkers, the first bushwalking club, to explore wild, trackless areas. His vision of wilderness protection grew through this.

In 1933, Dunphy helped form the National Parks and Primitive Areas Council, which sought the reservation of scenic areas for recreation.

He longed that Australia should mirror the development of national parks in the US. Dunphy’s proposal for a Blue Mountains national park two hours west of Sydney was submitted in 1932, but it was not until 1959 that lobbying resulted in a government gazettal of 155,676 acres (63,000ha). This was only a quarter of the size envisioned by Dunphy but with subsequent additions, the eventual Greater Blue Mountains Park fulfilled his original proposal.

His cartography skills and tireless lobbying ensured land was preserved for all to enjoy.

ELIZABETH DURACK 1915-2000 Artist, Writer, Illustrator LIKE others in the extended Durack clan, Elizabeth achieved both fame and controversy in her lifetime.

In recognition of her service to art and literature, which often depicted outback and Aboriginal life, Elizabeth was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1966 and the Order of St Michael & St George – Commanders (CMG) in 1982. Her interest in indigenous life stemmed from being part of one of the few old pastoralist families in the Kimberley region with a reputation for not shooting Aboriginal people in the 19th century.

But in 1997 a media storm blew up when she admitted entering work into Aboriginal art exhibitions under the name “Eddie Burrup”.

She was unrepentant though and continued to paint as Eddie Burrup until two weeks before her death.

FANNY DURACK 1889-1956 Olympic Swimmer Gold Medal Winner SARAH “Fanny” Durack was born in Sydney to Irish parents Thomas Durack and Mary Mason. She learned to swim at the Coogee Baths in the city’s eastern suburbs and won her first NSW state swimming title in 1906 while still a schoolgirl.

In 1912 Fanny headed to Sweden for the Olympic Games in Stockholm. She trained just half a mile a day, but such was her talent that

DONEGAL is recognised as the surfing capital of Ireland but little did John Fanning – from Malin Head – suspect that when he left the county for Australia in 1970, he would father a boy who would one day become world champion in the sport.

Mick Fanning – often known as “White Lightning” – finished 2002 as surfing rookie of the year and went on to win the 2007, 2009 and 2013 Association of Surfing Professionals world tours. He is a true superstar of the sport.

He grew up near Penrith in the western suburbs of Sydney, a long-hop to the city’s famed surf beaches.

The youngest of five siblings, Mick developed a passion for surfing along with his brother Sean after moving first to the NSW town of Ballina and then to the Gold Coast.

Tragically, Sean was killed in a car accident in 1998. Mick dedicated many of his subsequent career successes to his brother.

Fanning’s Irish background is important to she broke the world record in her heat before going on to win the 100m freestyle on July 15 – the only event for women at the time – beating runner-up and fellow Aussie Mina Wylie.

Her Olympic success led to tours with Wylie in Europe and the United States, and between 1912 and 1918 she broke 12 world records.

Her successes did much to promote women’s swimming, and in the US she was honoured by the International Swimming Hall of Fame at Fort Lauderdale.

She died of cancer in 1956 at her home in Sydney and is buried in Waverley Cemetery.

MARY DURACK 1913-1994 Author and Historian A PROLIFIC author, Mary Durack’s most famous book is Kings in Grass Castles, a history of the Irish Australian dynasty she was part of.

Born in Adelaide to Michael and Bessie (née Johnstone), Mary’s childhood was spent in the East Kimberley area of Western Australia. After being educated in Perth, she returned to the family properties.

With her sister Elizabeth, who also became a noted author, she wrote Allabout: The Story of a Black Community on Argyle Station, Kimberley in 1935.

Mary also wrote under the name of “Virgilia” for The West Australian newspaper. In December 1938, she married Captain Horace Miller and they had six children.

In 1977, she was appointed to the Order of the British Empire, Dames Commander, for her services to literature, and a decade later became a Fellow of Curtin University in Perth.

The Australian Irish Heritage Association of WA conducts the annual Mary Durack Memorial Lecture.

PATRICK (PATSY) DURACK 1834-1898 Businessman BORN at Scarriff, Co Clare, in March 1834, Patrick (Patsy) Durack rose from poverty in Ireland to become a wealthy landowner in Australia. The family of tenant farmers

him and he has returned to his father’s native Donegal to catch up with family and surf the rugged Atlantic coast. He is married to model Karissa Dalton. moved to NSW in 1853, but within two months his father, Michael, was accidentally killed.

The eldest son of eight children, Patrick settled his mother, Bridget, and family at Goulburn and went to work in Victoria. Eighteen months later he returned with £1000 and bought a smallholding.

In July 1862, he married Mary Costello.

They had eight children, two of whom died in infancy.

In 1863, with his brother Michael and brother-in-law John Costello, he set out with horses and cattle to establish a property in south-west Queensland. But the cattle died in a drought and the party survived only with the help of local Aborigines.

Durack was subsequently very successful with land, a butcher shop, hotels and mines.

He is said to have maintained a paternal control over the mainly Irish community around Goulbourn.

A financial disaster in Queensland left the family with only household possessions, but Durack had already signed many of his interests over to his sons and later helped them to expand further. He is buried beside his wife in the pioneer cemetery at Goulburn.

KATE DWYER 1861-1949 Women’s Activist BORN Catherine Winifred Golding to an Irishborn father and a Scottish mother, she married fellow teacher Michael Dwyer in Newcastle, NSW, in 1887.

A devout Catholic, in 1901 she helped found the Women’s Progressive Association which worked for women’s right to enter the legal and other professions and to have a fair share of the accumulations of marriage.

Dwyer wrote extensively on political, industrial and women’s issues and was said to be “a fine speaker, with a gift of repartee”.

In 1904 she became the first president of the Women’s Organising Committee of the Political Labor League.

Dwyer worked tirelessly for improved working and living conditions for women and for a minimum female living wage.

She was a co-founder of the Women Workers’ Union which sought to combat sweat factory conditions.

She also advocated for underprivileged men, opposing the building of tenements, instead seeking model dwellings for working men with a weekly rental of one day’s pay.

During World War I Dwyer was a member of the committee organising the ‘no’ vote for the 1916 conscription referendum.

In May 1921, she was one of the first female justices of the peace appointed in NSW.

DWYER was the eldest of seven children born to John and Mary Dwyer in Camara, Co Wicklow, before the family moved to a 24-acre farm in the Glen of Imaal in 1784.

As a member of the United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion, Dwyer fought in Wexford (at Vinegar Hill and Ballyellis), Carlow (at Hacketstown) and Wicklow (at the Battle of Arklow).

But following the defeat of the rebellion in Wexford, Dwyer retreated to the Glen of Imaal from where he led a five-and-a-half-year guerrilla campaign until December 14, 1803, when Robert Emmet’s rebellion in Dublin failed.

He was deported to New South Wales and was accompanied by his wife and the two eldest of their six children while their other children were left with relations in Dublin.

While jailed for several weeks in the Sydney debtors’ prison in May 1825 he contracted dysentery, to which he succumbed on August 23, 1825.

JOHN FAHEY 1945Politician BORN in New Zealand to parents from Co Galway, the family moved to NSW when Fahey was 11.

He was president of the World AntiDoping Agency, which investigates drug use in sports, from 2007-2013, but is more famous in Australia for his political career. He entered the NSW state parliament in the seat of Camden for the Liberal Party in 1984. In 1988 he became a Minister and was appointed Premier of NSW in June 1992. After narrowly losing power to Labor in 1995, Fahey entered the federal parliament in the seat of Macarthur a year later in the Liberal/ National coalition’s landslide victory. He served as Minister for Finance under John Howard but retired from politics in 2001 after having a lung removed due to cancer.

He was made a Companion in the Order of Australia in 2002.

JOHN FIHELLY 1882-1945 Co-founder Queensland Rugby League FIHELLY was born in 1882 at Timoleague in Co Cork, before moving to Brisbane with his family in September of 1883.

Fihelly represented Queensland against NSW from 1905-07, and in 1907 played for Australia against New Zealand.

A co-founder of the Rugby League code in Queensland, he was also assistant manager of the first Australian team to visit Britain in 1908-09, and was president of the Queensland Amateur Rugby League from 1914-16.

After his playing career ended, he went into politics and won Paddington for Labor in the Legislative Assembly in 1912. He was an outspoken supporter of Irish dissidents.

He died of a cerebral thrombosis in Brisbane in March 1945.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

JOSEPH LYONS

DANIEL MANNIX

JAMES MEEHAN

1879-1939 Prime Minister

1864-1963 Archbishop of Melbourne

LYONS was born in 1879 at Stanley, Tasmania, the son of Irish-born parents Michael Lyons and his wife Ellen.

Much influenced by the Irish radicalism of his mother, and perceiving the strength of the Protestant landholders in the small communities of northern Tasmania, he joined the North-West League of the Workers’ Political League, the forerunner of the Australian Labor Party in Tasmania.

He won the State seat of Wilmot for Labor in 1909 and in January 1914 became deputy leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party.

He campaigned strongly for a ‘no’ vote in the conscription referenda of 1916-17. The war years had rekindled his Irish nationalism and he became vice-president of the Hobart United Irish League in 1916.

Lyons defected from the ALP in 1930 to form the United Australia Party and he won a decisive victory in the elections of 1931 and Lyons governed for seven years in a climate of relative stability. He easily won the 1934 elections, and also had a convincing victory in the 1937 elections – his three successive election victories was a feat then unmatched by any other prime minister. Lyons maintained the stability of his government until the final months before he passed away in Sydney in April 1939 from coronary occlusion.

DANIEL Mannix’s 46-year reign as Archbishop of Melbourne (from 1917-1963) made him a powerful presence that the city’s politicians ignored at their peril.

The Co Cork-born, Maynooth-educated priest was ordained on June 8, 1890 and by 1895 was a philosophy lecturer and the chair of moral theology at Maynooth. However, not much is known of his early career in Ireland as he burned documents, wrote few letters and kept no diaries so that posterity could not “analyse my soul”.

He was no friend to the nascent Gaelic revival, which led Padraig Pearse to ask: “Is Mannix an enemy to Irish nationalism?”

Rome appointed Mannix to Melbourne and he arrived in Australia on Easter Saturday 1913. He later wielded political power through encouraging Catholics to support BA Santamaria’s Democratic Labor Party, which split from the ALP in 1954.

On Melbourne Cup Day, 1963, after his annual flutter, he collapsed at racetime and died the next afternoon, November 6. Both Robert Menzies and Eamon de Valera eulogised him.

1774-1826 Political Convict, Surveyor, Explorer

OLIVER MACDONAGH 1924-2002 Historian, Academic BORN in Co Roscommon, MacDonagh attended university in UCD and Cambridge and had also been admitted to the Irish Bar. Before coming to Australia with his wife, Carmel, and their family, he was professor of modern history at UCC. In Australia he was one of the designers of Flinders University in Adelaide and its foundation professor of history. He was also professor of history in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University from 1973 to 1990. He is remembered as a superb teacher.

In addition to his academic work, MacDonagh’s books were also highly regarded.

His biography of Daniel O’Connell portrayed “the Liberator” more vividly than any other had previously done.

States of Mind, a study of modern Irish history which won the Ewart Biggs Memorial Prize, was an even-handed account of sectarianism and Irish-British relations.

The Sharing of the Green: A Modern Irish History for Australians (1996) exposed the destructive tribal myths preserved among many Irish Australian families.

MacDonagh was a devout Catholic, though sometimes dismayed by the Vatican.

HUGH MAHON 1857-1931 Journalist, Politician BORN in Co Offaly, Mahon, aged 10, moved to the US with his family.

Having learned about journalism in America he returned to Ireland in 1880 and worked as a reporter in Co Wexford.

In 1881, he spent two months in Kilmainham jail for political activities with the

Irish National Land League, but was released with suspected tuberculosis. He fled to London and in March 1882 sailed for Australia under an alias. After managing a fund-raising tour for the Land League, Mahon edited and owned newspapers in rural NSW and was a political reporter for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

After periods working at newspapers in Melbourne and Western Australia, Mahon won the Federal seat of Coolgardie as a Labor candidate in 1901. He held several ministerial portfolios but his dream of becoming treasurer went unrealised.

In a 1920 speech in Melbourne, Mahon savagely attacked British policy in Ireland and called for the establishment of an Australian republic. The speech caused a sensation and, in a procedure unique in the history of the Australian parliament, he was expelled from the House. He lost the ensuing by-election. Buried in Box Hill cemetery in Victoria, Mahon was survived by his wife Mary and four children.

A biography of Mahon will be published later this year.

JAMES MARTIN 1820-1866 Premier and Chief Justice of NSW BORN in Middleton, Co Cork, Martin’s family arrived in Sydney on November 6, 1821.

Reputedly baptised at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney

by Fr John Joseph Therry, Martin was given the best education his parents could afford and by the age of 19 was acting editor of The Australian newspaper.

In October, 1863, he became Premier of NSW, but lost that office after the 1865 election.

He would twice more serve as premier (once in 1866 and again in 1870) but retired from politics in 1873. He had been admitted as a solicitor on May 10, 1845, and after retiring from politics he was appointed as Chief Justice in November 1873.

Martin’s legacy is assured in the naming of Martin Place, the heart of Sydney’s CBD, which was named in his honour.

Lady Martin’s Beach at Point Piper was also named after his wife, Isabella, and the couple went on to have eight sons and seven daughters.

Martin died at home in Potts Point, Sydney on November 4, 1886, and is buried in St Judes churchyard in Randwick, NSW. in 1909 his remains were moved to a new underground vault in the impressive Waverley Cemetery.

SAMUEL MCCAUGHEY 1835-1919 Pastoralist, Philanthropist BORN near Ballymena, Co Antrim, into a strict Presbyterian family, McCaughey learnt accounting in his father’s linen business before emigrating to Melbourne in April 1856. To save money he walked the 200 miles to the property near Horsham where he started as a station hand and soon became manager. Within four years, backed with family money, he was a property owner and later brought out his brother David to help manage his substantial interests.

McCaughey was a pioneer of widespread land irrigation and brought out Irish labourers who were used to wet and boggy conditions.

Despite having no strong political leanings, in 1899 he was appointed to the Legislative Council to help secure the passage of the Federation enabling bill.

In 1905, he was knighted and visited Louis Pasteur in France seeking, in vain, an efficient means of exterminating rabbits.

McCaughey made a fortune in Australia and was very generous to charities.

ISABELLA MCDONAGH 1899-1982 Actress BORN in Sydney to an Irish doctor father and his Australian wife, Isabella is better known by her stage name “Marie Lorraine”.

Together with her younger sisters Paulette (director) and Phyllis (production manager), the McDonaghs made three silent feature films: Those Who Love (1926), The Far Paradise (1928) and The Cheaters (1930).

Despite the Great Depression in the 1930s, the sisters made several short sporting documentaries, including Australia in the Swim with Andrew “Boy” Charlton and the Olympic swimming team, How I Play Cricket with Donald Bradman and Phar Lap in The Mighty Conqueror. Sadly, only the last survives.

In 1932, Isabella married a Scotsman, Charles Stewart at St Mary’s Cathedral. They moved to London for a time but returned to Sydney in 1935 to be near her family. She died in London on March 5, 1982.

MEEHAN was sentenced to transportation for his part in the 1798 rebellion and arrived in Sydney on February 16, 1800. In April of that year, he was assigned as a servant to Charles Grimes, the acting surveyor-general.

Grimes commended Meehan’s faithfulness and impartiality, with the result that in 1806 he received an absolute pardon.

By 1812, Meehan had risen to deputysurveyor of lands, and in 1814 became superintendent of roads, bridges and streets also. Meehan later discovered Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn plains, fixed the boundaries of land grants and made many contributions to the mapping of the colony, most notably a map of Sydney. He also surveyed several townships including Richmond, Windsor and Liverpool in NSW and Hobart in Van Diemen’s Land.

In 1823, as a result of the “hardships, privations and difficulties” endured during his early years in the colony and of his declining health, Meehan was granted a pension of £100 a year.

DAN MINOGUE 1893-1983 Politician BORN and educated in Co Clare, Minogue became a salesman and publican after migrating to Australia in the 1910s.

He was always a great friend to Sydney’s Irish community, and one with political influence once he became a member of Sydney City Council in 1938 and, in 1949, was elected to federal parliament as the Labor member for West Sydney.

For more than 30 years Minogue’s vision shaped the course of the Irish National Association in Sydney. The first phase of this was to establish an Irish cultural centre in Sydney. This required hard work raising funds to build the centre and building up a unified Irish community to patronise it, but he and his colleagues were equal to the task.

In 1951, Minogue began a campaign to have a full ambassador appointed to Dublin from Australia. In 1965, finally, an ambassador was appointed to Ireland.

Minogue’s autobiography, A Rambler from Clare, was published in 1973.

HERBERT MICHAEL MORAN 1885-1945 Wallaby Captain, Surgeon MORAN was born in Sydney to Irish baker Michael Moran and his Australian wife Annie.

He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney and took up residency at Newcastle Hospital, but it was through his rugby career that he really began to expand his horizons.

He represented New South Wales in 1906 and went on from there to captain the first Wallabies side to tour Britain in 1908. After the tour, he began his FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons) at Edinburgh, after which he worked in hospitals in London and Dublin.

He returned to Australia in 1910 and began a practice in Balmain, but in 1915 he went back to Britain to join the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as a lieutenant in Mesopotamia.

Returning to Sydney in 1916, Moran was honorary surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital. His surgical career blossomed through his interest in cancer research and in particular the then new use of gamma irradiation.

He died of malignant melanoma in 1945.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

EDMOND ‘NED’ HOGAN

PAUL KEATING

1883-1964 Premier of Victoria

1944Prime Minister

BORN to Irish father Jeremiah Hogan and Melbourne-born mother Bridget, Ned Hogan left school early to drive a team of horses, but was a voracious reader.

In his youth his various jobs included roadmaking, timber-cutting, farm-labouring and rabbiting before he left for Western Australia to work on the Kurramia timberlines.

He returned to Victoria after having become involved in the WA unions and in 1913 won the seat of Warrenheip for Labor – a seat he would hold for the next 30 years. He became active in the anti-conscription campaigns around the Ballarat area in 1916, and at the 1922 conference he was elected president of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party.

In 1924, he became minister of railways, agriculture and markets, before in 1926 he became leader of the Labor Party in Victoria.

The following year he formed a government and took over the premiership.

He represented Victoria at the 1927 Premiers’ Conference in Sydney which agreed to new financial arrangements between the Commonwealth and State governments and the establishment of the Loan Council.

He lost office in 1928 but regained it in the election of 1929 after which his government ruled over the worst years of the Depression.

AUSTRALIA’S most colourful Prime Minister, Keating was Labor PM from December 20, 1991 until March 11, 1996.

He was born into a working-class Catholic family in Bankstown, NSW, and traced his Irish background to the village of Tynagh, Co Galway.

He left school at 14 to work as a clerk with the Sydney County Council while continuing with evening study at Belmore Technical College.

Keating entered federal parliament as the member for Blaxland in 1969.

After Labor won a landslide victory in March 1983, Keating, together with then prime minister Bob Hawke, modernised Australia’s economy by floating the dollar and deregulating financial markets.

After challenging and defeating Hawke to become prime minister in 1991, Keating

JAMES FRANCIS HOGAN 1855-1924 Writer, Politician BORN near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, Hogan’s family emigrated to Australia in 1856 and settled in Geelong, Victoria. He was educated at Catholic schools in Geelong and Melbourne and contemplated becoming a priest, but in 1872 turned to teaching after passing his examination through the Victorian Education Department.

After being published in newspapers and journals Hogan abandoned teaching, went to Melbourne, became sub-editor of the Victorian Review and soon joined the Argus. From 188487 he presided over the Victorian Catholic Young Men’s Society and was secretary to the committee which organised the erection of the O’Connell statue in the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne.

After writing two books in Australia he moved to London, where his best-known work, The Irish in Australia, was published. In the preface, Hogan wrote: “Having lived in Australia from childhood, I have endeavoured … to present in this volume a faithful panorama of Irish life, Irish history, and Irish achievements in the land.”

In February 1893, he was elected to the House of Commons, representing the middle division of his home county of Tipperary.

He took a stand as an Irish Nationalist in parliament until 1900.

he was heavily involved in the construction of St Patrick’s Cathedral and St Mary’s in West Melbourne – he was also an ardent nationalist.

As well as being a founding member and President of the Celtic Club and the Victorian Catholic Young Men’s Society he was also deeply involved in the Melbourne branches of the Irish Land League, the Irish National League and the later formation of the United Irish League.

Jageurs died in Brighton in April, 1932.

Paul Keating, right, at Croke Park in 1993 alongside GAA president Peter Quinn and Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. outlined plans for Australia in the Asia-Pacific region, for Aboriginal reconciliation, and for the creation of an Australian republic.

He travelled to his ancestral home of Tynagh in 1993 during an official visit to Ireland.

Keating regularly comments on Australian politics in media interviews and opinion columns. that tarnished, and libelled, her memory.

“Sex-hungry tyrant lived by law of the lash”, screamed one headline, while another said she was “a bitter, sadistic, hellcat of a woman”. The truth, however, was a little less excitable.

In 1838, in a crown land sale, Kelly bought 895 acres on the northern bank of the Manning River for £223 and successfully managed it herself. The legends about her were based on resentment of her lifestyle as an unmarried woman. She died in Sydney in 1872.

TRENT JOHNSTON

NED KELLY

1974Cricketer

1855-1880 Folk Legend

BORN in Wollongong, Johnston played first-class cricket for New South Wales in the late 1990s before moving to Ireland and going on to captain the Irish national side to their inspiring run at the 2007 Cricket World Cup in the West Indies.

He was a leading force in Ireland’s transition from a second-class side to the top table of the game, and he captained Ireland in their first one-day international game against England in 2006.

But it was in the West Indies a year later that he solidified his reputation as one of the best players ever to play for Ireland. He led his side to victory over Zimbabwe before going on to score the winning runs against Pakistan in a win which saw Ireland secure a place in the Super Eights for the very first time.

In 2009, the all-rounder’s bowling played a crucial part as Ireland stormed into the Super Eights at the Twenty20 World Cup in England.

He picked up 3-20 against Bangladesh in the win which put Ireland into the final eight in their first time playing in the competition. He retired from international cricket at the end of the 2013 and has moved into coaching.

KELLY was born in Beveridge, Victoria, the eldest son of John and Ellen.

His father was born in Co Tipperary in 1820 and sentenced in 1841 to seven years’ transportation for stealing pigs.

Forced to leave school at 11 after his father died, Kelly moved to Eleven Mile Creek, near Glenrowan, with his mother and seven siblings.

In 1870 Kelly was imprisoned for six months. Soon after release he was sentenced to another three years for receiving a stolen mare.

His brothers James and Dan also served time.

On April 15, 1878, a police trooper named Fitzpatrick claimed Ned had shot him as he sought to arrest Dan. Ned and Dan went into hiding, with £100 rewards on their heads, while their mother was jailed for aiding them.

While on the run Ned killed three troopers (in self-defence, he claimed) and the reward was increased to £2000. Their reckless daring and evasion of the police for two years made them folk heroes.

After the infamous shoot-out at Glenrowan, where a cylindrical headpiece, and other heavy armour protected him, Kelly was captured and hanged in Melbourne. His reported last words were “Such is life”.

MORGAN JAGEURS

ISABELLA MARY KELLY

TOM KENEALLY

1862-1932 Irish Nationalist and Monumental Sculptor

1802-1872 Farmer, Horse Breeder

1935Writer

BORN in Dublin, and orphaned at the age of eight, Kelly has a unique place in New South Wales history – she was the only single female who was a settler in her own right.

A century after her death, Kelly became a tabloid sensation in stories

BORN in Sydney in 1935, Keneally is one of Australia’s best-known and most respected writers.

A Booker Prize winner for his book Schindler’s Ark in 1982 – which inspired the Oscar-winning movie Schindler’s List – Keneally is also a multiple winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize

MORGAN Jageurs was born in Tullamore but moved to Queensland in 1865 with his family.

The Jageurs then moved on to Sydney in 1868 before finally settling in Melbourne two years later.

His father Peter was a monumental sculptor, and Morgan followed in his footsteps, joining together to form Jageurs & Son in 1892. Morgan is widely accredited with having introduced the Celtic Cross to Australia for the first time.

Outside of his masonry and sculpting wor–

and has written more than 50 novels, plays and works of non-fiction including, in 1998, The Great Shame, in which he endeavoured to “tell the tale of the Irish in the new world and the old through the experiences of those transported to Australia for gestures of social and political dissent”.

Keneally’s Irish ancestry can be traced back to 1868, when his ancestor John Keneally was transported to Western Australia for sedition.

He arrived on the last convict ship – the Hougoumont – along with the famed John Boyle O’Reilly. Keneally told the Irish Echo in 2009 that he hopes he inherited a “love of freedom of speech (sedition) and a certain level of social activism” from his Irishness”.

Also, he adds modestly, “(I hope) a gift for messing around with language”.

MARION KNOWLES 1865-1949 Writer, Community Activist BORN in Victoria to Irish immigrant James Miller and his wife Anna Maria, Marion was a renowned writer by the time she married Melbourne city valuer Joseph Knowles in 1901.

After a few years of contributing to The Australasian newspaper, she released her first novel, Barbara Halliday, in 1896, before following that up with her second book, Songs from the Hills. Both books ran to four editions.

After the dissolution of her short-lived marriage she came on board as a staff writer with The Advocate newspaper. She played a leading part in the organisation of the Catholic laity before World War I, becoming foundation president of the Catholic Women’s Club in 1913.

During the war she organised the dispatch of parcels to Catholic soldiers, and in 1919 chaired the committee responsible for welcoming them home. She was appointed MBE in 1938. She died at her home in Kew in 1949 and is buried at Brighton cemetery.

PETER LALOR 1827-1889, Eureka Stockade Leader, Politician THE Eureka Stockade of 1854 – justifiably said to be the nascent roots of Australian independence – was led by Laois-born Lalor.

After training as an engineer, Peter and his brother Richard (later a Home Rule member of parliament for Leix) arrived in Melbourne in 1852, attracted by the gold discoveries. Peter moved to Ballarat early in 1854 but, though having some luck in his diggings, wrote: “the people were dissatisfied with the laws, because they excluded them from the possession of the land, from being represented in the Legislative Council, and imposed on them an odious polltax” (licence fee) which officials collected from diggers.

The uprising for fairer conditions at the Eureka Stockade led to Lalor writing to his fiancée, Alicia Dunne: “The diggers … have taken up arms and are resolved to use them …

I am one amongst them. I would be unworthy of being called a man, I would be unworthy of myself, and, above all, I would be unworthy of you and of your love, were I base enough to desert my companions in danger”. Though he lost an arm after being shot in the fighting, public sentiment was on the miners’ side, and Lalor was later elected to parliament.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

NICHOLAS FITZGERALD

ERROL FLYNN

1829-1908 Brewer, Politician

1909-1959 Actor

AUSTRALIANS couldn’t give a XXXX for any other beer, but most will not be aware of their favourite brew’s provenance. The Castlemaine brewery was set up by the Galway-born, Trinityeducated Fitzgerald brothers, Nicholas and Edward.

Nicholas joined Edward, who had just started the brewery, in Melbourne in 1859. They expanded rapidly, thanks in no small part to their signature XXX brew (the fourth X was a later addition). In 1878 the Brisbane Courier described it as “a delicious ale of the brightest amber, pleasant to the taste”.

After the company went public Nicholas was managing director from 1892 until 1906 when he became a director of the amalgamated Carlton and United Brewery.

Nicholas was a member of the National Australasian Convention in Sydney in 1891 and in 1894 he represented Victoria at the Colonial Conference in Canada. In 1903 he became the Legislative Council’s chairman of committees.

He and his wife Marianne had seven sons.

THE Tasmanian-born actor became one of Hollywood’s biggest and most notorious stars in the 1930s and ’40s.

Renowned for his hell-raising off-screen antics, Flynn was marketed as an Irish actor when he first travelled to Hollywood at the age of 26. He never returned to Hobart but the city proudly claims him as its own and in 2009 ran a festival to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

He became an overnight sensation for his role in Captain Blood in 1935 and reinforced his swashbuckler image in subsequent films such as Robin Hood and The Adventures Of William Tell. He is also fondly remembered for his performances in The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex, opposite Bette Davis and The Charge Of The Light Brigade but he was never nominated for an Oscar.

He was three times married and had four children; a son Sean who died in Vietnam and daughters Deirdre, Rory and Arnella.

His father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was

MARK FOY 1865-1950 Sportsman, Resort Owner BORN in Bendigo, Victoria, to Irish immigrant parents, Mark and his brother Francis moved to Sydney where in 1885 they set up a drapery shop on Oxford St called Mark Foy’s, in memory of their late father.

Business flourished and a new store near Hyde Park was opened in 1908 which featured Sydney’s first escalator.

A keen sportsman, as a young man Foy won several shooting medals in America. In 1890 he founded the Sydney Flying Squadron to brighten up sailing on Port Jackson. His efforts popularised sailing with big prize money and colourful boats which could easily be identified.

In July 1904, Foy opened the Hydro Majestic Hotel in the Blue Mountains as a hydropathic resort, complete with Swiss doctor and spa water from Germany. With characteristic flair Foy provided a wide range of recreation facilities and excellent cuisine and made it one of the most fashionable resorts in Australia.

URSULA FRAYNE 1816-1885 Mother Superior BORN in Dublin to a wealthy family, in 1834 she entered the Institute of Mercy which had been founded two years earlier, and took the name Ursula in place of her baptismal name Clara.

In 1842 she was appointed Superior of the institute’s first foreign mission foundation in Newfoundland, Canada and in 1846 arrived in Perth following the request of the newly consecrated Bishop John Brady for Sisters to staff Catholic schools.

However, the Sisters experienced great hardship in Western Australia. So small was the Catholic population that government aid was insignificant and the bishop, who was close to

bankruptcy, could not be relied on for support.

Shocked by the Sisters’ conditions, the Dublin mother-house sent money for return passages.

Mother Ursula gratefully acknowledged the money but refused to abandon the mission. To supplement their income, in 1849 she opened Western Australia’s first secondary school.

It was a fee-paying school catering almost exclusively to non-Catholics, and brought financial security.

Its success determined the pattern of future Mercy expansion, which was to establish, often within the same building, three separate schools: a ‘select’ fee-paying school, a primary school and an infants’ school.

Mother Ursula is remembered for her tenacity as an education pioneer.

FRANCIS GILLEN 1855-1912 Ethnologist, Public Servant GILLEN was born near Clare, South Australia, to Irish immigrant parents.

He joined the public service at age 12 as a postal messenger and four years later transferred to Adelaide where he combined work as a telegraph operator with night classes at the School of Mines and Industries.

After marrying Amelia Besley in August 1891 (they had six children) Gillen was appointed as Alice Springs post and telegraph station master.

His boisterous personality, championing of Home Rule for Ireland, administrative efficiency and sense of justice for Aborigines, made him a celebrity of his day.

Promoted to Alice Springs special magistrate and Aboriginal sub-protector, Gillen strove to improve racial problems.

MURRAY GLEESON 1938Chief Justice of Australia GLEESON was the 11th Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, and the fourth of Irish background to hold the position (the others being Sir Frank Gavan Duffy, Sir Gerard Brennan and Sir Anthony Mason).

Thomas Flanagan and Dan O’Shea found gold near the surface of the dry red soil to the east of Coolgardie. Working in secret, each man won the equivalent of several years’ wages in the space of a week. On June 17, Hannan rode his horse to Coolgardie with about 100 ounces (3.1kg) of gold and broke the news. The next morning the rush to Kalgoorlie began. The rich discovery, at the time of a national depression, was timely.

PATRICK HARTIGAN 1878-1952 Priest, Poet a noted biologist who lectured at Queen’s University Belfast. He was the inspiration for the expression “in like Flynn” and Australian Crawl wrote a song called Errol in his honour in the 1980s.

He once said: “If I have any genius it is a genius for living.”

Born in Wingham, New South Wales, he went to high school in St Joseph’s on Sydney’s North Shore, before studying arts and law at the University of Sydney. He was methodical as a barrister, known for preparing his cases and cross-examinations in great detail. The late Roddy Meagher, a former judge of the NSW Court of Appeal, said of Gleeson: “His house is painted grey. The fish ponds leading up to it are filled with piranhas which glide among the bones of those who have displeased him.’’

Gleeson was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1986, became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW in 1988 and Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia a decade later.

ANNE GREENE 1884-1965 Nun, Nurse THE ninth of 12 children, she was born in Co Clare and emigrated to Western Australia at about age 21, where she completed her novitiate at the Convent of St John of God and took the name Mary Gertrude.

After training as a nurse at the Order’s hospital, Sr Mary Gerrude studied midwifery at King Edward Memorial Hospital, Subiaco. After periods working as both ward and theatre sister, in 1929 she volunteered to serve at the Order’s foundation in the north of Western Australia where four of her siblings, who were all also nuns, had preceded her.

Conditions at Beagle Bay mission were basic, but they offered health care, education and counselling to patients who included Aborigines suffering from leprosy. With state funding, Sr Mary Gertrude and other Sisters opened a leprosarium near Derby. After Broome was attacked by Japanese aircraft on March 2, 1942, they moved with their patients into the bush for two weeks.

In 1947 Sister Gertrude was made provincial superior of the North-West, an appointment that brought with it the title of Mother. Next year she was appointed MBE., one of the first secular awards given to a St John of God Sister.

PADDY HANNAN 1840-1925 Prospector BORN in Quin, Co Clare, Hannan arrived in Victoria in December 1862 and worked underground at Ballarat. It is said the search for gold infatuated him. As prospecting moved from the slopes of the Great Dividing Range to the dry plains, Hannan learned how to find water before looking for gold, to travel lightly, and to operate far from the nearest supply base.

On June 10, 1893 Hannan, along with

HARTIGAN (AKA John O’Brien, Mary Ann) was born at O’Connell Town, Yass, NSW, to parents from Co Clare.

After attending St Patrick’s College, Manly and St Patrick’s College, Goulburn, he was ordained a priest in January 1903. In 1910 he became inspector of schools for the vast diocese of Goulburn and was one of the first curates in the State with a motor car. By then he had already begun to publish poetry in such journals as the Albury Daily News, Catholic Press and the Bulletin under the pen-name ‘Mary Ann’. He published Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, under the pseudonym ‘John O’Brien’, in November 1921. Recording the everyday lives of the people around him, he successfully combined Irish Catholicism with the mateship and ethos of the bush. Poems such as Said Hanrahan were an instant success and Hartigan’s work was hailed in the Bulletin as “unaffected talk about Australians, much as they would naturally talk about themselves”.

The book was made into a film in 1925 and was acclaimed in Ireland and the US as well as being a huge seller in Australia.

MARY HEALY 1865-1952 Nun, Hospital Administrator BEST known as Mother Gertrude, Sister of Charity and hospital administrator, she was born in Dublin on July 24, 1865.

After accompanying her family to Victoria, she attended Loreto Abbey, Ballarat, and entered the Novitiate of the Sisters of Charity, Sydney, in June 1889. She was professed as Sister Gertrude on October 2, 1891. She then began training at St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst and registered with the Australasian Trained Nurses’ Association in July 1903. In 1910, Sister Gertrude was appointed mother rectress of St Vincent’s. In order to become a clinical school for the University of Sydney, she expanded the hospital and increased the number of specialties. The outpatients’ division was extended, with improved X-ray facilities, and an electro-therapeutical and massage department provided rehabilitation for returned servicemen.

By 1917, nursing staff under Mother Gertrude’s direction had risen to 30 Sisters of Charity and 80 trainees. During the 1919 flu epidemic St Vincent’s admitted more than 27,000 urgent cases and treated another 70,000 as out-patients.

She has been described as one of the greatest hospital administrators Australia has ever seen.

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Belfast Film Hailed ‘FeelGood Movie Of The Year’

Record Vote For Sinn Féin, Labour Leader Falls On Sword

AUST RALI A’ S I RI S H N E WS PA P E R For breaking news visit www.irishecho.com.au

June 5 – 18, 2014 | Volume 27 – Number 13 | AUS $4.95 (incl GST)

SYDNEY PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION CAPTURES IRELAND’S UNIQUE EQUINE SUB-CULTURE

Striking Images Of An Unstable World

MY LITTLE PONY: A girl and her pony at the Smithfield horse market in Dublin. This is one of the images from James Horan’s Irish Horse exhibition currently showing in Sydney’s Waterloo.

SYDNEY TRAGEDY AS DUBLINER LOSES LIFE IN FRONT OF HORRIFIED FRIENDS

Shock drowning in city harbour

Elaine Loughlin

THE grieving family of an Irishman who drowned in Sydney on Friday May 23 have described him as a “positive, outgoing personality who would always put others before himself”.

Brendan Hickey fell into the water at Sydney's Darling Harbour while attending the Vivid Festival.

His brother Shane has said the family have been “overwhelmed” by the support they have received since Brendan’s death.

Bren, as he was known by all his friends and family, lived with his girlfriend Julia Szymanska, brother Shane and his girlfriend Catriona Clerkin in Randwick, Sydney.

His brother said Bren had been liv-

ing in Sydney for two years and “very much loved the outdoor life it has to offer – he regularly played sports with different teams and friends in Sydney”.

“He loved the lifestyle so much he was currently in the process of applying for permanent residency with Julia,” Shane said.

The Dubliner was sitting with friends watching the Vivid festivities from the edge of Cockle Bay when he accidentally slipped into the water close to pontoons on the eastern side of the bay on the event’s opening night.

In a desperate attempt to save the 34-year-old, two of his friends jumped into the water fully clothed before police arrived.

However, the man and woman were unable to find Mr Hickey.

Police divers finally recovered his body at around 1.30am.

Superintendent Joe McNulty, Commander of the Marine Area Command, said the man’s friends had been distraught after the accident.

“Witnesses said they heard a splash and they saw the 34-year-old man in the water,” he said.

“A short time later two of his companions, who were with him at the time, entered the water in a frantic attempt to save his life.”

Speaking on behalf of the family, his brother Shane said Bren's friends were always amazed at how many people he knew, and this had been shown by the amount of support and tributes they have r eceived since the tragic accident.

TRAGIC LOSS: Dubliner Brendan Hickey, who drowned at Cockle Bay

He said: “Bren was an experienced electrician who was passionate and dedicated himself to every job he undertook, often working up to 60 hours a week. Even though he worked these long hours he always made time to

socialise and meet new people.” Bren, who was originally from Glasnevin, is survived by his parents Rosealie and David, brothers Shane, Stephen and Declan and sister Linda.

His brother said that although he had planned to stay in Australia he also loved Ireland and was organising a holiday home at Christmas.

Shane said: “We would like to thank everybody who has comforted us and sent words of support from Sydney and all over the world. It has been a massive comfort to realise how many people’s lives he has touched, and it gives us strength during this tragic time.”

A Mass for Brendan was held in St Patrick’s Church in Bondi last week.

The Irish Echo understands his body has been repatriated for burial.

www.irishecho.com.au | Postal Address: PO Box 256, Balmain NSW 2041 Australia | Phone: 1300 555 995 | Email (Editorial): newsdesk@irishecho.com.au | Email (Administration): mail@irishecho.com.au

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

local BLOOMSDAY EVENTS PLANNED AROUND THE COUNTRY TO REMEMBER CLASSIC NOVEL ULYSSES

Joyce in full bloom on day of celebration Elaine Loughlin and Pádraig Collins AUDIENCES can expect a “total rollercoaster” when James Joyce’s Ulysses is brought to the stage as part of Melbourne’s Bloomsday celebrations on June 16.

A tenor, a percussion orchestra and about 80 Dublin characters – played by nine actors – will bring the famous novel to life.

It will bring the story of Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and the colourful characters they meet in one day to the stage with the wit and humour of Joyce’s original novel.

As well as the theatrical production, a seminar on the importance of reading Ulysses slowly will be held along with a Bloomsday dinner in The White Rabbit restaurant.

Director of the Bloomsday in Melbourne society Frances Devlin-Glass said they work on a fresh script every year so it takes months of preparation to bring it to the stage.

“As soon as the last Bloomsday finished we were onto the next one,” she said.

This year is the most adventurous production to date with the adaption running from June 11 to 16.

All 18 chapters of the book will be crammed into two hours and director Wayne Pearn has come up with some novel approaches to the text, including presenting one of the chapters as a modern-day television quiz show.

“We’re aiming to tell the story as clearly as we can but also communicate some of the texture and variety and also the comedy of Joyce’s book,” Ms Devlin-Glass said.

“It should be a lot of fun, it’s a total roller-coaster with great characters.

“Ninety-nine per cent of this adaption is Joyce’s own words, we have occasional editorials but it’s either to make it clearer or to tip off the audience.

“We are refusing to compromise with the texture of Joyce’s text even though it is a condensed version.”

The group, which is made up of volunteer writers, directors, actors and Joyce scholars, started reading

Bloomsday: The Facts Bloomsday, June 16, is the day on which James Joyce set his classic novel Ulysses. All the events in the novel take place on that day in 1904. Joyce supposedly chose the date as it commemorated his first date with Nora Barnacle, who would become his wife.

excerpts from the book on the streets of Melbourne a decade ago but have since been forced to take their production indoors to cope with demand.

“There is an appetite for it, it’s still a novel that people really, really want to read and have had difficulty reading,” Ms Devlin-Glass said.

“I think the challenge of it is one thing, but people know it is highly respected even if they haven’t read it.

“Even 90 years after its publication, in performing Joyce we are often shocked and surprised by it as a really radical work.”

In Sydney, the Consulate General of Ireland has teamed up with Liverpool City Library and Laneway Learning to promote the appreciation of the works of Joyce on Bloomsday.

Liverpool City Library has held a Bloomsday celebration annually since 2006.

This year’s event will feature artists, musicians and writers reading from and discussing Ulysses, accompanied by a six-piece céilidh band. The lunchtime event is free and a buffet lunch will be provided.

This year is the 25th annual Bloomsday celebration in Perth and features The Honourable Wayne Martin , AC, Chief Justice of WA who will preside over a trial of Joyce, prosecuted by broadcaster and educator Frank Murphy, ably defended by former broadcaster and politician Diana Warnock, with a host of witnesses from the novel personified by broadcaster Peter Holland (Leopold Bloom), ABC’s Gillian O’Shaughnessy, comedian Damien O’Doherty and Davilia O’Connor (great granddaughter of CY – for more details of whom, see the 100 Greatest Irish Australians supplement).

Earlier in the evening, Colm O’Doherty opens the program with audience participation in readings as he explores the underworld of the Odyssey depicted by Joyce in his surreal and comical night-town chapters.

Named for Leopold Bloom, the book’s central character, Bloomsday was first celebrated in 1954 when writers Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien visited locations mentioned in the book, reading and drinking as they went.

Sydney For Joyce, trad music and lunch, head to Liverpool City Library. www.facebook.com/ LiverpoolCityLibrary A host of beautiful voices (including playwright, author, and broadcaster Melanie Tait), will read aloud from Ulysses from 7.30-9.30pm at the Level 3 Event Space, Central Park, 28 Broadway, Chippendale. Tickets are $15 from Laneway Learning www.lanewaylearning.com.

Melbourne Exploring Ulysses – its humour, its challenge to rethink the world and its experimentalism – is all grist to the mill for the veteran Joyceans in Melbourne.

Tickets from $15-$45. www. bloomsdayinmelbourne.org.au

Perth

FANS RE-JOYCE: Left, foot fetishist Leopold Bloom, played by Drew Tingwell, worships Molly Bloom, played

by Catherine Kohlen. The pair will take to the stage from June 11 to 16 as part of Melbourne’s Bloomsday celebrations.

Pics: Bernard Peasley

See panel on right for more details of Bloomsday events around the country

HUSBAND’S CAMPAIGN TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Tom Meagher: why I had to head home Pádraig Collins

HAPPIER TIMES: Tom and Jill Meagher on their wedding day.

TOM Meagher, the husband of Jill Meagher, has spoken out about why he left Australia and moved back to Ireland.

Mr Meagher left his advertising career in Melbourne for Dublin where he is now the face Ireland’s White Ribbon campaign to end violence against women. His wife, who was from Co Louth, was raped and murdered in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick on September 22, 2012.

“I found it very difficult to live in a city where something like that happened – not because that usually happens in that city, just because it happened to Jill,” he said.

In his position with White Ribbon, Mr Meagher hopes to get men to think more deeply about the culture of

masculinity. “The idea is to make it very clear, that you are not going to enable this, that you are not going to involve yourself in a conversation if it goes to topics that are denigrating women,” he said.

“To laugh it off is kind of creating cultural acceptance of these things – which is obviously not on.”

Mr Meagher said every day since Jill was killed, he reads a quote by the American author and poet Maya Angelou (who died last week, aged 86).

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again,” Ms Angelou said.

“Male self-examination requires this courage,” Mr Meagher said. “And we cannot end the pattern of men’s violence against women without consciously breaking our silence”.

The 25th annual Bloomsday celebration in Perth (Irish Club Theatre, 61 Townshend Rd, Subiaco) features much to do justice to what is regularly called the greatest novel ever written.

Tickets are $20 and include Irish tea interval and an informative program. Audience members are encouraged to dress in Edwardian style. Bookings 9367 6026. www.irishheritage.net

Brisbane The Queensland Irish Club is celebrating Bloomsday at Tara House in Brisbane. www.queenslandirish.com/ events/bloomsday-2014

FEWER MIGRANTS OUT OF WORK

Irish more likely to be in work than Aussies Pádraig Collins

IRISH migrants are more likely to have a job than Australian-born workers, new research has found.

Data from the Federal Department of Employment reveals that just 3.9 per cent of immigrants from Ireland or Britain are unemployed, which is far less than the 5.8 per cent figure for Australian-born workers.

The numbers were averaged over the 12 months to February.

Italians in Australia have the same unemployment rate as Irish immigrants, while Dutch migrants have the lowest jobless rate of 3.6 per cent.

The news comes as the government continues its review of its 457 visa, which is used by many Irish immigrants. The visa allows employers to sponsor skilled migrants to work in Australia for up to four years if they cannot source local staff for particular positions.

The National Tourism Alliance told the review that hospitality businesses

are suf fering “significant” labour shortages, “due to an inability to find suitable staff at a local level’’.

The Alliance expects a shortfall of 56,000 staf f in 2015 “unless more overseas workers can be hired, particularly in regional areas’’.

As well as seeking an expansion of 457 visas, the tourism sector also wants the minimum wage for 457 migrant workers lowered from its current level of $53,900 a year.

A record 68,480 457 visas were issued last financial year. More than 6,500 of them were Irish citizens.

Assistant Immigration Minister Michaelia Cash says the Coalition government is committed to ensuring the 457 program acts as a supplement to and not a substitute for Australian workers.

“The government fully supports the principle that Australian workers have priority, but to bind employers up in needless red tape will only stymie Australian business and cost Australian jobs over the long run,” Ms Cash said.

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AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

local FROM BAREBACK CITY RIDERS IN TRACKSUITS TO PACKED COUNTRY FAIRS, AN ENDANGERED TRADITION

Saddle up for look at lives of urban horses Andrea McCullagh THE lives of Ireland’s urban horses are documented in a new exhibition by photographer James Horan.

Irish Horse captures ancient horse fairs, inner city horse owners and young riders from the Travelling community throughout Ireland.

And Horan felt it was important to photograph the equestrian sub-culture before it disappears.

“There is a danger of keeping horses and horse fairs disappearing into the history books as Ireland progresses into the modern age,” he said. “I think it’s an important part of our tradition. It would be a big shame if it was lost.”

Horan was living in Australia for about five years when he decided to move back to Ireland.

He captured thousands of images of the horses between 2007 and 2011; and it all started out simply to prove a point to his Australian friends. He had no photos to back up his stories of people keeping horses in housing estates so nobody believed him.

“The only time any of them would have seen that would have been in The Commitments and they thought it was just part of the movie,” he said.

Horan has since returned to Sydney where he has his own photographic business and is married to an Australian. He knew nothing about horse fairs when he began the project and he started back on home ground in Moyross, Limerick.

He went back to the areas where he grew up and on his first attempt to capture images of the horses he was confronted by a gang of locals.

They assumed he was a newspaper photographer planning to create a negative article about animal cruelty.

But when he explained who he knew in the area they relaxed and brought him to see their stables.

Growing up in Moyross, Horan’s parents kept him away from the people who owned horses.

While taking the photographs he soon realised that many of them were decent people who loved their animals.

“They just happened to keep animals in places where a lot of people wouldn’t of imagined you could,” he said.

“What was really interesting to me about that is in most Western society only rich people keep ponies and horses. But in Ireland the poorest of people have them as well. That really fascinated me.”

Horan’s photos capture the energy of the culture, from bareback city riders in tracksuits to the packed country fairs.

So far the Australians he has shown the work to have been fascinated by it.

“They have never seen anything like it. They think it’s from the fifties.

They just can’t compute that’s modern Ireland,” he said.

And his overview of the Ballinasloe horse fair has promoted a lot of questions.

“People ask me ‘were all those horses photoshopped into the photograph?’,” he said. “They just can’t understand what’s going on. With the portraits with the kids and the horses it takes them a few minutes to realise the kids don’t have any saddles.”

Horan feels it is unfortunate that there has been a lot of cases of animal abuse and said the terrible reputation that the Smithfield fair has is probably justified. But he pointed out that all the owners get tarred with the same brush and that there is a genuine love for the animals among the community.

“Maybe that kid with that pony, he could be doing a lot worse,” he said.

“He could be out dealing drugs or stealing something. Instead he has a pony, he has a homemade stable, he hangs around with his friends who do the same thing.

“They really love their animals.”

HORSING AROUND: Above, youths ride their ponies on a sunny day in the Dublin suburb of Finglas; below left, traders Michael Barry and Tommy Cullanan, both from Co Clare, make deals for horses outside the Emerald Bar during the 2010 Ballinasloe Horse Fair; below right, photographer James Horan.

The Irish Horse exhibition is part of the Head On Photo Festival and runs until June 14 at the Brenda May Gallery in Waterloo, Sydney

SCHEME CLOSURE MEANS MIGRANTS NOW HAVE TO PAY

Parent visa changes in budget fine print Andrea McCullagh

THE government is scrapping a costeffective visa scheme that allows parents to move to Australia to be with their children.

It was announced in the budget that the government will no longer accept applications for Non-Contributor y Parent visas after the end of the financial year.

The scheme is thousands of dollars cheaper than the other visa alternative for parents but the waiting list is more than a decade.

Visa expert John McQuaid from Arrive Australia doesn’t think the move will affect many Irish families.

“It’s a long, long time since we have done one as no one is attracted to them,” he says.

“Imagine parents 60-plus waiting 14 years for a visa. It’s not an attractive option.”

He explained that the Contributory Parent visa, which has a waiting list of about 18 months, is a more realistic

option for Irish families. This visa costs up to $60,000 per applicant.

Arrive Australia processes a couple of these visas every year for families.

McQuaid believes the demand for the scheme will now go up with the closure of the other visa stream.

“The Contributory Parent visa is still there. It doesn’t mean no parents can come. They just have to pay to get the visa,” he says.

Under the Contributory Parent visa parents can live permanently in Australia if they have a child who is a citizen or permanent resident.

However, the loss of the NonContributory scheme is a concern to the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA).

The MIA claims that the cost for two parents to migrate under the Contributor y scheme is about $125,460. It says that 2250 NonContributory Parent visas are granted each year.

“Not being able to eventually sponsor your parents to migrate may be a

disincentive for skilled migrants to choose to migrate to Australia and lead them to reconsider migration to other countries that welcome parents, such as Canada and the US,” says MIA national president Angela Chan.

The MIA represents migrations agents and lawyers in Australia.

The budget paper states that the end of the scheme will enable faster processing of existing applications.

“The Family Stream will refocus on meeting the increasing demand for close family reunions,” it states.

“The additional partner and child places will be made available as a result of the cessation of new applications from the other family and parent (non-contributory) places.”

The Government says it will achieve savings of about $300 million over five years by modifying the 2014-15 Migration Programme.

It will have 190,000 places: 128,550 Skilled Stream places, 60,885 Family Str eam places and 565 Special Eligibility Stream places.

CHANGES TO ANIMAL IMPORT RULES

Pet quarantine times shorter, but fees higher Andrea McCullagh

QUARANTINE for pets has been cut to 10 days but owners are facing higher fees for bringing their animals to Australia.

Previously, cats and dogs were forced to wait 30 days before they could be released to their owners.

But a more rigorous pre-expor t process for pets introduced by the Depar tment of Agriculture has resulted in a reduction of the minimum quarantine time.

A new fee structure will be introduced from July 1 and it sees the cost of daily accommodation for cats and dogs rising to $149.

It previously ranged from $29 to $39 per day.

And if kittens or puppies arrive in quarantine owners face paying an extra one-off fee of $1500.

Rabbits and guinea pigs are a more cost-effective option at $5 per day.

Alongside the accommodation costs, cat and dog owners also have to pay $325 for the lodgement and assessment fees.

The changes to import conditions for household pets has been intro-

“

The policy review concluded that an increased emphasis on offshore preparation is an effective and practical approach to achieve Australia’s appropriate level of protection. This approach also reduces the need for extended periods of postarrival quarantine.

”

duced following a policy review conducted by the department.

“The policy review concluded that an increased emphasis on offshore preparation is an effective and practical approach to achieve Australia’s appropriate level of protection,” a statement from the department said.

“This approach also reduces the need for extended periods of post-arrival quarantine.”

The review included a number of key revisions to biosecurity measures for cats and dogs.

The department could not release figures on how many pets are imported to Australia from Ireland annually.

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

local GOOD SAMARITANS USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO IDENTIFY CONFUSED 27-YEAR-OLD HURT IN MOTORBIKE CRASH

Missing man found in Bali with leg injuries Pádraig Collins AN Irishman found with horrific injuries in Bali had lived in Australia for two years before going to the Indonesian island.

The man, known only as “Sean”, was first reported missing in April.

The confused 27-year-old was found and cared for by three good samaritans who used social media to identify him.

The Irish embassy in Singapore, which has jurisdiction for Bali, is providing consular assistance to Sean’s family.

“We became aware of the case through the social media campaign and were able to identify the citizen involved,” Cormac Hynes, charge d’affaires at the embassy, told the Irish Echo from Singapore.

Mr Hynes expressed his gratitude to everyone who helped to identify the man.

The Irish Mirror newspaper reported Sean had spoken to his father in Co Sligo and was receiving treatment in a hospital in Bali’s capital city, Denpasar.

The three people who found Sean convinced him to seek medical help for serious leg injuries sustained in a motorbike crash. When they found him, he was barefoot, dehydrated and had no money.

“There was a team of us. I was lucky enough to gain his trust,” security expert Matt Jones said.

“I got him to remember my name

after about 50 times of telling them.”

They then took Sean to the hospital.

“I have sat with him and I haven’t let him out of my sight. I was the only one he would let see his wounds. I got Sarah to clean his wounds while he rested his legs on me.

“I got Sarah to get him water and we gave him money.”

After initially concealing his identity, Sean eventually told the people helping him his family’s phone number in Ireland.

“His father is blown away, he was emotional with me.

"He was a very nice guy. I was just totally honest and straight to the point,” Mr Jones said.

“I think his state of mind right now is either from the infection in his legs or dehydration or malnourishment. It could be shock from his accident.

“He told us that he had a motorbike accident and that is where the injuries are from.”

Sean’s father is understood to be travelling to Bali to bring his son home.

FOUND: An Irishman found in Bali with horrific leg injuries sustained in a motorbike crash, known only as “Sean”, was found and cared for by three good samaritans, above left, who used social media to identify him.

KEVIN BELL REPATRIATION TRUST OFFERS ASSISTANCE

Help at hand when tragedy strikes Pádraig Collins

Repatriation Rules

WHEN the unthinkable happens and a loved one dies suddenly abroad, it can be very difficult to know what to do.

This is where the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust (KBRT) can help.

The KBRT was set up by the family and friends of Kevin Bell, who was killed in a hit-and-run in America a year ago. It has already raised more than $200,000 to help other families who find themselves in the same tragic situation.

Kevin, 26, was one of seven children, including a twin brother. His father Colin says the KBR T has already helped repatriate several bodies from Australia to Ireland.

“There have been two or three from Sydney, we’ve taken three from Perth and also taken people from Brisbane, from Toowoomba and Melbourne.

We’ve done quite a lot of repatriations from Australia, as well as New York, Boston, San Francisco, Virginia, Spain, Germany, Thailand,” he said.

“Since Kevin died, which was the 16th of June last year, we’ve taken home 28 people.”

Mr Bell says it generally costs between $7000 and $10,000 to repatriate a body from Australia, but can cost up to $15,000 depending on circumstances such as how long it takes for a body to be released and if a crime was involved.

“We would contact the funeral director and they make arrangements. Once

There are several steps before a body can be repatriated to the home country.

Firstly there is a post mortem, after which the cause of death is confirmed and a death certificate is issued.

Then an undertaker in Australia partners with an undertaker in Ireland to make arrangements to repatriate the body.

LEGACY: Kevin Bell

they have the death certificate and the post mortem is done, it’s straightforward enough,” he said.

“Until we set up this trust, the families were left to bear the cost themselves, as far as I know. What happened was, when Kevin died there was an absolute frenzy of fundraising here in Newry. Kevin had also been in Sydney too, so there was fundraising in Australia and America as well. We ended up with about £140,000 to take Kevin home, which was an incredible amount of money.

“So we decided to use this money to help others, and now families we help will fundraise for us and that’s how we keep going. We would have sold the house to get Kevin’s body home, and when people were so good to us it was a natural thing to us to continue on,” Mr Bell said. www.kevinbellrepatriationtrust.com

The Irish embassy in Canberra or consulate in Sydney is involved if a person does not know what to do or how to make these arrangements.

One of the things the embassy can do is to inform the Australian authorities about death customs in Ireland, such as the fact that a body is buried as quickly as possible, unlike in Australia. This can help speed up the process of releasing the body for repatriation.

If there are missing identification documents the Irish embassy can provide travel documents for the remains.

The embassy can also put the family of the deceased in touch with the Irish Welfare Bureau and the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust.

AMBASSADOR SLAMS COVERAGE

Media’s demeaning Irish clichés no joke – White Pádraig Collins

IRELAND’S ambassador to Australia, Noel White, has spoken out strongly about media coverage of a court case involving the late Pádraig Gaffney.

The headline – Drunk Paddy’s $500k flood of tears – in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper led to widespread criticism after Mr Gaffney took his own life on May 7 in Queensland after returning from the court case in Melbourne.

In an opinion piece for Fairfax media, Mr White said it was “no surprise that the media coverage … provoked strong reaction within the Irish community”.

He said the reaction was a mix of “shock and grief at a tragic loss of life” and “dismay at the casually offensive language” in describing someone who had expressed remorse and shame for his actions as just another “Drunk Paddy”.

“The headline succeeds in simultaneously demeaning an individual and taking a swipe at an entire national group,” wrote Mr White.

“It is disappointing that it was not removed through the appropriate editorial controls before it ever made it into the online edition.”

The ambassador said the hur t caused by the incident was all the greater because is has happened in Australia, a country where Irish people feel at home.

“The Irish have been serious players in the Australian narrative since the time of European settlement. Alongside other ethnic groups and nationalities … they have built its infrastructure, sustained its institutions, fought under its flag,” he wrote.

Mr White said more recent Irish

SHOCKED: Noel White

arrivals have been talented and hardworking young people, with highly valued skills and expertise, but that the ‘Irish joke’ still exists.

“The caricature of the fighting, drinking, dissolute Irish, notoriously promulgated in the pages of Punch in the 19th century, while certainly less evident these days, has not been entirely eradicated. When it does occur, its impact is not diminished by familiarity … It is deeply upsetting to be described in these limited and negative terms.”

The ambassador said repeated use of such language over time leads to “uncritical acceptance of a distorted national stereotype”.

“It undermines the confidence and self-esteem of communities, including of the many children of Irish-born parents in Australia … Equivalent stereotyping would be as offensive to any other nationality or ethnic group as it is to the Irish.”

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June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

xxxx ireland Isabel Hayes has done what many expats never quite get around to – she’s moved back to Ireland with her husband after almost seven years in Australia. Now with a brand new baby boy, Isabel reflects on the importance of family and the austerity-diminished Irish health system.

Oh baby, hurrah for Henry and Holles St angels

a native once again

Isabel Hayes

THERE’S an ad on Irish TV that never failed to make me cry during my hormonally-charged pregnancy. It’s an ad for Denny sausages – not really a crying matter when you think about it (although sausages did give me vicious heartburn towards the end of my pregnancy).

But this ad is about a young couple flying home to introduce their new baby to her grandparents. The expression on the grandparents’ faces as they meet their grandchild for the first time (and then rush home to fry sausages) always had me welling up, much to my partner Aidan’s disbelief. But it was the thought that in just a couple of weeks they’d have to say goodbye that got to me.

It was the exact situation we could so easily have been in.

Now our son Henry has been born and our decision to return home has never felt so right.

When I saw the looks on my parents’ and my sister’s faces as they cradled him for the first time, everything just clicked into place.

In his first few weeks, Henry has been surrounded by a host of loving aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, first cousins once removed, even second cousins.

He has been cuddled by his great-grandmother and fought over by our doting friends, some

of whom are expecting babies of their own.

I suddenly feel very lucky that we were able to move home and give Henry access to this wide network of relations and friends who love him so much already.

Now more than ever, it’s clear that nothing is more important than family.

minutes for an appointment and each one was lengthy and informative. My first appointment with my midwife lasted nearly two hours as details on every aspect of my medical history, personal life and mental health was recorded. Upon our return to Ireland, I decided to continue as a public patient. It seemed there was little benefit to

“

Now our son Henry has been born our decision to return home has never felt so right.

In the end, Henry’s arrival was a whole lot easier than expected. He was born nine days early after just six hours of labour at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street.

For the last few months I had been feeling apprehensive about how we would get on, mainly because my experience with Holles Street hadn’t been overwhelming.

Perhaps I was spoilt by the Australian healthcare system.

For the first 24 weeks of my pregnancy, I was under the care of the Royal Hospital For Women in Randwick.

Despite being a public patient, I never waited more than five

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”

be gained from going semi-private except for having the same consultant at each appointment. As everything was going smoothly it didn’t seem worthwhile spending the money and our Irish health insurance wouldn’t cover it anyway.

I was prepared for long waiting times. And there were. I must have spent hours sitting on hard benches (some women brought cushions with them). But I wasn’t prepared for how rushed every appointment was. The midwives and doctors were lovely but very obviously under extreme pressure to get through patients. I never managed to ask all my questions.

No one talked me through my expectations for labour or what facilities were available in the hospital.

When I asked about getting a Strep B test – a standard procedure in Oz – I was told it was unnecessary and, “sure they throw money at these kind of things in Australia”. It wasn’t reassuring.

Everyone told me that once I was in labour, the midwives would be brilliant. And as it turned out, they really were.

Everyone I came into contact with during those hazy few hours was just lovely and did everything to keep me going.

In the end, Henry and I spent nearly a week in Holles Street as he had severe jaundice. During our stay, almost every nurse I met was incredibly kind, knowledgeable and cheerful, despite working under gruelling conditions.

Some have left lasting impressions, including the student midwife who spent hours helping me to nurse, and the night nurse who took Henry off my hands when I hadn’t slept in 24 hours.

I never thought I’d be sad to leave a hospital but I did feel a pang as we left our little cubicle behind and introduced Henry to the big wide world that is Ireland.

At least the sun was shining for once.

“To me, Irish is a language of this country. It has in it the gumtrees of my childhood, the streets of a Melbourne suburb, the heat of Australian summers.”

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

ireland LABOUR IN CRISIS :: GILMORE RESIGNS AS LEADER :: NOMINATIONS CLOSE FOR NEW LEADER THIS WEEK

Gilmore falls on sword as woes worsen Ed Carty

IRELAND’S deputy prime minister has announced he is quitting as leader of his party in the wake of disastrous local and European elections.

Eamon Gilmore, the Labour Party chief and Foreign Affairs Minister in the Republic’s coalition government, revealed he is resigning after a hammering at the polls and a backbench heave. Mr Gilmore said he had taken his party into coalition with Fine Gael in 2011 because there was a duty to act during the worst economic crisis in the history of the State.

“I still believe that was the right decision, and I am proud of the progress we have made in achieving those objectives,” he said. “But it was a course which carried a high political risk, and Labour has paid the price for that in the local and European elections. I deeply regret the loss of good public representatives and the defeat of outstanding Labour candidates.”

Mr Gilmore said he will stay on as leader until his successor is appointed before the end of the current Dáil parliament term.

Mr Gilmore said he informed ministerial colleagues at his offices in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Iveagh House, Dublin as the fallout from the voter humiliation worsened.

Labour took only 50 or seven per cent of seats on offer in the local government elections. The wipeout was compounded by the massive success secured by Sinn Féin which trebled representation on councils up and down the country and finished up with four MEPs on the island of Ireland.

Labour had three MEPs returned in the 2009 Brussels poll, one of whom later resigned from the party and ran as an independent, but none has been returned this time around.

Mr Gilmore said he took the decision to resign before a motion of no confidence was put forward by seven TDs and a senator.

Ciara Conway, Dominic Hannigan, Michael McNamara, Ged Nash, Derek Nolan, Aodhán Ó Riordán and Arthur Spring, as well as senator John Gilroy, moved against the outgoing leader.

Mr Gilmore had also faced the prospect of being removed as party leader by the influential Central Council. He will stay on as leader until late June.

Mr Gilmore’s successor will have discussions with Taoiseach Enda Kenny over whether he stays on as Foreign Affairs Minister and who takes the role of Tánaiste.

Mr Gilmore said the party must act on the message sent by the electorate.

“There is work to do, and I intend to be part of it, but I believe that the work of renewing the party is best done under new leadership,” he said.

“As I have said many times, I am immensely proud of the courage shown by those members of the Labour Party who, over the past three years, put their country first.

“Who recognised that real politics is about finding real solutions, and who put loyalty and country before everything else,” he said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he wanted to thank Mr Gilmore for his outstanding service to the country.

“Eamon Gilmore and the Labour Party have been courageous in making the collective decisions that have pulled Ireland back from the brink of economic collapse and put the country on the path towards recover y,” Mr Kenny said.

“As Minister for Foreign Affairs, he has also been pivotal to the restoration of Ireland’s international reputation, which has been crucial for investor confidence and job creation.”

Mr Kenny described his coalition colleague as a man of integrity, courage and conviction.

Mr Gilmore said he would contest the next general election.

“I have already spoken of the necessity for renewal. The party and the Government must move on to a new phase and look to the future,” he said.

“Where we have had successes, we must build on them. Where we have fallen short, we must do better. Where new problems are arising, we must find solutions for them. We must, and we will, continue to put the country and the needs of the Irish people first.”

POLL-AXED: Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has resigned as the leader of the Labour Party. Pix: PA

Burton favoured to become leader SEVERAL senior Labour Party politicians are vying for contention in the leadership contest sparked by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore’s dramatic departure.

With all the names yet to be formally declared deputy leader and Social Protection Minister Joan Burton is the early favourite.

In an interview with the Sunday Independent at the weekend, Ms Burton called for an end to the “dead hand of austerity and penitence”.

Ms Burton said she wanted to lead “a national moving away from the politics and the economics of austerity”.

She told the Sunday Independent: “Ireland has to move away from the current economic narrative of pain and penitence; we need to become a society again, not an economy. We need to build the economy from the middle out, we need a strong middle and working class; lifting the working poor out of unemployment will provide the centre ground of our recovery.

“But this cannot be done under the austerity model; that is predicated on the trickle-down effect from the wealthy – that will not work in Ireland.”

In spite of the still uncertain economic outlook, the Social Protection Minister said the government parties

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FAVOURITE: Joan Burton is odds on to succeed Eamon Gilmore must refocus economic policy to stimulate growth. She added: “Though it is not going to be easy, it is now possible after the groundwork of the last three years to have a Budget centred on growth.

“During the first three years of the Coalition, the pressure in Ireland was to restore us to a place where we could simply pay our debts but given the amount of heavy lifting that has been done, the potential for recovery now is significant. The greatest danger to Ireland is an absence of growth.”

The minister said a Europe-wide fiscal stimulus package was needed in the wake of the European elections, which left government parties across the continent reeling.

“There is an absolute need for a fiscal stimulus, not just in Ireland but across Europe, when you see the rise of the extremes,” she added.

“For a Labour recovery to occur we have to exorcise the spirit of austerity.”

The bookies have installed Ms Burton as the 1/5 favourite but she will have at least one challenger with junior health minister Alex White also announcing his interntion to stand. Nominations were due to close after we went to press.

Meanwhile, more than four in 10 Labour politicians are backing Joan Burton as their new leader.

In a poll conducted by the Irish Sunday Mirror, more than a quarter of Labour politicians said they are still undecided about who they want to see elected. Another 20 per cent of those quizzed said they would not vote for Ms Burton or Mr White – but would support any other candidate who threw their hat into the ring.

The majority of these tipped backbencher Arthur Spring TD – a nephew of Dick Spring – for the top role.

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AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

euroepan and council elections :: ireland MAINSTREAM PARTIES REELING FROM ANTI-AUSTERITY VOTE

Kenny points to major shift in Irish politics Brian Hutton TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has conceded a major shift in Ireland’s political landscape after voters turned in their droves to anti-austerity candidates in European, local and by-elections.

Despite the massive controversy over the arrest of Gerry Adams during the election campaign, Sinn Féin continues its march on the south and is on course to triple its council seats in the republic.

Mr Kenny admitted voters were venting their anger, impatience and frustration.

“I know what’s in it,” he said. “It’s frustration, it’s anger, and it’s saying ‘show me where the return on my challenge and the sacrifice I have made is’.”

The Fine Gael/Labour government will now come under intense pressure to rebrand itself with focus shifting to a Cabinet reshuffle and an overhaul of its programme for government.

Sinn Féin’s rise has also fuelled predictions the party could enter a ruling coalition in Dublin after the next general election in two years time.

Mary Lou McDonald, the party’s Dublin-born deputy leader who has been touted as a potential successor to Gerry Adams, said it would consider going into government.

“I don’t think it would be simply a numbers game,” she said. “It would be a matter of whether or not you could produce a programme for government that really changed things and delivered real results for people’s lives. That would be the litmus test.”

Such is the shift in voter preferences, former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes raised the prospect of his party having to consider a coalition with Fianna Fáil.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams dismissed claims by the Government that the local election and Euro contest results were “a protest vote”.

He claimed: “This (election result) is no less a democratic revolution.

“It isn’t a protest vote. I listened to some Government spokesman trying to dismiss this as a mid-term election blip.

This is deep rooted. It is a seismic shift in the political landscape,” he said.

Mr Adams called on the Taoiseach to resign or call a general election.

SHINNER WILL: Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan is elected as an MEP during the European Parliamentary elections count at the RDS in Dublin. Pic: Niall Carson

EUROPEAN AND LOCAL ELECTIONS

Sinn Féin benefit from protest vote Pádraig Collins

AFTER marathon European election counts in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin has emerged as the major beneficiary of strong anti-austerity polling.

In the Republic, Fine Gael maintained its four MEPs out of 11 European Parliament seats – reduced from 12 last time. Sinn Féin and Independents won three seats each, Fianna Fáil went from three down to one, while Fine Gael’s Coalition partner Labour lost all three of its seats.

Independent Marian Harkin edged out Fianna Fáil’s Pat the Cope Gallagher to retain her seat in the Midlands North-West constituency. It was the last seat to be filled.

“For Ireland, it is past time that we get a deal on our legacy debt; our bank debt,” Ms Harkin said after being elected.

In Northern Ireland, which has three European Parliament seats, Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson topped the poll with 25.5 per cent of first preferences. The DUP and UUP also each won a seat.

The turnout in the Republic was 52.4 per cent.

In the North it was 51.84 per cent.

In council elections in the Republic, Sinn Féin looks set to triple its number of seats. Party leader

Gerry Adams said there had been a “sea change” in Irish politics. “We have just had the best Sinn Féin election in the history of this State.”

He said Sinn Féin will negotiate with other parties about forming council administrations. It will also talk to Independent candidates, who have won around a quarter of Ireland’s 949 council seats.

Mr Adams also said his recent arrest and questioning by the PSNI in relation to the Jean McConville murder case was part of a “dirty tricks campaign” against his party, but had no effect on its electoral performance.

Mr Adams said Sinn Féin is likely to make further gains at Ireland’s next general election, expected in early 2016.

“We want to be in Government. We are in Government in the North. We need a mandate and I think Pearse Doherty put it well when he said Sinn Féin is hungry for change but we are not hungry to be in Government,” he said.

“We are not going to leave our principles outside the door. The only reason to be in government is to advance the project that you have set.”

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said voters were venting their anger.

“It’s frustration, it’s anger, and it’s saying ‘show

me where the return on my challenge and the sacrifice I have made is’,” he said.

As well as losing all of its European seats, Labour lost dozens of council seats, seeming to bear the brunt of a backlash following years of cutbacks.

High profile Labour casualties include Lord Mayor of Dublin Oisín Quinn and Lord Mayor of Cork Catherine Clancy.

In a by-election, a former Labour seat in Dublin West was won by the Socialist Par ty’s Ruth Coppinger.

Eamon Gilmore has since resigned as Labour party leader, with veteran Dublin TD Joan Burton the favourite to replace him (see page 9).

In Northern Ireland’s council elections, the DUP won the most seats with 130, though the party’s 23.1 per cent share of the vote was down around 4 per cent on the last local election in 2011.

Sinn Féin came second in the number of seats won with 105 but got the largest percentage of the overall vote. Its 24.1 per cent share of first preferences was down slightly on its 24.8 per cent in 2011.

The Ulster Unionist Party was the only one of the five main Northern Ireland parties to increase the percentage of votes won.

European Parliament seat winners Dublin: Lynn Boylan – Sinn Féin Nessa Childers – Independent Brian Hayes – Fine Gael Ireland South Brian Crowley – Fianna Fáil Liadh Ní Riada – Sinn Féin Seán Kelly – Fine Gael Deirdre Clune – Fine Gael Midlands/North West Luke Ming Flanagan – Independent Mairead McGuinness – Fine Gael Matt Carthy – Sinn Féin Marian Harkin – Independent Northern Ireland constituency Martina Anderson – Sinn Féin Diane Dodds – DUP Jim Nicholson – UUP

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June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

ireland NAMA AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

Ireland’s ‘bad bank’ shows healthy profit Ed Carty

IRELAND’S bad bank has reported a profit of €211 million for last year, a slight drop on the previous year’s operations.

The National Assets Management Agency (Nama) revealed that in the four years it has been in business it has been involved in selling property loans and assets worth €14.1 billion. In the first five months of this year alone, it secured €3.5 billion worth of sales.

Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh said the agency was well ahead of schedule in clearing bad debts from the banks and selling on loans and assets.

He said: “Nama’s very strong performance and excellent cash generation means we are now well ahead of schedule in getting our job done successfully. We reported a profit for taxpayers for the third year in a row and successfully met our first major milestone of repaying €7.5 billion of Nama’s debt in full and on time.

“We have benefited from very strong demand for the assets in our portfolio and from the exceptional dedication of our staff who work diligently and professionally on taxpayers’ behalf.”

Nama said it has already exceeded

its full-year 2014 target for paying down debt with the original aim of €2.5 billion now expected to grow to as much as €7.5 billion.

By the end of the year its target is to have redeemed €15 billion of its senior debt, half the money it originally issued to acquire loans linked to developers, business figur es and pr oper ty speculation.

Nama’s accounts also showed that the agency has built up equity and reserves of €810 million and cash balances increased to €4.4 billion at the end of last year.

Chairman Frank Daly said last year was marked by a remarkable turnaround in investor sentiment towards Ireland, of which the bad bank took full advantage.

“We are playing our part in building confidence - at home and abroad – in Ireland’s strong recovery story, doing all we can to channel investment in the Irish economy.”

Nama disposed of more than 60 per cent of its assets in London by the end of last year but in Ireland the progress has been slower, with only 10 per cent of the portfolio sold. The agency recently freed up 684 homes for social housing and it expects another 400 to be sold or leased this year.

IRISH FOOTBALL STAR IN COURT

ON BAIL: A case against Ireland and Celtic star Anthony Stokes has been escalated to a higher court by a Dublin District Court judge. Pic:

Stokes case no ‘minor offence’: judge Brian Hutton SOCCER star Anthony Stokes has been warned by a judge that his alleged assault of an Elvis impersonator is no minor offence.

After reading medical reports of the alleged victim, Judge Conal Gibbons said the injuries were too serious to be dealt with in the Dublin District Court.

He ordered the case be sent back to State prosecutors before a decision on

whether Stokes will have to stand trial in Ireland’s higher Circuit Court.

The Ireland and Celtic striker, 25, who was in the court in central Dublin will have to wait another seven weeks before hearing the fate of his case.

Judge Gibbons said he was refusing jurisdiction – effectively recommending a higher court take on the case.

“If these are the injuries the injured party sustained, to my mind this is not a suitable court,” he said.

The judge added: “As a matter of fact it is not a minor offence.”

Judge Gibbons said the Director of Public Prosecutions will have to review the case and come back before the court. Stokes was remanded on bail until July 17.

The footballer was arrested by appointment earlier this year and charged with assault causing harm to Anthony Bradley, 42, at Buck Whaley’s nightclub in Dublin, on June 8, 2013.

BABY NAMES

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Emily and Jack remain as favourite baby names Brian Hutton

Ireland’s Favourite Names

IRELAND has changed over half a century from a country of John and Marys to a nation of Jack and Emilys, a new report shows.

An of ficial sur vey of newbor ns names registered last year confirms Jack and Emily remain the most popular baby names in the country.

Jack has been on the top spot for boys for the past six years while Emily has been the favourite for baby girls since 2011, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) found.

The same study looked at the most registered names in Ireland in 1963 and found John and Mar y topping the league of baby names.

Since then John has slid to 27th in the name rankings while Mar y has plunged to 81st.

Few names preferred among mothers and fathers 50 years ago have passed their popularity down to the current generation.

In 1963, boys were more likely to be named John, Patrick, Michael, Paul and James - while Jack was an unusual name for a baby boy, not featuring at all in the survey of newly-registered births that year. Only James has survived in the top five last year, where it was in second place, followed by Daniel, Conor and Sean.

Newborn girls were more likely to be named Mary, Margaret, Catherine, Ann and Anne a half a century ago.

None of the names made it into the top five for girls last year, which was Emily, Emma, Sophie, Ella and Amelia.

Boys 1) Jack 2) James 3) Daniel 4) Conor 5) Sean Girls 1) Emily 2) Emma 3) Sophie 4) Ella 5) Amelia Source: CSO

Margaret, Catherine, Ann and Anne didn’t even feature in the top 100 girls names for 2013.

The CSO report also reveals two first-time entries into the top 100 for boys last year – Kai and Kayden. There were four first-time entries for girls: Sadie, Sienna, Fiadh and Poppy.

A few areas of the country bucked the national trend with Michael the most popular name for boys in Kilkenny, Alex in Cork and Aaron in Waterford city.

Ryan was the favourite among parents of newborn boys in Cavan while Charlie topped the poll in Monaghan, as did Mark in Leitrim.

Top-ranking girls names in pockets of the country included Ava, Caoimhe, Kate, Grace, Hannah, Mia and Sarah.

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June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

ireland IT jobs announced SOME 380 new jobs have been

announced by German and Swedish companies with operations in Galway, Athlone and Dublin.

IT company SAP is creating 60 R&D roles and 200 technology support roles at its Citywest campus and in its business suite and cloud support teams.

Telecoms and tech company Ericsson will take on 120 staff at sites in Dublin and Athlone, including highly skilled roles ranging from software developers to programme managers and consultants.

Elsewhere, a third jobs announcement sees another 100 roles created in the IT field.

Wipro, which provides services to banks and finance companies in Ireland and Britain, is to increase its workforce in Shannon by 50 per cent over the next year.

Drop in suicide rate CAMPAIGNERS have hailed a decrease in suicides in Ireland but warned too many people are still taking their own lives.

Latest official figures show a six per cent drop in suicides last year, including a more substantial 23 per cent fall in the number of young people reported as dying by suicide.

However Ireland still has the fourth highest suicide rate in Europe in the 15 to 24 age group, and there was a rise in the number of those taking their lives aged between 45 to 54.

The latest figures, from a Central Statistics Office report, show an encouraging trend with a 40 per cent drop in suicides over two years in the younger 15 to 24 year age group.

More than eight in every ten reported suicides is a man.

FIRST MINISTER FORCED TO APOLOGISE OVER SUPPORT FOR ANTI-MUSLIM SERMON

Robinson apology over slur David Young

MUSLIM representatives in Northern Ireland have received and accepted an apology from Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson in the wake of controversial remarks he made about members of the Islamic faith.

Three members of Belfast’s Islamic Centre met the Democratic Unionist leader at Stormont Castle to discuss the fall-out from his comments in suppor t of anti-Islamic evangelical preacher James McConnell.

Earlier, the veteran politician issued a statement claiming his words had been “misinterpreted” and insisting he would never wish to insult or distress Muslims.

While that statement stopped short of an apology, the delegation from the centre said Mr Robinson did say sorry to them in private.

Spokesman for the Belfast Islamic Centre, Dr Raied Al-Wazzan said: “We

accepted the apology in private and for us that was a sincere apology and we accepted it.”

A further statement issued by the DUP after the meeting said Mr Robinson was willing to apologise to anyone who had been hurt or distressed by his comments.

A party spokesman said the meeting had been “friendly and relaxed”.

After wards, the representatives from the centre also met Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Mar tin McGuinness.

Mr Robinson faced a storm of criticism after publicly backing Pastor McConnell, who earlier this month said he did not trust Muslims.

Mr McConnell, who is a fundamentalist Protestant preacher at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle Church in north Belfast, branded Islam a heathen doctrine during a fiery address to his congregation.

“People say there are good Muslims

in Britain – that may be so – but I don’t trust them,” said the pastor.

“Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.”

Police are currently investigating the contentious sermon made by Mr McConnell to see if its contents constituted a hate crime.

Mr Robinson’s subsequent comments in a newspaper interview that he himself would not trust Muslims for spiritual guidance but would trust them to “go down the shops” for him were characterised by his critics as insulting and condescending.

The DUP stalwart, who has attended Pastor McConnell’s church in the past, told the Irish News that claiming not to trust one section of society was not a hate crime, adding: “If it is then I’m going straight away to the police to ask them to take action against all those who say they don’t trust politicians.”

Race hate attacks in Nor ther n Ireland are on the increase.

SORRY: Peter Robinson has been forced to back away from comments about Islam.

TOURISM CHIEFS SEEK TO CAPITALISE ON CELEBRITY HONEYMOONERS

Kimye in Laois? Yes, celeb couple were in Ireland

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West

IRISH tourism bosses are seeking to capitalise on a publicity spike surrounding the Irish honeymoon of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

Industry sources have said the “Kimye” phenomenon will not only raise the profile of the country but has the potential to add a completely new visitor demographic.

The couple stayed at the 17th

century Castle Oliver in Limerick before travelling to the Ballyhoura Mountains where they took in a guided bike tour and a picnic. They even stopped in a local pub for a pint of Guinness.

Later in the week the couple stayed at the lavish five star Ballyfin Demesne in Co Laois, visiting a local cinema in Portlaoise to catch X-Men: Days of Future Past (in 3D).

A spokesman for Fáilte Ireland described their presence here, and the ongoing fascination with where they might next show up, as “priceless”.

“There will be a lot of people in the United States and across the world who won’t necessarily have had Ireland on their radar and it’s put us on the map for a new demographic,” the spokesman said.

FOR IRELAND & IRISH COMPANIES THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT DOWN UNDER The Irish Government agencies supporting the globalisation of Irish companies and attracting of inward investment, Enterprise Ireland & IDA Ireland are confident that Ireland is well on its way to economic recovery. Export levels are now significantly higher than the pre-crisis peak in 2007 and net job creation was higher in 2013 than it has been for ten years.

The Australian market is playing an important role in Ireland’s recovery; “The value of the economic relationship between Ireland & Australia is stronger now than at any time in our respective nation’s history”, says Enterprise Ireland Director Australia/New Zealand, Mr Paul Burfield. “In the last 5 years, the number of Irish companies active across this region has grown from less than 50 to more than 150 with an increase in exports to this market of almost 90% to a value exceeding $530m.”

Aisling O’Carroll, IDA Ireland Director for Australia also commented “2013 was a record year for IDA Ireland with the recent investments from Australian companies contributing to employment in multinational companies in Ireland reaching its highest ever levels.”

Both agencies rely heavily on the strength of their business networks to support the achievement of their respective objectives. Mr Burfield commented, “its all about contacts, we rely heavily on our networks to support the core objective of our organisations, being driving export growth that is aligned to job growth in Ireland.”

If you feel that you are in a position to support the growth of Irish companies across this market or to assist Australian companies grow their international business through a base in Ireland please email your contact details to Jessica.oreilly@enterprise-ireland. com and we will keep you connected.

BE A PART OF IRELAND’S ECONOMIC RESURGENCE! EMAIL YOUR DETAILS TO: Jessica.oreilly@enterprise-ireland.com

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

Under Belly Bell X1’s First Aussie Tour Interview :: Page 20

PERTH ROSE

STARS AND STRYPES

Glitz and Glamour From The Perth Rose Of Tralee Selection Ball

Cavan’s Finest Enroute To Australia

IRISH SEEN :: PAGE 14

WHAT’S ON :: PAGE 16

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Des Ruane and his wife Mia.

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

PERTH ROSE OF TRALEE SELECTION BALL Photos: Mamraz Nagi (Courtesy of nagitography.com)

Sinéad Lehane with escort Kieran Lehane and Rosebud Isabella Bruinning.

Perth Rose Jean O’Riordan with conveynor Jessica Stojkovski and her daughter and 2014 Rosebud Nadija.

The winning moment, Sinéad Lehane is announced as the 2014 Perth Rose.

2014 Perth Rose Sinéad Lehane.

The 2014 Perth Rose Entrants with 2013 Perth Rose Jean O’Riordan and the 2014 Rosebuds.

Perth Rose committee members, left to right, Lindsay Barry, Kate Dwight, Ailish Dillon, Jessica Stojkovski, Mary Jean Simms and Sarah Morrow.

Perth Rose judges, left to right, Carmel Lee, Steve Roe, Nyomi Horgan (1995 International Rose of Tralee), Frank Murphy and Bernadette O’Gorman.

Irish Club WA president Alan O’Meara and his wife Barbra.

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

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TOURING Celtic Thunder Celtic Thunder return to Australian shores for an extensive 21-date national tour. The talented troupe features Colm Keegan, Keith Harkin, Neil Byrne, Ryan Kelly & Emmet Cahill.

Jun 06

Geelong Geelong Arena

Jun 07

Melbourne

Melbourne Convention Centre

Jun 09

Adelaide

Adelaide Entertainment Centre

Jun 10

Adelaide

Adelaide Entertainment Centre

Jun 12

Mandurah

The Boardwalk Theatre

Jun 13

Perth

Perth Arena

Bell X1 Rock trio Bell X1 tour Australia for the first time this July. The band, who are celebrating the release of their sixth album Chop Chop, are joined on the road by The Phoncurves.

July 03

Melbourne

Hi Fi

July 04

Brisbane

The Zoo

July 05

Sydney

Hi Fi

July 06

Perth

Capitol

The Legend of Luke Kelly with Paddy Casey Songwriter Chris Kavanagh pays tribute to the legendary Luke Kelly during a mini-tour of Australia. He is joined by the talented Paddy Casey, the voice behind the hits Addicted to Company, and Saints & Sinners.

July 11

Perth

Riverside Theatre

July 13

Melbourne

Forum

July 18

Brisbane

Tivoli Theatre

July 19

Sydney

Enmore Theatre

The Strypes Ireland’s hottest new rock band are visiting Australia on their world tour. The Co Cavan four-piece have landed a spot on the Splendour in the Grass line-up, and also play shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

July 22

Melbourne

Northcote Social Club

July 23

Sydney

Newtown Social Club

July 18

Byron Bay

Splendour in the Grass

CAVAN’S FAB FOUR: Cavan has yet to produce a really great rock band but that looks set to change because of four young lads called The Strypes. Aged from 16 to 18, The Stypes (Josh McClorey, Ross Farrelly, Pete O’Hanlon and Evan Walsh) have already won the admiration of luminaries like Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher. They’ve also appeared on Letterman and with Conan O’Brien. Now they’re heading our way for the Spendour In the Grass festival and three side shows.

COMMUNITY

Saturday, June 7

Sunday, June 8

MELBOURNE Roesy

DARWIN Community Colours 5km Fun Run

Darwin Shamrocks GAA are hosting a fun run at East Point Reserve to promote cultural awareness. Participants are invited to wear something from their country of origin.

Contact darwinshamrocks@hotmail.com

ARTS & CULTURE Thursday, June 5 BRISBANE The Heartstring Quartet

Sisters Marie Ni Chathasaigh and Nollaig Casey join forces with gifted guitarists Arty McGlynn and Chris Newman. The band are touring Australia and also perform at the National Celtic Festival. heartstringtour.com.au

SYDNEY Sydney Film Festival: Calvary

Brendan Gleeson and John Michael McDonagh reunite for this black comedy shot in Sligo.

The film follows a good priest tormented by his community in a small Irish town. sff.org.au

June 6-9 PORTARLINGTON, VICTORIA National Celtic Festival

The largest celebration of Celtic culture in the southern hemisphere returns. An impressive line up of 40 national and international acts will take to the stage including Tolka, The Heartstring Quartet and Mairéad Hurley. nationalcelticfestival.com

June 6-9 SYDNEY Irish Language Winter School

Applications are open for Sydney’s only live-in Irish language school. Everyone is welcome from complete beginners to fluent speakers who want to help others learn.

Contact eilis@internode.on.net

what’s on

Singer-songwriter Roesy plays a series of gigs in his adopted hometown of Melbourne. Hear him at Oscar’s Alehouse in Belgrave tonight. roesy.net

SYDNEY Sydney Film Festival: Frank

Michael Fassbender takes the lead in this tribute to the masked comic character Frank Sidebottom. Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the movie also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Domhnall Gleeson. sff.org.au

Sunday, June 8 SYDNEY Sydney Film Festival: Love Eternal

Ian Harding is described as one of the strangest and most compelling characters moviegoers will meet onscreen this year. Love Eternal won the Best Irish Feature award at the Dublin International Film Festival. sff.org.au

June 11-14 MELBOURNE The Lonesome West

Melbourne theatre group the Kin Collective takes on Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy. In the final instalment two brothers are embroiled in a bitter family feud. fortyfivedownstairs.com

Until June 14

SPORT Saturday, June 14 SYDNEY Sydney Irish RFC Family Day

Sydney Irish RFC play Redfield Old Boys at home in Latham Park. Free activities all day for children during the mid-season fixture. sydneyirishrfc.com

Saturday, June 14 VICTORIA Stevie Kelly

The Shamrock Express Stevie Kelly fights Jake Gathercole in a Victorian state middleweight title challenge. The Mayoman is part of the Fight Card Promotions stable. facebook.com/TheShamrockExpress

Sunday, August 3 DARWIN Paddy Bird Cup

The Paddy Bird Cup returns for the third year for another exciting day of International Rules Football. The tournament was established to honour the memory of the young Irishman who died in a gas explosion in 2011.

Contact darwinshamrocks@hotmail.com

August 23-24 DARWIN Hurling and Gaelic Football Tournament

SYDNEY Irish Horse

Photographer James Horan captures the lives of Irish Travellers and their horses in this fascinating exhibtition. The show is part of the Head On Photo Festival. brendamaygallery.com.au

Saturday, June 14 PERTH Byrne and Kelly

their acoustic sounds on a sideshow tour around Australia. See the pair at Rosie O’Grady’s in Northbridge tonight. byrneandkelly.com

The Darwin Shamrocks are planning a four-club tournament in the Top End. The Singapore Lions have confirmed attendance and Shamrocks are calling for other clubs to take part.

Contact darwinshamrocks@hotmail.com

SPORT ON TV GAA Channel 7

Celtic Thunder’s Neil Byrne and Ryan Kelly bring

Watch the Championship live on Network Seven’s digital channel, 7Mate. au.tv.yahoo.com

whatson@irishecho.com.au :: (02) 9555 9199

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

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June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

review

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Life on and off duty full of dangers TOM Clonan lectures in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology where he teaches a full load as well as having to tend to the “publish or perish” requirement that goes with any form of academic employment.

He is also security correspondent for The Irish Times and it is that aspect of his life that is the focus of this book.

The book comes with the secondary title, “A Journey into the Heart of the Global War on Terror”, but that is actually the least interesting part of his story. Much more fascinating is the glimpse we get into problems in the Irish army as well as a sometimes uncomfortable look at Ireland’s part in the younger Bush’s muchvaunted “war on terror”.

Clonan retired from the Irish army with the rank of captain; he had just been awarded his PhD on the role of women in the army and the problems that they have to face. He sought an interview with the then newly appointed head of army to discuss his thesis findings and to suggest ways that some of his conclusions might be addressed.

He was not able to get such a meeting, but the media took up the case, availing of access to his thesis in the public library at DIT. The army closed ranks and Clonan was blacklisted, even by his former fellow officers. To counteract a dirty tricks campaign against him, he took a case against the Irish state which was settled out of court.

But the army did not forget. Some eight years later, he was asked by The Irish Times to cover a press conference with Taoiseach Bertie

Ahern at McKee barracks. When he rang the barracks, a place where he had once worked, he was told, “Look, Tom, we couldn’t guarantee your personal safety if you turned up [here] on Friday.”

It was only after the situation was taken up by the NUJ with the army chief of staff, the late Lieutenant General Dermot Earley – one of the few army good guys in the story – that the matter was settled.

Clonan’s experience in postings in Lebanon and as an observer in Bosnia meant he was widely used by the media to comment on the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. His contacts in the US embassy managed to get permission for him to visit their medical facilities in Germany, as well as their less salubrious amenities in Guantanamo Bay for features in The Irish Times. These are extensively covered in the book.

As if his problems with the Irish army were not enough, Clonan and his wife Aideen have had great sadness in their lives. Their second child was born with a neuromuscular condition that has him confined to a wheelchair; their next child was stillborn; Clonan’s mother and his favourite sister Pauline both died of cancer; Aideen’s mother died after being knocked down on the street on her way back from the shops.

Despite these troubles, life continues for the couple and their five children. Because Aideen is a hospital doctor, the author takes on many of the roles that in times past would have fallen to the woman.

Here he is on the eve of

“ Much more fascinating

is the glimpse we get into problems in the Irish army as well as a sometimes uncomfortable look at Ireland’s part in the younger Bush’s muchvaunted ‘war on terror’.

”

BOOKS Whistleblower Soldier Spy

by Tom Clonan Liberties Press 374 pp 14 euro

CCCC Hunting Shadows

by Sheila Bugler Brandon Books 444 pp 9.99 euro

C Frank O’Shea departing for a week-long visit to Guantanamo: “The day before I fly to New York en route to GTMO, I spend most of the day cooking. I freeze several dinners and make sure there is enough milk, bread and vegetables on hand for the week. I pack my bag.

I make sure I am not carrying any weapons. I don’t want a ‘serious misunderstanding’ when I land in GTMO.” This touch of lightness, even humour, characterises Clonan’s writing, some of it self-deprecating.

There is an account of a good-cop, bad-cop interview by Homeland Security in New York that is priceless. So too is his relationship with his father, a retired Garda who is determined to show how unimpressed he is by his son’s successes, while keeping hidden all his writings, carefully clipped from the media.

The war on terror, the Irish army,

caring for a handicapped child, working in the media are all here in a book that, despite the seriousness of its subject, is hard to put down.

CRIME writing is a genre that never seems to lose its popularity. It is not an area where Irish writers have excelled – John Connolly, John Banville/Benjamin Black, and Julie Parsons are exceptions, but the best writing in the area seems to come from English and Scottish writers, many of them women.

Sheila Bugler comes from the west of Ireland, but now lives in London, and Hunting Shadows is her first novel.

While the other book on this page deserves high accolades, this one is dull and tedious and full of clichés. The central character is DI Ellen Kelly, a masterclass in bumbling inefficiency and inability to get on with almost everyone.

She specialises in self pity and wine-soaked introspection, the result of things that happened in her childhood and in a previous case.

Set in London, the story starts with the abduction of a young

girl by a character named Brian Fletcher. He is a caricature of an adult with an intellectual disability who was abused as a child. Parts of the story are told in his voice, and it appears he is under the impression that the child he has abducted and locked in a shed at the back of his property is his younger sister. He hears voices, but is able to work competently as a gardener without attracting attention.

In the second half of the story, we are introduced to another man named Rob who is mourning the death of his child, Brian’s first victim. He is also mentally disturbed and irrational. To add to the confusion, the senior detective in the case, Ellen’s boss, is also off with the fairies.

This is a world populated by deeply flawed characters, all chasing their tails while the child in the shed seems to also be gradually going mad. Just when the story seems to be progressing, the author switches to this child’s voice, indicated by italics which are also used for Brian’s voices. The ending is as unsatisfactory as it is contrived.

Good Vibrations strikes the right chord

IF you were a music fan growing up in Ireland in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, chances are at some point you made a pilgrimage to Terri Hooley’s legendary Good Vibrations record shop in Belfast.

In the times of The Troubles it was an oasis of calm where it didn’t matter what your creed was, only what records you wanted to buy.

The film Good Vibrations does justice to the record shop and label of the same name and, more importantly, to Hooley.

It is a paean to the power of music to galvanise young people from disparate backgrounds who only want to worship at the altar of the 7” single.

Hooley (Richard Dormer) opens a record shop on the most bombed half-mile in Europe as civilisation all but collapses around him in 1970s Belfast. It’s far from plain sailing, with loyalist and republican thugs having to be placated with free LPs, Hooley’s own father – a radical socialist – protesting outside the shop, and the RUC assuming he was selling drugs.

Along the way he meets the girl of his dreams (Jodie Whittaker) and puts out The Undertones’ classic Teenage Kicks single. The scene where Hooley and his wife hear John Peel play Teenage Kicks

FILM

Good Vibrations Directors: Lisa Barros D’Sa, Glenn Leyburn Stars: Liam Cunningham, Jodie Whittaker, Dylan Moran

CCCC Pádraig Collins twice in a row on his BBC Radio 1 show is utterly joyful. The acting throughout is terrific, the script by Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson is tight and the direction by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn sympathetically serves the story.

This is the best feel-good film of the year so far, and worth seeing even if you’ve never previously heard of Hooley, Good Vibrations or The Undertones.

Good Vibrations opens in limited release on June 12. The next edition of the Irish Echo will feature an interview with Terri Hooley.

ON SONG: Richard Dormer plays Terri Hooley, a record-store owner instrumental in developing Belfast’s punk-rock scene, in Good Vibrations.

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RINGING LOUD

Bell X1 were once known as the band Damien Rice left, but the Dublin-based three-piece are now an established musical entity in their own right with six albums to their name. Elaine Loughlin spoke to them on the eve of their first Australian tour IT has been a long wait for Bell X1 fans but the band have finally decided to tour Australia – cow bells and side drums included.

Although it is five years since the group were placed in the top 10 on The Irish Times “The 50 Best Irish Acts Right Now” list, the musicians never felt ready to take the trip Down Under.

Six albums in and after forging a hugely successful career back in Ireland the indie rockers – who began their musical life as Juniper along with Damien Rice – now believe their records have “filtered through enough” to warrant a tour.

Lead singer, guitarist and occasional drummer Paul Noonan said the band, whose most recent album Chop Chop debuted at number one in the Irish charts last year, said they didn’t want to solely rely on the expat audience when coming here.

“We wanted to wait until we felt that the music had filled through enough and the last couple of records had been really well received down there,” said the singer, who grew up in the Dublin suburb of Lucan along with fellow bandmates bassist Dominic Philips and multi-instrumentalist David Geraghty.

“So I think we reached a point where it felt like the music had filtered through enough to warrant going down there,” he said.

“We didn’t want to go to Australia without proper infrastructure in place until the music was on radio and we had some awareness.

EARLY DAYS: Bell X1 began their musical life as Juniper along with Damien Rice.

“Having had such an amazing career in Ireland and the fact that there are so many Irish in Australia we knew that we would be OK with the Irish part of the crowd.

“That side of the audience would be there for us.

“But when I talk about the music filtering through, by airplay and in the press it’s to make sure that its not only Irish that turn out, that there is some awareness beyond the Irish community of the band. I think all six records have had some sort of a release there now and we have reached enough people that we will have a bit of both.”

Chart-topping albums and singles along with sold-out shows are almost a given for the band back in Ireland who supported U2 in Croke Park and have played a rooftop gig at Facebook’s European headquarters in front of its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

However, Paul said the string of

Australian gigs in July will be like getting “back to first principles” something that the lads are hugely excited about.

“We are really looking forward to it, it’s something that we have talked about for years, we know a lot of people in Australia, Irish people, friends who have gone down there. My sister even lives in Sydney, I haven’t seen her in a year.

“But apart from personal reasons it has always been a thrill for us to play somewhere new.

“We feel like we are breaking new ground and performing in front of people who don’t know us, we have had to do that everywhere we have gone outside of Ireland, throughout Europe and the States and we feel like we are sort of converting small groups of people at a time.”

The band will be travelling with a much smaller crew and the singer

said they will be humping their own gear – including all the unusual percussion instruments they regularly bring out on stage – and will be getting back to basics.

“I always enjoy going back to feeling like it was in the early days,” he said.

“You get to see the real results you get to see things building from grass routes and its very satisfying when you see that happening.”

In the early days, of course, their band included the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Damien Rice who the lads grew up with. Although now making significant inroads across Europe, the US and here in Australia the Damien Rice tag can often still be used when introducing them to new audiences.

“I think it’s understandable in places where we have never been, places that he has been that we would be introduced in that way,” Paul said.

“Obviously I can understand if it’s used in Australia a lot.

“But it’s our sixth record in and we have kind of defined ourselves as Bell X1 more than anything else.”

And although the band continued on – changing their name from Juniper to Bell X1 –- and Damien went onto record his solo albums, they all still maintain contact.

“I think we shared something with Damien that was very powerful and very formative,” Paul said.

“The first band when you are as a teenager and into your early

20s, it’s a very emotional and life-forming time and I think we all affected each other and all continue to, so we will always have that time and will always have that shared experience.”

The pop-rock group will play four shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth in early July and will be supported

by Brisbane indie-pop duo The Phoncurves.

“It will be a bit of a manic few days, we are flying every day, a new city every day and we have never done that either, obviously it’s a massive expanse and you really have to do that to make sense if you are going to do shows one after the other,” Paul said.

The group will play several festivals back home over the summer before travelling to America in September for a months tour.

Paul is also releasing Printer Clips at the end of May – a album of duets with the likes of Lisa Hannigan, Martha Wainwright and Cathy Davey.

“Over the years we have all done side projects that have all sprung from the band in various ways, Dave has got three solo records at this point and I have been moonlighting as a drummer for various bands over the years,” he said.

“I think it is good for us to go flex our muscles that don’t necessarily get worked in the band because you bring back something to the next Bell X1 record that is informative.”

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

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'Friends for Life' Tour Fri 19 Sept BRISBANE Eatons Hill Sat 20 Sept SUNSHINE COAST Maroochy RSL Sun 21 Sept TOOWOOMBA Empire Theatre Tue 23 Sept GOLD COAST Southport Sharks Wed 24 Sept PORT MACQUARIE Glasshouse Thu 25 Sept NEWCASTLE Panthers Fri 26 Sept CANBERRA Southern Cross Club Sat 27 Sept SYDNEY Dee Why RSL Sun 28 Sept SYDNEY Rooty Hill RSL Tue 30 Sept ALBURY Albury Ent Centre Wed 1 Oct SHEPPARTON Eastbank Centre Thu 2 Oct BALLARAT WCPA Fri 3 Oct MELBOURNE The Palms Sun 5 Oct PERTH Crown Perth Tickets available at ticketek.com.au or the venue box office Go to thehighkings.com for more details ALBUM OUT NOW

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WA TOP 10 1 JB O’REILLY’S 2 DURTY NELLY’S 3 WENTWORTH PLAZA 4 WHALE & ALE TAVERN 5 BAILEY BAR & BISTRO 6 FIBBER MCGEE’S 7 MURPHY’S 8 THE MIGHTY QUINN TAVERN 9 FENIANS’ 10 THE KINGSLEY TAVERN

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THE BLACKLIST RANKS PUBS BY THEIR VOLUME SALES OF DRAUGHT GUINNESS. THE RANKING IS SUPPLIED BY LION. THE GUINNESS WORD AND HARP DEVICE AND ASSOCIATED LOGOS ARE TRADE MARKS. GUINNESS & CO. 2014.

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“GOOD VIBRATIONS isn’t a ‘feel good’ film, it is a feel great’ film.”

T H E H O L LY W O O D N E W S

“Magic... My Favourite Film of the Year.”

MARK KERMODE, THE GUARDIAN

“Impassioned, Funny and Monumentally Likeable Myth-making.”

TOM HUDDLESTON, TIME OUT

Audience Award Best Feature Film

Outstanding Debut Writer, Director or Producer

Belfast Film Festival

2014 BAFTA Nominee

Opening Night Film

Official Selection

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2013

London International Film Festival 2013

Official Selection Seville European Film Festival 2013

Audience Award Best Irish Feature Galway Film Fleadh

DAVID BOWIE, SMALL FACES, THE ANIMALS AND THE UNDERTONES

IN CINEMAS

JUNE 12

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The Hurler’s Top Three Irish Aussies HAD a look at the Top 100 Irish Australians of all time and I’m not impressed.

Three of my personal favourites didn’t even make the cut.

How, for instance, could you overlook Lola Montez or, to give her her full title, Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert?

Born in Limerick in 1818, Lola was educated at boarding schools in Britain and France. She was ordered by her mother at 19 to marry an aged judge, but instead eloped with Lieutenant Thomas James whom she married in Ireland in 1837.

After spending some time in India, Lola returned to England in 1842 and James won a judicial separation on the ground of her adultery on board the ship. After training as a dancer in Spain, Lola gave performances which were considered “suggestive” in Warsaw, Paris and beyond. She became the mistress of Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas.

In 1849, Lola returned to London and married a young officer, George Trafford Heald. She was arrested on a charge of bigamy but released on bail. She fled with Heald to Spain, where he ‘drowned’ the following year. Lola returned to the stage, touring Europe and America, carrying a cowhide whip and often a pistol, and becoming involved in various

assaults, scandals and legal actions.

In San Francisco, she gave the first performances of her notorious ‘Spider Dance’. On July 1, 1853 she married Patrick Purdy Hull, owner of the San Francisco Whig. He soon sued for divorce, naming a German doctor as co-respondent. A few days later the doctor was found shot dead in nearby hills.

MY ANTI-HEROES: Dubliner Edward DeGroot interrupts the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; above, dancer and femme fatale Lola Montez.

Quiz

1. Which two counties have the shortest coastlines in Ireland?

2. What is a caubeen?

3. How is the Monument of Light in Dublin also known?

4. What was first sent from Valentia in Kerry in 1858?

5. Which saint is reputed to have founded Cork in the sixth century?

6. Which leader intercepted William of Orange’s forces on their way to the siege of Limerick?

7. What was the general strike of 1918 in Ireland a protest against?

8. Who wrote The Third Policeman?

9. Which novelist lost his job as a teacher because of ‘indecencies’ in his book The Dark?

10. What links Carhan near Cahersiveen, Co Kerry, to Genoa, Italy?

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

Taking her show to Australia in 1855, she played to full houses in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

She opened at Ballarat on 16 February 1856 and invited miners to shower nuggets at her feet as she danced. When the Ballarat Times attacked her notoriety; Lola retaliated by publicly horsewhipping the editor.

After touring other Victorian towns, Lola sailed with her manager Noel Folland for San Francisco.

Near Fiji on the night of July 8 he was lost overboard; with no official investigation following. She died in New York of syphilis, aged 42, having repented her notorious ways.

Another worthy inclusion would sure have been Alexander Pearce.

Born in Co Monaghan, Pearce was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for seven years for the theft of six pairs of shoes.

After escaping from prison and being recaptured, he received a second sentence of transportation, this time to the new secondary penal establishment at Sarah Island on the west coast of Van Diemen’s Land.

Pearce then led another escape and became notorious for cannibalising his fellow escapees when they ran out of food. After being free for 113 days he was caught and jailed again. However, within a year he escaped once more.

This time he was out for just 10 days before being caught. In that time he murdered and cannibalised Thomas Cox, despite still having food left.

Just before he was hanged for this, Pearce reportedly said: “Man’s flesh is delicious. It tastes far better than fish or pork.”

The other notable absentee is the peculiar Dubliner Francis Edward De Groot, who wrote himself into the history of Sydney by famously interrupting the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on March 19, 1932.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, De Groot, mounted on horseback, at the crucial moment slashed the opening ribbon with his sword, declaring the bridge open “in the name of the decent and respectable people of New South Wales”, upstaging the Premier Jack Lang.

They said it...

“I decided last night that the party would be best served by having a new leader. I intend to remain involved and active in politics. It is my intention to seek re-election in my constituency of Dún Laoghaire at the next general election.”

Eamon Gilmore resigning as leader of the Labour Party and Tánaiste, after the party’s poor showing in the local elections.

“Quite clearly the voters have rejected the policies of this government.”

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, speaking about the poor showing of the government in the recent elections, and the increase in Sinn Féin’s vote.

“I’m now known as the Quadfather.”

James Slattery, whose wife Grace gave birth to three girls and a boy in Limerick.

“I think we would like to place on the record that you’ve shown great dignity and courage. And I commend you on your selfless work now in the area of suicide risk awareness. I know that it’s motivated by your wish that no family has to go through the devastating experience you’ve had to go through.”

Cork’s city coroner, Dr Myra Cullinane, speaking to Elber Twomey at the inquest into the death of her husband Con, who died from injuries received in a crash caused by a suicide driver.

Elber’s 16-month-old infant Oisín, and Elber’s unborn daughter, Elber Marie, also died in the crash.

“I am grateful to all those including politicians, charities, the media and ordinary Irish and British people who have helped support my campaign for greater road safety and enhanced training resources for the Garda Síochána so no other family has to endure the terrible loss that I have suffered. I especially wish to thank my family and Con’s family for their incredible support.”

Elber Twomey “The problem is mine. The wedding invitations issued at the weekend made me realise that I wasn’t ready. I wish Caroline all the happiness she deserves and thank her for the great times we’ve had. Everyone has been through break-ups and it’s obviously very, very difficult.”

Rory McIlroy, announcing that his wedding to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki is off.

“It’s a hard time for me right now. Thanks for all the sweet messages.

Happy I support Liverpool right now because I know I’ll never walk alone.”

Caroline Wozniacki “I won’t take lectures from a self-confessed leader of a bloody terrorist organisation on equality, tolerance and mutual respect for all.”

First minister Peter Robinson, turning on his deputy Martin McGuinness. The deputy first minister had criticised Robinson’s support for evangelical preacher Pastor James McConnell’s right to criticise the Islamic faith.

“I was pinned to the wall two months ago and told, ‘You are going to One Direction and that’s it.’”

Broadcaster Gay Byrne jokes about how he came to be in the audience of One Direction at Croke Park.

Crossword Clues across 1. Golfer could learn showy, disjointed shots (5,5) 8. A town that sounds as if it could make an ass of itself (4) 9. Remove hydrogen from the people of Ireland, add to an Australian media magnate to find Dublin Booker prize winner (4,7) 10. Piece of wood often one finds discreetly connected to another (5) 11. Including the cost, Eire becomes something for those with specialised knowledge (8) 14. Masculine island in the Irish Sea (3) 15 & 19 across: Play, film, he lifted confusingly from Kerry (3,5) 16. Confused yarn leads to Irishman (4) 19. see 15 across 20. Mid onions you’ll see territories (9) 21. Seems Emer might be able to hypnotise (9) 23. Very straight sort of Irish chap (5) 24. Sea inlet in Strananerriagh (3) 25. Smoke, play or use them to cart waste away (5) 27. Nothing and Virginia shortly produces eggs (3) 28. Cleanse haphazardly to find three different sides here (7) 29. For shooting, the Eske ethically provides a substitute for dove (5) 30. Woman you might meet the day before? (3)

Clues down 1. Tailors can make this sporting object (7) 2. Is amen changed in a Dublin station, street or French city (5) 3. An ensnared woman emerges as the Irishman with the red book (6,7) 4. A flan, we hear, that might be a Strabane writer (6) 5. You can say, ach tomorrow I’ll find the boat (5) 6. Intellect orgy I arrange in a university (7,7) 7. Square in Galway, Jane might be attracted to (4) 12. Hog, hamburger, hide script (5) 13. Irish omen could produce island (9) 17. Calcium hydroxide and an oldfashion hay stack produces place you’d write rhymes about (8) 18. A lodger I mistook, eventually led me to harbour (8) 22. Add an article to Erse to remove it (5) 23. Remove a measure from a caveman to find county (5) 26. Ireland’s seeing one is an island (3)

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LAST EDITION’S ANSWERS: Clues across: 1. Ryanair. 5. Banshee.

8. Letterfinish. 9. Headlights. 10. Ore. 12. (Boston) Celtics. 13. Cape.

14. Kesh. 16. Ode. 18. Entrance. 19. Eli. 22. Daly. 23. Molly. 24. Avivia.

26. Era. 27. Ann. 29. Enthusiastic. 30. Ben. Clues down: 1. Riley. 2. Arthur.

3. Alec. 4. Rafferty. 5. Benedictine. 6. Nessie. 7. Emmet Spiceland.

10. O’Neal (Ryan). 11. Echo. 15. Dramatic. 17. Dedalus. 20. ICI. 21. Elphin.

25. Vane. 26. Erse. 28. Nun. Clues across: 1. Golfer could learn showy, disjointed shots (5,5) 8. A town that sounds as if it could make an ass of itself (4) 9. Remove hydrogen from the people of Ireland, add to an Australian media magnate to find Dublin Booker prize winner (4,7) 10. Piece of wood often one finds discreetly connected to another (5) 11. Including the cost, Eire becomes something for those with specialised knowledge (8) 14. Masculine island in the Irish Sea (3) 15 & 19 across: Play, film, he lifted confusingly from Kerry (3,5)

Answers: 1. Leitrim (2 miles); Meath (13 miles); 2. Type of hat; 3. The Millennium Spike or the Spire of Dublin; 4.

The first transAtlantic cable message; 5. St Finbarr: 6.

Patrick Sarsfield; 7. The British Government’s intention to introduce conscription; 8. Flann O’Brien; 9. John McGahern; 10. Places of birth and death of Daniel O’Connell.

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June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

Mal Rogers scans Ireland’s regional media for what’s making news in your county DERRY

Man jailed for dragging woman by hair in bar A MAN who assaulted a woman by dragging her around a bar by her hair has been jailed for four years at the Crown Court in Derry.

Rodney Bonnes, 29, from Melrose Terrace in the Waterside area of the city, was arrested by the police on August 22, 2012, after he randomly attacked the woman in an unprovoked assault in Downey’s Bar in Shipquay Street.

UTV reported Bonnes was described by the judge as “dangerous”.

After his arrest, the 29-year-old bit the forearm of a civilian detention officer with such force that the officer had to hit him three times before he released his bite grip.

When the police were called to the bar, Bonnes assaulted two of them and also resisted arrest before the police used CS spray to restrain and arrest him.

Bonnes, who has 71 previous convictions, 21 of which are for assaults and three for threats to kill, admitted six charges linked to the assaults inside and outside the bar and in the city’s Strand Road police station.

Bonnes will serve two years in jail without remission and will be on licence for a further two years after his prison release.

CORK

Bookie stole €600k, gambled most of it THE Irish Examiner reports a former manager of Boylesports bookmakers at Castle St in Cork stole almost €600,000 from the shop and gambled most of it through Paddy Power’s website.

Detective Garda Padraig Harrington said Paddy Power became so concerned about the extent of the gambling by Ronan Crowley, 33, of Carrig Downs, Carrigtwohill, that it investigated it internally and refused to take any more bets from him.

The detective said Paddy Power did not notify management at Boylesports of the matter.

The 236 separate thefts, where Crowley failed to lodge shop cash receipts into the company’s main account any day on which he was working over a 22-month period, were eventually discovered by his employers, but not before he had stolen €590,810.

The chances of the gambling addict repaying any money was described by the detective as zero.

DOWN

Bees cause buzz at Bangor wedding SWARMS of bees that sparked a stir in Bangor may have originated in hollow trees in the town’s Ward Park.

The Belfast Telegraph reports

beekeeper Phelim Breen, who collected one of the swarms, said the trees were host to several rare wild colonies of honeybees. These colonies could originally have been founded by bees that had escaped from domestication. One swarm touched down on the windscreen of a car parked near Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, a couple of hundred yards from the first swarm.

“The congregation had to take refuge in the church while the bees were swarming outside,” Mr Breen said.

LIMERICK

‘Elaborate’ counterfeit tax disc discovered CONCERNS have been expressed there is a sizeable market in Limerick for illicit tax discs after the seizure of an “elaborate counterfeit” disc by gardaí.

The Limerick Leader reports Limerick Court was told a false disc was discovered by Garda Pat Melody of the divisional traffic corps when he stopped a van at Pa Healy Road, Corbally, on August 17, last year.

The driver of the van – Niall Griffin, of Island Road – pleaded guilty to using the false disc and to driving without motor tax when he was stopped.

After the disc was produced in court, Judge Eugene O’Kelly said it was a “very elaborate counterfeit” and it wasn’t “just a scanned document”.

When asked by the judge if there is a market for counterfeit tax discs in Limerick, Garda Melody replied there is saying: “I have detected a good few of them”.

Solicitor John Devane said Mr Griffin, who is an unemployed steel fabricator, could not afford to tax his vehicle at the time.

He added that his client did not tell gardaí who supplied him with the false disc “out of fear” for his safety.

After commending Garda Melody for his sharp eye in the case, Judge O’Kelly imposed fines on Mr Griffin totalling €700.

He also requested a Community Service report, indicating that he is considering a 200-hour penalty in lieu of a five-month prison sentence.

GALWAY

Memorial to babies’ unmarked graves EFFORTS are under way to raise enough funds to build a memorial at an unmarked grave of as many as 800 babies in Tuam.

The Journal.ie reports the site is located at what was a home for unmarried mothers, run by the Bon Secours order, from the 1920s until the ’60s.

Catherine Corless, a local historian and genealogist, was researching the home when she discovered death records for 796 children, ranging from infants to children up to the age of nine. There was a high infant mortality rate over the 40-year period, with many of the

CREATIVE MIND: Shania McDonagh, 16, from Co Mayo, with this extraordinary drawing was the overall winner of the 60th Texaco Children’s Art Competition at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin. Pic: PA children believed to have died from malnutrition and infectious diseases.

She could find no record of their burial in other graveyards in the county, or in areas where the mothers had been from.

Local authorities have so far donated €2,000 towards the memorial, but those involved hope to raise €5,000 to build a plaque containing and a small statue.

ANTRIM

Clash erupts over anti-Islamic preacher STORMONT’S political leaders have clashed after First Minister Peter Robinson backed an evangelical preacher who sparked controversy when he said he did not trust Muslims.

Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson, who has attended Pastor James McConnell’s church in Belfast, said he supported his right to criticise the Islamic faith.

The Belfast Telegraph reports police are investigating the contentious sermon made by the pastor to see if its contents constituted a hate crime.

Mr Robinson insisted claiming not to trust a section of society was not a hate crime, adding: “If it is, then I’m going straight away to the police to ask them to take action against all those who say they don’t trust politicians.”

KERRY

Oldest Blasket native wants funding for pier THE OLDEST living Blasket Island native has urged the Office of Public Works and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to urgently provide funding to address the “deplorable” condition of the pier that provides the sole access to the island for thousands of summer visitors.

The Kerryman reports Dr Mícheál Ó Céarna, 93, has written to several TDs, including Minister Jimmy Deenihan and South Kerry Deputies Brendan Griffin and Michael HealyRae, from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, to express his “deep concern” about the state of the pier.

“This pier sustained heavy damage during the unprecedented storms

last winter. Now the sub-standard condition of the pier threatens to compromise the upcoming tourist season when thousands of people travel to West Kerry seeking to visit the Great Blasket island by boat,” Dr Mike states in his letter.

DUBLIN

services to the scene. By that stage the man, a local lobster fisherman, had been in the water for more than an hour-and-a-half.

He was pulled aboard a local boat and then transferred to the Lough Swilly RNLI lifeboat who wrapped him in blankets and brought him ashore.

DERRY

Twink shocked as gang School children find try to blow up ATM man’s body on beach PANTO-QUEEN Twink was disturbed by a gang of raiders in her Knocklyon home as they set about blowing up an ATM across the road from her.

The stage stalwart told Dublin’s Evening Herald how her dogs “went berserk” in the early hours and would not stop barking.

The commotion was caused by a daring attempt by a gang to blast the cash machine out of the wall of the local shopping centre, just yards from Twink’s front gate.

The gang succeeded in blowing the front off the ATM, but fled emptyhanded when they failed to get at the cash. They had pumped gas into the cash dispenser and ignited it in the hope of blowing the machine apart.

“I can’t believe these guys were just across the road from me – it’s terrifying to think it could be happening so near to you,” Twink told the paper.

Gardaí at Rathfarnham are investigating the raid.

DONEGAL

THE body of a man has been found on a Co Derry beach by a group of primary school children, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

It was discovered at Magilligan Point, near the village of Downhill.

It is understood pupils from the Model Primary School in Londonderry made the find.

The class of 27 children had been combing the beach in small groups when five of them saw the outline of a body and reported it to their teacher.

Principal Paul Sheridan said: “A group of five children, three girls and two boys, came across the body.

The children told their teachers – there were two with them – and the authorities were immediately contacted.”

Police are investigating the death and a post-mortem is due to be carried out.

CARLOW

Vandals drop rocks Young farmer saves on passing cars lobster fisherman’s life A CARLOW man whose car had a A YOUNG farmer believes he was simply “in the right place at the right time” when he heard a drowning fisherman’s cry for help, a half-mile away.

John Grant was tending to sheep near Clonmany in Co Donega. The Irish Examiner reports he briefly thought he heard a cry for help in the distance. He jumped on his quad bike and headed towards the sea.

He spotted a man in the sea waving his arms for help.

John, 23, said: “I was simply in the right place at the right time. Anybody else would have done the same.”

John, from Binion, Clonmany, contacted his mother and she alerted the Malin Head radio station who set about scrambling coastal emergency

stone dropped on it from a height by vandals said it’s lucky no one was killed by the reckless behaviour.

The Carlow Nationalist reports the father-of-three was travelling from Askea towards Hanover when he passed under the railway bridge.

Immediately a huge stone, which he described as similar to “sleepers on a railway track” smashed into the bonnet of the 2012 Opel Insignia.

“One stone struck the car and I got such a fright I pulled in at the side. There was a chap walking with a buggy and his wife along the bridge and he came up and said they were throwing stones at them, too,” he added, horrified.

Gardaí in Carlow are investigating the matter.

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VISA-BILITY YOUR IMMIGRATION

QUESTIONS ANSWERED...

Co Antrim native and registered migration agent John McQuaid provides a uniquely Irish perspective on current visa and migration issues.

Send your immigration questions to John at

June 5 – 18, 2014 I www.irishecho.com.au

AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

Skill Select route proving popular with applicants Dear John, I am an Irish qualified bricklayer in Sydney on a temporary visa looking to apply for permanent residence. I see options for the state nominated or independent visas. Is there any advantage in applying via state nomination?

Which is the better option for me?

Brian T

visability@irishecho.com.au

This Migration Column is intended to provide general information on migration issues and does not constitute legal or migration advice. While all care is taken, no responsibility is accepted by the Irish Echo or John McQuaid for the accuracy of material in the column.

People seeking advice on migration law should seek advice from a registered migration agent.

DEAR Brian, Yes, the “skill Select” system’s independent or state nominated visa options are open to application from in or outside Australia.

To start, check if your occupation is on Immigration’s current Skilled Occupations List (SOL).

SOL occupations are eligible to apply independently and through State / employer nominated routes.

Bricklayers are not currently on the SOL, but are on the bigger Consolidated Skilled Occupation List (CSOL). CSOL listed occupations are eligible to apply for the state or employer nominated permanent visas but not through the independent route.

So as a bricklayer, the state nominated route is the next best option to employer nomination.

(See http://www.immi.gov.au/News/ Pages/Consolidated-sponsoredoccupation-list-updated.aspx) The Skill Select System requires you to have at least 60 points to make an ‘expression of interest’ (EOI) application for the preferred visa. Points can be claimed for age, qualifications, work experience and English language ability.

Some positives for State nominated option are that an extra five points are available

for the nomination, and may be critical to getting to the 60 point minimum eligibility. Getting a state nomination approval means immigration will invite you to apply for your visa right away.

One possible downside is that you must commit to living in the nominating state for the first two years of the visa.

Each state has different lists of occupations they sponsor and in some cases additional requirements such as minimum years of experience. Some ask you to have access to ‘relocation funds’.

NSW is not accepting permanent nomination applications until the new migration program year starts in July. At this time, expect NSW and other state governments to release new lists of occupations they will sponsor.

If you are in Australia, it’s best to look at the state you are living in as you may have problems convincing another state government that you genuinely intend to relocate.

Applicants outside Australia need to show that they have researched their preferred state in some detail.

If lodging an EOI for the independent visa (without a state nomination) you have to wait for an ‘invitation to apply’ for the visa.

Emerald City Advisers now have Lending Managers who can assist you with your lending needs.

Every month, DIBP ‘sweep’ the EOIs, picking the highest points scorers first. However recent DIBP reports show many EOI applicants with the base 60 points getting invitations.

This independent route can mean waiting for several months for an invitation and unlike the state nominated option, there is no guarantee of receiving an invitation.

To make the ‘free’ EOI application, a migration skills assessment and in some cases an English language test are needed. These steps will determine how you reach the 60 points score and eligibility. So there will be some costs to get to the point of EOI. When you get the visa application in, DIBP processing is currently around three months. Bridging visas are granted to anyone who has applied for the visa while in Australia.

Getting the migration skills assessment can take from four weeks to four months depending on your occupation. Allow four to six weeks to obtain the English language test score.

Understanding how you can meet the points is critical so consider asking a registered migration agent for a personal assessment.

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

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A U S TRA L I A’ S I RI S H N EW S PA P E R

Important milestone for Australia’s Irish newspaper THE past 25 years have been momentous in the history of media and publishing.

When the Irish Echo began, the internet was unheard of, there were no mobile phones and desktop publishing was not yet available.

The earliest editions of this newspaper were put together by compositors who used scalpels to physically cut up ‘galleys’ of bromide paper that had been waxed on one side. They then pasted them down on layout sheets.

The stories themselves were typed (using a typewriter or occasionally written in long-hand) and ‘marked up’ for typesetting using printer’s measurements (ems) that are now consigned to history. No sector has been transformed more over the past twoand-a-half decades than print media.

Everyone associated with the Irish Echo is very pleased that we have ridden the publishing rollercoaster and reached this particular milestone.

Any yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The credibility of any news organisation depends on the support of the community it serves and the integrity of the information it chooses to publish.

We believe that over 25 years the Irish Echo has worked hard to fulfil its role as Australia’s Irish community newspaper.

We have borne witness to presidential and prime ministerial visits between the two countries; we have watched seven Irish ambassadors come and go; we have captured the joy of seeing an Irish horse win the Melbourne Cup or an Irishman winning an AFL premiership while at the same time, sharing the grief of so many – too many – young Irish lives lost through accident, violence or misadventure.

We have uncovered stories of Irish Australia that had never been reported before while shining a light on issues of cultural or ethical

“

We have uncovered stories of Irish Australia that had never been reported before while shining a light on issues of cultural or ethical concern to immigrants. Similarly, we have been vocal advocates for the Irish abroad, often battling political ambivalence in Ireland.

”

concern to immigrants. Similarly, we have been vocal advocates for the Irish abroad, often battling political ambivalence in Ireland.

We have lent our voice to those who want to see a stronger political, economic and social relationship between Ireland and Australia.

In terms of a body of work, we have published more than 500 editions of the newspaper as well as a number of magazines.

The alumni of this newspaper are scattered throughout the globe.

Many have been head-hunted for major editorial roles in Ireland, Britain, the Unites States and in Australia. We thank them all for their contributions over the years.

As we celebrate 25 years of the Irish Echo, it is important to reflect on the role our newspaper plays in the community.

The Echo is part of a network of Irish publications around the world that are connected to the communities on which they report.

In recent years, Ireland-based media organisations have woken up to the fact many Irish nationals live overseas.

There has been a conscious effort to engage expats.

This is welcome, as it means people in Ireland are better informed about those who have left.

Our Ireland-based readership also continues to grow as online publishing introduces a global audience to our stories.

The role of the media is under enormous scrutiny right now, not least because of rapidly changing technology in general and the internet in particular.

People are openly wondering if there is a need for journalism at all.

Social media and search engines provide many of us with a news feed for the stories that might interest us.

But the Irish Echo remains the only nationally distributed Irish media operation in Australia with reporters and writers in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Dublin and Belfast.

We are the only media operation to commission reporters and photographers to cover events.

The print edition will continue, we hope, for many years to come but we are also very keen to embrace the opportunities of digital and we will have more to say on this later in the year.

In the meantime, please enjoy our 25th anniversary edition.

Thank you to all our contributors, writers, readers, subscribers and advertisers for their loyalty and support over the past two-anda-half decades. We hope we will continue to enjoy that support as we move into the next chapter of our journey.

editor@irishecho.com.au

A U S T R A L IA’S IR IS H N E WS PA PER

Editor: Billy Cantwell Subediting: Pagemasters Contributors: Martin Brady Susan Butler (Brisbane) Sarah Carty (Perth) Andrea McCullagh Elaine Loughlin (Melbourne) John McQuaid Frank O’Shea Malcolm Rogers Darryl Kennedy Seumas Phelan Design: Diarmaid Collins Office: Lorraine Heneghan Telephone: +61 2 9555 9199 Facsimile: +61 2 9555 9186 Postal Address: PO Box 256, Balmain, NSW 2041, Australia E-mail (Admin): mail@irishecho.com.au E-mail (Editorial): editor@irishecho.com.au Web: www.irishecho.com.au The Irish Echo is a national publication published fortnightly by The Irish Exile P/L Printed by Spot Press Distributed by Network Distribution Services

Opinion

Barry O’Keefe: Remembering a great Irish Australian IT was only in 2002 when I was appointed as Parish Priest of the Parishes of Sydney Harbour North that I met Barry O’Keefe. Although throughout my life I had heard a great deal about the man and the O’Keefe family from Waverley.

For many years Barry attended daily Mass during the week at St Mar y’s Cathedral in Sydney and the weekend in his home Parish of Blessed Sacrament, Clifton Gardens on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

Ever y Saturday morning he would proclaim the Word at 8am Mass; most Saturday’s I would have a discussion with him in the sacristy after Mass.

I found it difficult to understand how this man of an Irish working-class Labor family was a member of the Liberal Party and was a Monarchist. I must admit I never did really find out the reason.

However, he was an honest and generous person with a strong faith that could move mountains and his faith was the one thing that kept him focused and on track.

Barry’s family were the centre of his whole. His wife for 52 years Janette; his sister Anne and his brother John, who died back in 1974, was a well known rock singer. Blessed with five children, Philip, Vanessa, Roger, Andrew and Sophie and their families including seven grandchil-

Have Your Say Share your reaction to Bishop Terry Brady’s analysis on our Facebook page or send us your thoughts by emailing editor@ irishecho.com.au

dren and a large extended family. Justice O’Keefe died peacefully on April 24 at St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst; with his immediate family at his bedside. He was 80.

Throughout his long life Barry made an outstanding and distinguished contribution to the community through his service to the law, local and state government; particularly in the fight against corruption and injustice.

His contribution to the Church was equally outstanding, and in recognition of this tireless service to the Church two days before his death he was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Gregor y the Great. This was the second Papal honour to be awarded to Barry for his remarkable contribution to the Church.

He was a man of simple and deep faith.

The integration of the spiritual life and a professional concern is a challenge for most people.

How do you find stillness and God’s presence when there are constant demands on your time and energy?

Barry told me that his attendance at daily Mass was important so he could find the time to know and love God. For the past 18 months Barry chaired the Tr uth, Justice and Healing Commission for the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia. All would agree that his wise counsel will be ver y much missed.

There were few spare seats in the Cathedral for the Requiem for Barry.

Among the mourners were Governor Marie Bashir, former NSW Premier Nick Greiner, High Court Chief Justice Robert French and NSW Health Minister Julian Skinner.

Certainly I didn’t really notice anyone from the other side of the political divide.

Bishop Terry Brady

Macquarie Bank in his eulogy at the Requiem made mention in his years as Mayor of Mosman, he was responsible for transforming Mosman Council into an “enlightened” one.

He was dedicated to proper town planning and he had a passion for civic embellishment; particularly passionate about statues and fountains and when he had a passion for something he was very persuasive. Kevin made mention he had funded two of the fountains in Mosman and provided a statue of its first mayor.

Barr y’s son, Philip, in his words highlighted how his dad also had an enthusiasm for regalia, “whether it was in the Mayoral robes and chains or the

“

Barry O’Keefe has left a great legacy for his family, the community and the Church. I will probably never really find out how he moved away from his “Irish Convict” roots; but one thing is certain he never lost that innate sense of justice for all.

Obviously Barry certainly had moved away from where he came and this always made me very sad.

However, it has to be stated he did have love for the poor and the vulnerable, but there was no signs of this at the Requiem Mass; usually you see a number of the battlers and the homeless but not on this occasion.

Kevin McCann the Chairman of

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gowns and wigs of the Queens Counsel, he never failed to take delight in dressing up”.

Barry O’Keefe has left a great legacy for his family, the community and the Church. I will probably never really find out how he moved away from his “Irish Convict” roots; but one thing is certain he never lost that innate sense of justice for all.

Bishop Terr y Brady is an auxiliar y bishop of the Sydney diocese.

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AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

sports :: football FRIENDLY INTERNATIONAL :: IRELAND V TURKEY

O’Neill mystified by Turkish loss but points to positives Rep Of Ireland

Damian Spellman

IRELAND’S soccer boss Martin O’Neill was at a loss to explain how his Republic of Ireland side slipped to a second successive friendly defeat as Turkey left Dublin victorious.

Goals from Ahmet Ilhan Ozek and substitute Osman Tarik Camdal either side of half-time proved sufficient to hand the visitors a 2-1 win at the Aviva Stadium on Friday May 23, with Jon Walters’ 78th-minute strike prompting a late, but ultimately unsuccessful, fightback.

However, O’Neill and his players were left to rue missed chances, good goalkeeping and two debatable penalty decisions as the Turks did what Serbia managed to do on Irish soil in March.

The Ulsterman said: “I actually thought that we created a lot of chances in the game and I genuinely don’t know how we lost the match.

“A combination of things - probably poor finishing, some great saves by the goalkeeper too – but we should have had the game out of sight by half-time.

I thought we played really well. I was just saying in the dressing room, there

1

Turkey 2

NO TURKISH DELIGHT: Stephen Ward is challenged by Turkey’s Ahmet Ilhan Ozek (left) during the friendly match in Dublin. Pic: Artur Widak

are big moments in matches where you have to really defend stoutly.

“You might go 10 or 15 minutes in the match and you are coasting through and you haven’t been tested.

Then when the big moments come, you have to be stronger.

“Eventually we conceded two goals tonight when I think that there should have been less danger.

“That said, genuinely going forward, I thought we were excellent and somebody is going to earn themselves a fortune by being able to put the ball in the net, an absolute fortune.”

Things might have been very different had French referee Ruddy Buquet viewed defender Omer Toprak’s fifthminute challenge on Shane Long differently. Ireland were convinced they should have been awarded a penalty and Toprak a red card, but crucially Buquet was not.

O’Neill said: “I have seen it back on the big screen, but it’s pretty blatant, and I think the referee knows that.

“However, five minutes into the game, it’s a friendly match, he didn’t apply the rules at the end of it all. It’s a definite penalty and as a consequence if it is a penalty, then it’s an automatic sending off.

“That said, deep down it’s game that we wanted to contest and if that had been them case, I suppose you take it, but it was a decision that obviously

eventually played an important part in the game. But I am not overly concerned about it.”

Despite the result, O’Neill was able to take positives with the contribution of playmaker Wes Hoolahan a particular high point for the manager.

He said: “I thought little Hoolahan played brilliantly for us. He tried to create things for us during the course of the game.

“Sometimes some big boots come in and shove him off the ball a little bit, but overall he showed a great determination and great ability to try to manoeuvre it. He was excellent for us.”

The game was watched by a crowd of just 25,191, less than a third of the attendance just a few miles away for One Direction’s concert at Croke Park, although O’Neill was happy enough with the turn out.

He said: “I was delighted with the crowd in the sense that it’s hard-earned money at the end of a season.

“There were a couple of other attractions on in Dublin tonight – even some of my family were thinking about leaving here and going to One Direction, and that includes my wife!”

FRIENDLY INTERNATIONAL :: IRELAND V ITALY :: LONDON

Improved Irish keep Italy in check Cindy Garcia-Bennett

Republic Of Ireland

THE Republic of Ireland held Brazilbound Italy scoreless during a wellcontested friendly at Craven Cottage last weekend.

Coach Martin O’Neill applauded his players following their impressive performance.

The Irish were the better team on the night and were unlucky not to claim the win when substitute Stephen Kelly saw his shot beat Italy goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu but hit the crossbar.

Sirigu had earlier made some fantastic saves to deny Ireland the lead.

“We played ver y well indeed,” O’Neill said. “Italy started well and had two chances in the opening 10 minutes but after that, we settled down.

“I thought we were excellent. We could have scored a few goals.

“I’m very pleased with the way we played against Italy. I thought the game was ver y competitive from start to finish, just what both teams wanted.”

Italy coach Cesare Prandelli, whose side begin their World Cup campaign against England on June 14 in Manaus, used the friendly in London to try out some of his fringe players before naming his final 23-man squad for Brazil.

Italy are now winless in their last six games and to complicate matters for Prandelli, AC Milan midfielder Riccardo Montolivo was carried off on a stretcher early on. It later emerged that the player had a broken leg and is out of the World Cup. Prandelli fielded Fiorentina striker Giuseppe Rossi, who was looking to prove his fitness having recently recovered from a right knee injury, alongside Serie A’s top scorer Ciro Immobile up front. Ireland coach Martin O’Neill made five changes to the side that lost 2-1 in a friendly against Turkey in Dublin last weekend.

Italy dominated possession early on and had the first chance of the match in the fifth minute. Ireland goalkeeper David Forde had to dive at full stretch to clear Claudio Marchisio’s powerful 30-yard effort towards the far post.

Prandelli was forced to make his first substitution in the 15th minute with

Italy 0

0

Alberto Aquilani replacing the injured Montolivo. Ireland created their first chance in the 21st minute with Anthony Pilkington’s free-kick towards the far post kept out by Sirigu.

Matteo Darmian, making his senior debut with Italy, came close to breaking the deadlock a minute later but his diagonal effort went just wide.

Ireland continued to press forward and David Meyler’s stinging drive from outside the area forced Sirigu to palm the ball over the bar.

In the 33rd minute, Sirigu made a superb save to keep out Shane Long’s close-range header from Aiden McGeady’s cross from the left.

Prandelli made his second substitution before half-time with Marco Parolo replacing an injured Aquilani.

Ireland picked up where they left off after the re-start and twice had opportunities to score early in the second half. Wes Hoolahan fed Long in the box but his right-footed strike was saved by Sirigu, and then seconds later Pilkington’s curled attempt flew inches wide.

Italy thought they had taken the lead in the 56th minute when Immobile got on the end of Parolo’s pass and struck the ball past Forde only to see his goal disallowed for offside.

Prandelli brought in Antonio Cassano before the hour mark in the hope the Parma forward could make the difference. In the 65th minute, Cassano spotted an unmarked Marchisio in the area and the Juventus midfielder wasted a great chance as he struck the ball straight at Forde.

With 12 minutes remaining, Ireland put a great move together and came close to scoring.

James McClean’s cross found Quinn in the box and his right-footed shot hit the bar as Italy escaped with a draw.

The Irish now head to the United States for friendly clashes against Costa Rica and Portugal.

Their first Euro2016 qualifier will be on September 7 against Georgia.

IN A HOOP: Roy Keane is a candidate for the vacant Celtic FC manager’s job casting some doubt on his continuing role as Martin O’Neill’s assistant. Pic: PA

Celtic interested in Keane as manager CELTIC chief executive Peter Lawwell has confirmed the club are interested in appointing Roy Keane as their new boss.

But the Hoops chief says the Republic of Ireland assistant manager faces competition from as many as nine other rivals to be named Neil Lennon’s successor.

Ireland boss Martin O’Neill revealed last week that the majority shareholder of the Scottish champions Dermot Desmond had held talks with Keane.

And now Lawwell has confirmed the 42-year-old former Manchester United skipper – who ended his playing career at Parkhead – is on a short list of candidates the Celtic board is now examining.

Asked how many names were in the frame, Lawwell told STV: “Between five and 10. We are looking at a number of exceptional candidates and we’re going through a process. Clearly we want to do it as soon as we possibly can but these things you can’t put a time on.

“We have got a number of excellent candidates, Roy is one of them and we’ll see what happens in the next week or two.

“He’s played here, he’s a Celtic supporter, he’s a first class guy and like the others are, as I said we have between five and ten candidates.

“You just have to do your work properly and hopefully we’ll get it done as soon as we can.”

As we went to press, there was doubt as to whether Keane would fly to the US with the Irish team.

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

rugby :: sports RABO PRO12 FINAL :: LEINSTER V GLASGOW

O’Driscoll, Cullen end Leinster career on a a high RETIRING duo Brian O’Driscoll and Leo Cullen received winning send-offs to their illustrious careers as Leinster beat Glasgow Warriors 34-12 in a runaway RaboDirect PRO12 final victory.

It was a bittersweet occasion at the RDS for O’Driscoll who was forced off with a suspected calf injury just eight minutes into the contest.

“I always say you can’t plan anything in this game, what happens happens and it wasn’t going to be a good day for me today but this is what it’s about,” O’Driscoll said in a pitchside interview, surrounded by victorious team mates.

O’Driscoll re-emerged to accept the trophy alongside lock Leo Cullen who was also playing in his final match, retiring as the only man to captain a team to three European titles. The pair were lifted aloft by team mates in a victorious a lap of honour.

“I’m about to be unemployed in a month so I’ll take what’s going,” O’Driscoll joked when asked what the future holds.

But in the absence of the team’s spiritual leader, victorious head coach Matt O’Connor was delighted with the performance of O’Driscoll’s replacement Ian Madigan.

“He (Madigan) is a class footballer.

He has played a hell of a lot of rugby at 12. He gave us an extra set of hands there, which created a lot of opportunities and asked questions of the Glasgow defence,” O’Connor said after guiding the Irish province to their second successive league title.

“There has never been a doubt in how good a footballer Ian Madigan is from this side of the table. The last two performances of the season, he has come on early and changed the game

CHAMPAGNE RUGBY: Leinster players celebrate their second consecutive RaboPro12 title after defeating Glasgow 34-12 in Dublin. (Inset) Brian O’Driscoll waves to the crowd after playing his final rugby match. Pix: Niall Carson for us. That says to me that he is in a pretty good frame of mind mentally.

“The challenges that he has had - he is running the game and being the focal point of the opposition - that takes time, and he will develop the more and more he does that. I thought he and Jimmy (Gopperth) tonight worked in tandem brilliantly, and it was a very pleasing result for Ian personally.”

Glasgow were only 14-12 in arrears at the break after Finn Russell converted his fourth penalty of the evening in injury-time, however this experienced Leinster team gradually took control in

the second half.

Gopperth finished with a 14-point haul, converting closing tries from Zane Kirchner and Gordon D’Arcy. He also added the extras to first half efforts from Kirchner and Shane Jennings and landed two penalties.

Heading into the province’s fifth consecutive league decider, O’Connor was under no illusions about the challenge that they would face from Glasgow and acknowledged beforehand that the hosts would need to be at their best.

“Glasgow are a good side. We said all week that we needed our season’s

best performance,” O’Connor said.

“Anything else was going to be not good enough against Glasgow because they’re a class side.”

For Warriors supremo Gregor Townsend, this emphatic defeat was a hard one to take at the end of a memorable PRO12 season which saw them embark on a record-breaking ninematch winning run before the final.

After improving on their semi-final finish last term, he is hopeful that they can learn from their mistakes again.

“Absolutely, there’s a lot of lessons that we’ve taken from losing the semi-

IRISH RUGBY TOUR OF ARGENTINA

Henshaw, Jackson to miss tour Nick Purewal

HAND surger y has denied Robbie Henshaw first refusal on Brian O’Driscoll’s Ireland berth after the Connacht centre was ruled out of next week’s tour of Argentina.

Irish rugby bosses have confirmed the highly-rated Henshaw exacerbated a hand problem in training, and will now miss the two-Test series against the Pumas.

The 20-year-old has been widely tipped to succeed the retired O’Driscoll in Ireland’s midfield, but will now miss out on the first chance to stake a claim for the vacant 13 shirt.

A statement from the Irish Rugby Football Union read: “Robbie sustained the injury earlier in the season and it had not limited his ability to train or play. “He exacerbated the injur y in training and further specialist advice has recommended that surgical repair of the damaged ligaments should not be delayed further.”

Ulster’s Darren Cave will now be favourite to start at outside centre for Ireland’s Tests against Argentina on June 7 in Resistencia and June 14 in Tucuman.

MISSING OUT: Robbie Henshaw will miss Ireland’s two test tour to Argentina next week.

Ireland are yet to name a replacement for Henshaw, but losing the much-vaunted youngster will be a blow to head coach Joe Schmidt.

Former Leinster boss Schmidt will have viewed the summer tour as the ideal vehicle for blooding the next generation of centres as Ireland start the long build-up to the 2015 World Cup. Ulster’s Paddy Jackson will also miss Ir eland’s summer tour to

Argentina due to a stress fracture in his lower back.

The Ulster fly-half has been battling the problem for some time, but the injury has deteriorated.

Leinster playmaker Ian Madigan has been drafted in after failing to make the initial cut.

Madigan was scheduled to tour Romania with the Emerging Ireland squad after Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt opted to take just two flyhalves to Argentina.

Ireland boss Schmidt has rested a host of frontline stars for the summer tour, but resisted temptation to hand Racing Metro fly-half Johnny Sexton a break.

Robbie Diack, Rob Herring, James Cronin and Kieran Marmion are the four uncapped tourists heading to Argentina next week.

Cian Healy, Gordon D’Arcy, Sean O’Brien and Tommy Bowe have been handed a break in the summer, with Schmidt conscious of an arduous and unrelenting build-up to Rugby World Cup 2015.

Leinster wing Dave Kearney’s knee injury suffered against Ulster has ruled him out of the tour, with fit-again

Munster flyer Simon Zebo slotting in after missing the entire Six Nations.

South Africa-born Ulster duo Diack and Herring have qualified through residency and could make international debuts this summer.

Prop Cronin and half-back Marmion have also been handed chances to shine.

Schmidt admitted it would be vital to hand a number of senior stars a rest this summer, with the World Cup next autumn already hurtling into view.

Sean Cronin and Dan Tuohy are two more left at home after battling injury for much of the campaign.

“It’s really just player management,” Schmidt said. “There are guys who have had continuous niggly injuries that are going to be given a good amount of time in the pre-season to recover from those.

“Obviously Sean (O’Brien) has come back (after shoulder surger y) and played very few minutes.

“It was a discussion I had with both players (O’Brien and Bowe).

“Also a number of them have accumulated very brief pre-seasons by the time they go away on June tours, Lions tours and the like.”

final (last year) and that’s made us a stronger team. Now that we’ve gotten to a final, I think we have to handle the occasion better,” said Townsend.

“It was a wonderful occasion. The noise the supporters made, the amount of Glasgow supporters that were there, was fantastic. “Today, I think the game itself would have been great for the neutral, but there were times when we needed to have more control and more patience in our play.

“I think we rushed things at times.

We knew we had to play our best game of the season to win.”

KANE DOUGLAS

Waratah opts for Leinster WARATAHS second-rower Kane Douglas has confirmed he will leave Australian rugby a little more than a year out from the World Cup. Douglas, a 13 Test Wallaby, will join Leinster on a two-year deal towards the end of the year.

In a sign his services would still be required by the Wallabies, a statement from Leinster said Douglas’ start date would be confirmed at a later date.

“I value the Wallaby jumper and cherished every moment when wearing it,” Douglas told fairfax. com.au.

“Who knows, one day down the track I may be considered good enough to wear it again.

“It’s a big decision but one which I am extremely comfortable with.

“I’ve had plenty of time to weigh lots of things up and the time is right for me and my partner Jennerly to experience something new and something totally different.”

Douglas said he had discussed the move with ARU chief Bill Pulver.

“I’ve reaffirmed my passion for the Wallabies,” he said.

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AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

sports :: golf IRISHMAN BOOKS BERTH AT PINEHURST AS HARRINGTON MISSES OUT

Impressive Lowry seals spot in US Open

FINE FORM: Ireland’s Shane Lowry.

SHANE Lowry maintained his excellent form from the BMW PGA Championship as he booked his spot at next week’s US Open by winning the 36hole qualifying event, but thr ee-time major winner Padraig Harrington missed out.

Louthman Lowry finished runner-up to Rory McIlroy at Wentworth a few days earlier, but put any disappointment to one side by carding an eightunder-par overall score in heavy wind and rain at Walton Heath Golf Club.

He recorded a 69 on the new course before bettering that with a 67 on the old course to

clinch one of the 14 qualifying places from the 105-man event.

“It was really tough out there,” Lowry said.

“I played OK and putted really, really well. I holed a lot of six to eight footers for par and carried a lot of momentum to get the job done.

“I just tried to play steady from there and not lose my head. It was tough last week and then 36 holes in this weather was very tough.

“Majors are where I want to be playing. I was comfortable competing down the stretch with the likes of Thomas Bjorn, Rory McIlroy and Luke Donald, so I’ve got a lot of

confidence and I’ll take that with me to Pinehurst.”

Lowry believes he has rediscovered the mindset which allows him to play at his best.

“I am in a decent frame of mind as I’ve been playing quite well over the past few weeks,” he told European Tour Radio.

“I was struggling a lot and managed to find something at the Spanish Open and brought it into Wentworth and I really enjoyed it there and played well at Walton Heath.

“I feel I am mentally back to where I am when I am playing my best. I am switched on and nothing seems to faze me when I’m like this.”

English duo Simon Griffiths and Graeme Storm and Scotland’s Chris Doak were among the nine players to automatically qualify alongside Lowr y, with Niclas Fasth, Marcel Siem, Max Kief fer, Garth Mulroy, Shiv Kapur and Brooks Koepka also earning their place at the second major of the season.

But six other players had to compete in a play-off for the four remaining spots.

English duo Oliver Fisher and Tom Lewis, plus Andrea Pavan and Lucas Bjerregaard sealed their spots, meaning Morten Madsen and Danny Willett had to be content with

alternate places. Among those who missed out was Harrington, who was tied for fourth at the 2012 US Open and is a two-time champion of the Open as well as the 2008 US PGA Championship winner. He carded a 75 and a 71.

The Dubliner remained upbeat, however, telling Sky Sports: “Definitely it wasn’t good, but I’m certainly putting that down to just a little bit of fatigue, it’s been a long couple of weeks.

“I’m really positive about things, trying to to stay confident. Probably the most important thing is trying to stay upbeat and let it happen.”

FORMER WORLD NO.1’S EYES ON THE PRIZE AFTER CALLING OFF WEDDING TO TENNIS STAR

Wozniacki woes roll on in Paris Caroline Wozniacki’s miserable week was complete when she lost in teh first round of the French Open to Yanina Wickmayer.

The Dane was making her first public appearance since Rory McIlroy called off their engagement and had plenty of support on Court Two but it was to no avail as Belgian Wickmayer triumphed 7-6 (7-5) 4-6 6-2.

It was in stark contrast to McIlroy’s fortunes since the break-up, the Northern Irishman winning the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on Sunday, May 25.

Wozniacki made the subject off limits in her press conference, saying in a statement to start: “The only thing I really have to say is to thank everybody for their support and sweet messages.

“That’s really nice.

“What happens in my personal life, I just want to really keep that between my closest people around me. I just have to move on.”

Wozniacki has received lots of messages of support from fellow players and Serena Williams tweeted a picture of the pair together at dinner, tagging it “friends forever”.

A knee injury that had stopped her playing in Rome certainly did not help Wozniacki.

The 23-year-old addressed the break-up briefly during the press conference, saying: “You’re not prepared for something like this, and it came a bit as a shock.

“I just tried to prepare the best that I could, and really tried to focus on my match and on what I had to do out there.

“It doesn’t make it easier that I haven’t been able to play really that many matches because I have been injured. I felt a little bit rusty out there and it wasn’t really a pretty match.

“But I tried.”

McIlroy: I’m back on track

Phil Casey

RORY McIlroy has targeted more major titles after his surprise victory in the BMW PGA Championship, although he admits he is completely in the dark about next month’s US Open venue.

McIlroy had missed the cut in his past two appearances in the European Tour’s flagship event at Wentworth and began last week by announcing he had called off his wedding to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki.

After turning off his phone and giving away his laptop, McIlroy sought sanctuary inside the ropes and pulled off a remarkable first professional victory on European soil with a closing round of 66 on May 25.

That lifted the 25-year-old from 10th to sixth in the latest world rankings and boosted his confidence ahead of the year’s second major at Pinehurst from June 12-15.

“I think the win at the end of last year in Australia stopped all the questions about equipment and about str uggling and a slump and all this stuff,” the former world No.1 said.

“I think this victor y here, against a great field, one of the best fields of the year, sort of cements that and shows where my game is and that I’m on the right track again. Hopefully it won’t be long before I’m contending in majors and having a chance to win those again.”

McIlroy has finished joint eighth in his past two majors, although he never really threatened to win either the 2013 US PGA Championship or the Masters in April.

Both were examples of the “back-door top-10s” he had been racking up this season with good performances over the last 36 or 18 holes, but the two-time major winner knows he will need four strong rounds to add to his collection of the game’s biggest titles.

McIlroy was a 16-year-old amateur when New Zealand’s Michael Campbell won the last US Open staged at Pinehurst in 2005, although the course has since been restored to how it was intended to play after Donald Ross altered his original

design in 1935. “I can only go on what I’ve read and what I’ve heard about Pinehurst because I’ve never been there,” added McIlroy, who won his first major by eight shots in the US Open at Congressional in 2011.

“No rough for a US Open is going to be very different. I hear it’s going to be a long, long golf course (7,562 yards), which I’m looking forward to. I don’t mind that at all, getting driver in the hand, and a long golf course would suit me.

“Obviously the greens are very tricky at Pinehurst, a lot of r un-of fs and slopes. I think you’re going to have to have everything there. Even without seeing the golf course, I don’t think it’s going to be a course that’s going to suit one type of player or another. You’re obviously going to have to be pretty long off the tee, but most of the guys are these days.

“So it will just be about second shots and when you miss greens I think you’ll have to be very imaginative. You’ll have to bump it into the hills and run it up, and some guys might try and fly it up on top of the greens.

“It will be interesting to see.

I’m going to go and take a look at it after the Memorial Tournament.”

With 14-time major winner Tiger Woods absent through injury, McIlroy said earlier this season that golf was waiting for a “dominant player” to stamp their authority on the game as Woods did in his prime.

Australian Adam Scott could argue he is that player after extending his stay as world No.1 with victory in the Crowne Plaza Invitational just hours after McIlroy’s at Wentworth, but McIlroy hopes he can answer his own rallying cry.

“I hope so, I definitely hope so,” he said.

“I think it’s the start of something. I could feel my game sort of bubbling and it was getting there. A win validates that.”

McIlroy led the field after the first round of the Memorial Tournament last weekend before a horror 78 in the second round put paid to his chances of winning.

He finished joint 15th with weekend scores of 69 and 72.

TOO GOOD: Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy with the trophy after winning the BMW PGA Championships at the Wentworth Club in Surrey. Pic: PA

Pair’s shock split ‘amicable’ GOLF star Rory McIlroy has said his split from fiancee Caroline Wozniacki was mutual and friendly.

The two-time major winner and former world No.1 broke off their five-month engagement just days after invitations for the wedding were sent out.

McIlroy said he wanted to get his head into golf but admitted it would be difficult on the back of a very public break-up.

“Obviously (it’s) quite a difficult time for Caroline and myself,” he said.

“It was mutual and amicable and we both thought it was the best for us, the best for both of us. Time to move on and I think I’ve said all that I need to say.”

News of the broken

IT’S OVER: Rory McIlroy and Caroline Wozniacki. engagement was confirmed by McIlroy in a statement through his communications consultants in Dublin.

Faced with having to answer for the decision as he prepared for the BMW PGA Championship, McIlroy said: “I’m not going to lie. It’s going to be very difficult.

But you know, at least when I get inside the ropes I can just try to concentrate on the shot at hand. But yeah, it’s obviously going to be difficult.”

The golden couple of sport enjoyed a short-lived engagement after announcing to their million-plus Twitter followers last New Year’s Eve that they were to marry.

At the time the pair posted matching pictures of themselves with a ring.

It is understood the couple – dubbed Wozzilroy in some circles after a golf wedge was engraved with the moniker – had been an item for more than two years.

They were forced to scotch rumours of a split late last year.

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

Garryowen CONGRATULATIONS TO BILLY AND ALL AT THE IRISH ECHO ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY. WE LOOK FORWARD TO OUR CONTINUED ASSOCIATION! Padraig Pearse GAC would like to thank those that made the 2014 Pearses 7’s such an overwhelming success.

Sincere gratitude to our Major Sponsor The Quiet Man Irish Pub, and many thanks to kind donations from Emerald Travel, The Snug, P J O’Brien’s, Bev & Mics and Donohoe Ice. Thank you also to Gaelic Park for its amazing facilities and the effort to provide a brilliant sporting arena. Thanks to the 42 teams from all over Australia that travelled and participated in the 2014 games.

WE CONGRATULATE THE WINNERS ON THE DAY! COMPETITION WINNER FINALISTS Camogie Central Coast Michael Cusacks Ladies Football Cormac McAnallens Michael Cusacks Mens Football Cormac McAnallens Wolfe Tones Hurling Sinn Fein Na Fianna Finally to the Committee, Members and Players of the Padraig Pearse Club who ‘for the love of the Club and the Games’ helped plan, setup and run this event. This event is proving to be the most successful event on the Gaelic Sporting Calendar in Australia so book your spots early for 2015! – Maggie Harkin

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We would like to thank the Irish Echo for all their hard work over the past 25years and we look forward to working with you all in the future.

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AUST R ALIA’S IR ISH NE WSPAP E R

sports FOOTBALL :: AUSSIE CLUBS SNAP UP IRISH STARS

Duff, Keogh bound for Australia Aaron Dunne and Padraig Collins

TWO Irish football stars will join Australia’s A League next season.

Former Republic of Ireland winger Damien Duf f is poised to sign for Melbourne Heart, the Irish Echo has learned, while striker Andy Keogh has been snapped up by Perth Glory.

Duff, 35, will become the first major signing for the club bought by Manchester City’s owners. The Dubliner, who announced his decision to quit relegated Fulham this week, will join the A-League after the World Cup Finals, it is understood.

He will become the first major signing for the newly-formed Melbourne City, who are hoping to change their name from Melbourne Heart in time for next season.

City’s Abu Dhabi-based owners, who have also purchased sides in New York and Japan since acquiring Manchester City six years ago, are hoping to build a competitive side Down Under. Heart are currently bottom of the A-League.

Duff, capped 100 times by Ireland, had been linked with a return to his home country and a role with Bray Wanderers in the Irish League.But he has turned his back on a potential return to the Premier League or any moves to clubs in Europe, or even a drop to the Championship with Fulham, to move Down Under.

Duff will take a summer break with his family before moving to Melbourne for the second part of their season.

He has had his pick of A-League sides, including Hear t’s city rivals

OZ BOUND: Melbourne Heart’s new signing Damien Duff and Andy Keogh who will play for Perth Glory in 2014/15.

Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC and Perth Glory. City’s backers are prepared to match Duf f ’s wage demands.

His decision to quit Europe for a lucrative move to Australia will still come as a surprise, even though he made just 11 league appearances last season. Former Chelsea and Newcastle midfielder Duff left Craven Cottage after five years and nearly 200 games, following their relegation from the Premier League, and was looking for a new challenge.

“It was time for everyone, for me and the club to part ways,” the Dubliner

said last month. “It’s sad but that’s the way it is.

“I’ve matured as a person and a player at Fulham. Since I’ve been here I’ve got married, had two kids, so it has been a special time in my life and I stand by what I’ve said before that my most enjoyable time in football has been at Fulham.”

But Duff, who is signing an initial two-year deal, will be one of the biggest foreign stars Melbourne has attracted since the A-League was founded 10 years ago. Former Liverpool midfielder Harry Kewell has recently retired after a year with Melbourne Heart.

Meanwhile, Perth Glory has signed Ireland international Andy Keogh.

The 28-year-old has spent the past two seasons at Milwall in England’s Championship division and on loan at Blackpool, having previously played for L e e d s U n i t e d , Wo l v e r h a m p t o n Wanderers, and Scunthorpe United.

Keogh finished the season on loan to Blackpool and scored vital goals against Nottingham Forest and Wigan which helped the Seasiders stay afloat.

He became a free agent at the end of the season when his contract at Millwall was not renewed.

Speaking ahead of Ireland’s game against Italy at the weekend, Keogh said he hopes Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane will continue to follow his progress if he moves to the other side of the world. “It may be difficult, but if I star t scoring goals then hopefully they’ll have to take notice,” he said.

Keogh was part of the Wolves side that played friendlies against both Per th Glor y and the now defunct North Queensland Fury in July 2009.

He, his wife Natalie and their nineyear old-daughter are due to move to Perth in the coming weeks.

“You have your family and their livelihood to think of and I believe Australia gives us all a greater opportunity. I’m very much a person who likes to look for ward. You only live once and I’m one that likes to embrace life and what’s out there,” he told the Daily Mail.

“It may be more difficult for English players to break away but I came [to England] as a young boy from Dublin

and I have a sense for adventure.”

Keogh has another good reason for moving to Australia. Family.

“My uncles have been in Australia for around 30 years now and my brother Kenny lives near Perth too. It will certainly make the change easier but it also helps, to be honest, that the standard is definitely getting better and better.

“It’s a relatively new league and I want to experience it. For me it helps that the quality of leagues abroad are improving. The MLS in USA is really coming on and Australia has quality too.

“I’ve done my homework on the club and the city and I’m really excited about the challenge,” he said.

Keogh began his career with Cabinteely FC in Dublin. Since 2007 he has played 30 internationals for Ireland and scored twice.

He will become a marquee player to replace Shane Smeltz, who left Glory for Sydney FC in May. In the A-League, marquee players are not included in the salary cap and so earn higher wages.

“I’ve never been a player that is just happy to sit around and pick up his pay cheque, I’ve always wanted to play. It’s what I love doing,” said Keogh.

“I’m just looking forward to it. I want to help them challenge for the title and get into the AFC Champions League.”

Keogh and Duff will add to the A League’s Irish stocks.

Cork’s Liam Miller had a stellar season with the Brisbane Roar, helping them to their third A League title.

BOXING :: HURRICANE WINS AGAIN

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Congratulations to the Irish Echo on their 25th Anniversary edition. Good Luck for the future from all at Galway Constructions.

Hogan sets sights on Big Apple Andrea McCullagh CHAMPION boxer Dennis ‘Hurricane’ Hogan is celebrating his 19th undefeated fight in a row and is eyeing a possible bout in Madison Square Garden.

The Kildareman defeated David Galvin (pictured above) in Brisbane late last month, knocking him out in the fifth round. Hogan described the Alice Springs fighter as a tricky customer and stuck to his defence until he saw an opening.

“I popped it and knocked him out in the fifth round … flush on the chin,” he says.

“He was out on his feet. He was just wobbling.

I just pinned him another twice before he hit the canvas just to be sure.

“He was pretty hurt. I didn’t jump for joy. I just wanted to make sure he was ok first because he looked pretty out of it.”

Hogan was due to defend his Australian middleweight title against Kurt Bahram on the night.

Bahram pulled out due to injury and two further replacement fighters also pulled out. Hogan’s team were left with less than two weeks to find an opponent and Galvin was the only man to raise his hand. The Galvin fight was not a title defence.

Meanwhile, Hogan’s global ambitions are hotting

up as his teammate and sparring partner Jarrod Fletcher is in line to fight world champion Gennady Golovkin in New York this July.

There is debate about whether Golovkin will fight Fletcher or fellow Australian Daniel Geale but if it works in his favour it could be a major stepping stone for Hogan.

He is confident of getting a spot on the undercard and it would provide valuable exposure on the international stage.

“This is the home of boxing. It’s the Mecca of boxing,” he says.

“This means the world to me. This is going to bring my career on a lot more, get a lot more exposure in America. You never know who would be there looking ready to give you an opportunity.”

Hogan, from Kilcullen, last defended his title in a St Patrick’s Day weekend bout against ‘Bad Bad’ Leroy Brown. He is ranked 33rd in the world and is determined to reach the top.

“I always knew I’d get to this point in my career.

I’ve always had a belief I’m going to be world champion,” he says.

“That’s helped me a lot. It is surreal to be 19 fights and no one’s beaten you. How could you ever guess that? You take it one fight at a time.”

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A U S TRA L IA’S IRIS H N EWS PAPER

gaelic games GAA FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP :: BIG WINS FOR ANTRIM AND TIPPERARY

O’Boyle the hero as Saffrons hold off brave Fermanagh KEVIN O’BOYLE was the unlikely hero for Antrim as they beat Fermanagh by 2-18 to 3-13 in a high-scoring thriller in Brewster Park in Enniskillen.

For all the eye-catching scores Kevin Niblock and Brian Neeson hit, it was the Antrim defender who saved the day with a goal-line clearance from Ryan McCluskey in the last play of this Ulster SFC quarter-final.

O’Boyle had no idea his act was literally the last kick of the game, nor had he time to think about his dramatic intervention.

“I just covered the ‘keeper, I didn’t realise it was the last kick of the game but I was very fortunate I was in the right place at the right

GAA NEWS

Clarke a big loss for Harte’s Tyrone THERE are fears that Tyrone defender Conor Clarke’s season is over after he sustained a serious knee injury in a club game.

The versatile Red Hand star suffered suspected cruciate ligament damage following an innocuous challenge while playing for Omagh St Enda’s in their Tyrone SFC first round victory over Coalisland. Clarke was treated on the pitch before limping off with his knee bandaged.

Clarke, who is awaiting the results of scans to ascertain the extent of the damage, had scored an early goal for Omagh who prevailed on a 1-15 to 1-13 scoreline.

His injury comes after Tyrone manager Mickey Harte had criticised the decision to play a full round of club championship games just a fortnight before the Ulster SFC quarter-final against holders Monaghan.

Dub star Dean is ready to Rock DEAN ROCK could feature for Dublin against Laois in the Leinster SFC after making a sensational comeback from a long injury layoff.

Playing his first game in seven months, Rock scored 1-9 for Ballymun Kickhams in their 2-14 to 3-8 league victory over St Oliver Plunkett’s/Eoghan Ruadh last week.

The win, which keeps Ballymun at the summit of Division 1, was far more comfortable than the scoreline suggests with the winners having led by 2-12 to 0-6 with 15 minutes to go.

Plunkett’s were only short Alan and Bernard Brogan from the side that dumped Kilmacud Crokes out of the Dublin SFC a few weeks ago.

Rock, who only played at the request of Dublin manager Jim Gavin, has been plagued with injuries since Ballymun’s Dublin SFC final replay loss to St Vincent’s last November.

His return to fitness is a timely boost for the Dubs who begin their Leinster and All-Ireland defences at Croke Park this weekend.

time,” he said. “Paddy (Flood) had closed off the angle and I was lucky McCluskey didn’t put more power behind it and I was able to kick it away.

“It’s a very happy dressing-room in there. A lot of our own fans didn’t expect us to win but we believed as a panel we could.

“We came out all guns blazing, but we need to do that for a full 70 minutes the next day because we know the exceptional team Donegal are.”

Liam Bradley was able to laugh about his team’s near collapse in the last 10 minutes, with turnovers

by Justin Crozier and Ryan Murray gifting Fermanagh late goals.

“I just don’t know what the boys

were thinking,” he grinned.

“We were cruising and we played some stuff to then be hanging on at the end, but we are Antrim after all – we don’t do things the easy way.

“Yeah, there were plenty of mistakes made by both teams but it was a super Sunday of championship football as far as I’m concerned. Anyone who paid in here today got their money’s worth.”

Elsewhere, Anthony Nolan found himself at the centre of a black card storm at the Gaelic Grounds.

The Wicklow referee somehow opted for a yellow card instead of black when Limerick goalkeeper Donal O’Sullivan hauled down Tipperary’s Ian Fahey to concede a

second-half penalty. To compound the situation, O’Sullivan stopped Barry Grogan’s resultant effort but thankfully from a Tipp perspective, that mattered little as the Premier County cruised to a six-point 2-14 to 1-11 win.

Recording a first victory in the Munster Senior Football Championship since 2003, Tipp did so in style, surviving black card woe of their own when influential defender Ciarán McDonald was dismissed inside the opening ten minutes.

McDonald received the sanction for impeding the progress of forward Ian Ryan but Tipp coped well with the loss of the Aherlow man.

Debutant Colin O’Riordan, Robbie Kiely and Peter Acheson all shone in the half-back line, George Hannigan was a tower of strength at midfield and goalscorer Philip Austin led the line superbly.

A competent team display from the Allianz League Division 4 kingpins set up a provincial semifinal meeting with Cork on June 21 but the application of the black card rule, or lack thereof, was the main talking point at full-time.

Even Limerick boss John Brudair admitted that his keeper should have walked, reflecting: “The first one, sometimes, I think the refs are going to give a penalty and they think that’s punishment enough for the incident,” he said.

MUNSTER HURLING CHAMPIONSHIP :: LIMERICK V TIPPERARY :: SEMPLE STADIUM, THURLES

Limerick stun Tipperary

LIMERICK manager TJ Ryan was euphoric after Limerick put in a storming finish to beat Tipperary by 2-18 to 2-16 in a thriller at Semple Stadium.

Odds of 3/1 were available on the reigning Munster champions to trump Tipp at Thurles for the first time since 1973, and the magnitude of the victory wasn’t lost on the Limerick manager after the final whistle.

“Superb,” was his reaction.

“In fairness, the lads showed super character. A brilliant win, a brilliant day for Limerick, great for the backroom team.

“We worked really hard, but it’s important to remember today is only Day 1. There are three more [to win the All-Ireland].”

After wards, Paul Browne admitted that the players were riled by how they had been treated by the media in the build-up to the game.

“It was extremely annoying.

If you ask any man inside in that dressing room, the driving factor today was the media and what’s been said, the disrespect that’s been shown to us,” said Browne.

“It was just from the media in general (and) from our own public in Limerick. Look, we were Munster champions and we weren’t giving up that crown without a hell of a fight.

“Look, you try and keep away from the papers and stuff but inevitably you end up hearing it through the grapevine.

“We had heard all that stuff and, to be honest, we were disgusted with ourselves. We just wanted to prove to ourselves and to the nation that we’re not going away,” said Browne.

Meanwhile, Tipperary manager Eamon O’Shea masked his disappointment at the final at the death, suggesting that this was the star t of his team’s summer and not the end.

“Although we’re disappointed, there’s not a feeling in the dressing room that it’s season over. It’s a feeling that we have to go back and get things right and have another shot at it and we will do that.”

‘There’s fight in us – there’s definitely fight in us. Even though we didn’t get over the

GAA results HURLING Leinster SHC quarter-finals Antrim 0-21 Wexford 5-19 Laois 0-23 Galway 1-22 Munster SHC semi-final Tipperary 2-16 Limerick 2-18 Christy Ring Cup semi-finals Meath 0-13 Kildare 1-18 Mayo 1-18 Kerry 3-20 Christy Ring Cup relegation play-off Down 5-24 Armagh 2-15 FOOTBALL Ulster SFC quarter-final Fermanagh 3-13 Antrim 2-18 Munster SFC quarter-final Limerick 1-11 Tipperary 2-14

IN FOR A TREAT: Limerick’s Donal O’Grady (right) gets past Tipperary’s Michael Cahill during a thriller at Semple Stadium as the reigning Munster champions shocked the hosts to record their first Munster SHC victory over the Premier County since 1973.

Pic: Adrian Melia

line today, I think we will at some stage make an impact in terms of what we want to do” said O’Shea.

Elsewhere, Galway were left counting their blessings after a massive scare from Laois in Leinster.

The result was in doubt until a couple of seconds from the final whistle when Iarla Tannian saved a 20-metre free from Laois keeper Eoin Reilly and Joe Canning emerged from a ruck in the Galway area with possession to secure a 1-22 to 0-23 win as Galway clinched a semi-final slot against either Kilkenny or Offaly.

And in the weekend’s other quarter-final, it was a goal feast for Wexford in Portlaoise as they r uthlessly killed of f Antrim’s aspirations by 5-19 to 0-21 with strong starts to each half and in the process, secured a home semi-final against champions, Dublin.

And it has been confirmed that Wexford Park will stage the Leinster SHC semi-final on June 14, with the winner booking a provincial decider against Offaly, Galway or Kilkenny.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

PATRICK MORAN

C.Y. O’CONNOR

1830-1911 Archbishop of Sydney

1843-1902 Engineer-In-Chief of Western Australia

MORAN was born in Co Carlow to a well-off family. His mother died when he was just 14 months old, and his father when he was 11, while three of his siblings also died young.

In 1842, he was placed in the care of his mother’s half-brother, Cardinal Paul Cullen, rector of the Irish College, Rome.

Fluent in Italian and Latin, he later learnt to speak six other languages and studied theology at the Roman Seminary. He was ordained on March 19, 1853.

He was appointed Archbishop of Sydney in 1884 and a year later was made a cardinal.

His positive impact on the Catholic Church in Australia was exemplified by the opening of St Patrick’s College in Manly in 1889 to provide priests for all the colonies.

Though he had opposed political activity by women in Ireland, in Australia he became a strong advocate of female suffrage.

He died in 1911.

CHARLES Yelverton O’Connor was born in Gravelmount, Co Meath, and was educated at Waterford Endowed School before being articled to John Smith, engineer to the Waterford-Kilkenny railway line.

He emigrated to New Zealand in 1865 and on March 5, 1874, married Susan Ness with whom he had eight children.

In April 1891, the Premier of Western Australia, John Forrest, offered O’Connor the position of Engineer-In-Chief and he is perhaps best remembered for the spectacular achievement of the Coolgardie Scheme, which pumps water 600km to Kalgoorlie.

To this day it is still the lifeline of the Western Australian goldfields.

Tragically, O’Connor did not live to see its completion. After a sustained campaign against him by the Sunday Times newspaper and others, including colleagues, he took his own life in 1902.

JOHN MORIARTY Born 1938 Artist MORIARTY was born in Borroloola, Northern Territory, to an Aboriginal mother and a father from Blennerville, Co Kerry.

He was taken from his mother at the age of four and shipped, without his family’s knowledge, to a children’s home, entering a harsh world of orphanages and poverty.

But against such incredible odds Moriarty has found great success as an artist.

He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Flinders University, and is a Churchill Fellow.

He also has an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia and is a Convocation Medallist of Flinders University.

Moriarty is best known as founder of the Balarinji Design Studio, which has painted four Qantas aircraft with Aboriginal motifs.

He was also a fine soccer player in his younger days, playing in the South Australian first division and being selected to play for Australia (unfortunately Australia was then temporarily banned by FIFA and he was not capped).

Moriarty is the recipient of the Order of Australia, the St Peters Citizenship Award and the Advance Australia Award for Service to Industry and Commerce.

KERRY MURPHY 1918-2000 Community organiser

BORN in the small town of Knocknagoshel in Co Kerry, Murphy came to Sydney in 1950 where he immediately immersed himself in the Irish community.

He co-founded the Kerry Association in Sydney in 1960, which in turn led to the first Sydney Rose of Tralee being held in 1963, while he was also a driving force behind the growth of Gaelic games Down Under.

A hugely popular member of the Irish

community in the city until his death in 2000, Kerry also published a book in 1997 – Kerry Murphy’s Memoirs: Diaries Of An Irish Immigrant – a wonderful insight into the Irish community in Australia in the mid-to-late 20th century.

MARIE NARELLE 1870-1941 Singer BORN in rural NSW to parents of Irish extraction, Catherine Mary Ryan was known as Molly as a child, but would achieve international fame as Marie Narelle. She gained a reputation for singing at a young age and became a music teacher after her brief marriage to drunkard Matthew Callahan ended.

After Bishop Joseph Higgins heard Molly Callahan singing at a Catholic Church and offered introductions in Sydney, she adopted her stage name and started giving concerts. She left Australia in July 1902 after visiting Irish politician William O’Brien invited her to sing at the close of the Cork Exhibition.

Narelle was immediately acclaimed in Ireland, and politician Michael Davitt said it “took an Australian to teach the Irish to render their own songs”. Commenting on the popularity of Australian singers such as Nellie Melba and herself, Narelle said it was “the Australian personality that has made the Australian voice”.

She toured America with tenor John McCormack after having given him a break as an unknown. Narelle settled in America and married Harry Currie, a Canadian engineer. After his death in 1934 she moved to England and died in Oxfordshire in 1941. She was survived by three children from her first marriage.

BERNARD ‘DOC’ NEESON 1947Musician BERNARD ‘Doc’ Neeson is a true superstar of Australian rock music.

Lead singer with The Angels – one of Australia’s most successful bands of the 1980s – Neeson has penned a number of Aussie rock classics including No Secrets, We Gotta Get Outta This Place, Take A Long Line and jukebox favourite Am I Ever Going To See Your Face Again? [No way, get f***ed, f*** off].

Born in Belfast in 1947 – “in the age of Buddy Holly”, as he says – Neeson moved around a lot as a child.

His dad – an orphan – had joined the British Army “for a home and a trade”. Doc spent some time as a boarder at Terenure College in Dublin

before leaving Ireland with his mum – who is from Nenagh, Co Tipperary – dad, four brothers and a sister, arriving in Adelaide as a 13-yearold in 1960.

Both his parents were musical and Neeson told the Irish Echo that his songwriting has been strongly influenced by his Irish heritage, particularly its narrative style.

In January 2013 he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. His musical career and medical condition were the subject of ABC’s Australian Story program this year.

LUCAS NEILL 1978Footballer NEILL, who captained the Socceroos at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, has a proud Irish heritage.

His dad, Ed, was born and bred in Belfast and played soccer for teams on both sides of the religious divide – including giants Linfield and Cliftonville – before moving to Australia in 1969.

Neill, who grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, was approached to play for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in his early years but has always called Australia home.

He won 96 caps for the Socceroos before his international career ended this year. In England he played for clubs such as Millwall, Blackburn Rovers, West Ham United and Everton, and he has also played in Turkey, the Middle East and made three appearances for Sydney FC in 2013.

SIDNEY NOLAN 1917-1992 Painter NOLAN was born on April 22, 1917 in Melbourne to a fifth-generation Irish family.

A unique and great talent, Nolan is famed for a series of paintings (begun in 1946) on the life of the infamous outlaw, Ned Kelly. Among other events from Australian history, Nolan also did a series on the Eureka Stockade. His almost surreal landscapes were said to “express the hard, scorched majesty of the outback”.

Nolan sought to create and define episodes in Australian nationalism (often with an Irish background), to tell the story of a hero who became a metaphor for humankind – the fighter resisting tyranny with a passion for freedom.

In most of his Ned Kelly series, Kelly’s famous steel head-guard dominates the painting.

Nolan’s paintings give domestic audiences an insight into Australian history, but also showcase the great beauty of Australia’s outback

to the rest of the world. For many, seemingly including Nolan himself, the painter and outlaw are inextricably linked. A 1962 article in The Bulletin noted: “Nolan, like this Kelly figure, has also been a hero, a victim, a man who armoured himself against Australia and who faced it, conquered it, lost it … ambiguity personified”.

Nolan will be forever remembered as one of Australia’s greatest painters.

MAUREEN O’CARROLL 1932-2012 Cellist MAUREEN O’Carroll was born in the Sydney suburb of Balmain to Irish immigrant parents, John and May O’Carroll.

At the time Balmain was a hardscrabble working class area, but her prodigious musical talent took her from a Depression-era childhood to playing concerts around the world. She and her nine siblings all showed a gift for music and their parents saw this as the path out of poverty.

Six of them, including Maureen, attended the NSW Conservatorium of Music High School – said to be the largest number of students from one family – and went on to become professional musicians.

O’Carroll was drawn to the cello at a very young age, and would prop her brother Robert’s violin on a jam tin and play it like a cello.

At 17 she joined the New Zealand National Orchestra and went from there to New York, where she performed with Frank Sinatra, among others.

In 1974, she returned to Australia as a single mother of three. She played a blind audition behind a curtain (to avoid gender discrimination) and was accepted into the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

O’Carroll, being a child of two rebels who had fought for Irish independence, was deeply patriotic about Ireland. At one Sydney Symphony concert, she noted Rule Britannia was on the program and refused to play it. She placed her cello down and marched off stage, only returning at its end. She kept her job.

BERNARD O’DOWD 1866-1953 Poet, Radical O’DOWD was born at Beaufort, Victoria, to Irish emigrant parents who were preoccupied with Celtic ancestry and legend. But, in the hope he would win paid secondary school and university fees, O’Dowd was not sent to Catholic schools.

He did win the fees but was forced to leave university and earn a living after his father was kicked by a horse, and, aged just 17, became the headmaster of St Alipius’ school at Ballarat.

His then secularist beliefs led to his dismissal and in 1884 he opened his own school.

After initially having verse published in the Ballarat Courier, Dawnward? (1903) established O’Dowd’s identity as a radical poet. He wrote several law books as well as poetry.

His religious beliefs were often in flux and in turn he joined the Theosophical Society, the Australian Church and the Free Religious Fellowship.

He was also a foundation member of the Victorian Socialist Party in 1905.

In 1912, he bravely denounced the White Australia policy as “unbrotherly, undemocratic and unscientific”.

In 1934, O’Dowd declined the offer of a knighthood.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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xvi

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

PATRICK O’FARRELL

JOHN O’SHANASSY

1933-2003 Historian

1818-1883 Politician, businessman

BORN in New Zealand to Irish parents, O’Farrell moved to Australia in 1956 and, after receiving a PhD from the Australian National University, became a Professor of History and, later, Emeritus Professor, at the University of New South Wales.

Many of the 12 books he wrote concerned Irish Australia, Catholicism in Australia and Anglo-Irish relations. His most famous work, The Irish in Australia, first published in 1987, remains the most thorough account of the shared history of the two countries. As he said: “If people don’t know history, they don’t know themselves.”

O’Farrell held visiting professorships at both Trinity College (1965-66) and University College Dublin (1972-73). He was a great intellect with an unparalleled academic pedigree, a great friend of the Irish in Australia and he had a wicked sense of humour. He is survived by his wife Deidre and their five children.

BORN near Thurles, Co Tipperary, Ireland, O’Shanassy and his wife Margaret arrived in Australia in November 1839. After initially buying a farm, they opened a drapery shop in Collins St, Melbourne in 1845.

O’Shanassy’s political career began the following year when he won a by-election to become a member of the Melbourne Council.

In November he lost his seat thanks, at least in part, to lingering anti-Catholic sentiment after the “Orange” riots in July.

After becoming identified with popular causes such as opposition to any revival of transportation he won a seat in the first Legislative Council elections in September 1851. On March 11, 1857, he became premier, but this ministry collapsed after only seven weeks. He again became premier on March 10, 1858, leading a conservative government for the next 19 months.

CORNELIUS O’LEARY 1897-1971 Public Servant BORN at Murwillumbah, New South Wales, to an Irish immigrant father and a Queensland-born mother, O’Leary was educated by the Christian Brothers in Ipswich, Queensland, and began working for the Queensland Public Service in 1913.

Starting off as a clerk, by November 1922 he was appointed a ‘protector of Aboriginals’ and assigned to the district of Somerset, which encompassed the Torres Strait Islands and the northern half of Cape York Peninsula.

In March 1930, O’Leary was sent as acting-superintendent to Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement. It was a tough assignment as his predecessor had ‘run amok’ – firing a weapon, burning buildings and terrorising the inhabitants. By “tactful management” O’Leary restored confidence in the administration and was rewarded by being transferred to Brisbane as inspector and deputy chief protector of Aboriginals. He toured Queensland in 1935 to familiarise himself with the indigenous communities. He eventually rose to become director of native affairs.

O’Leary’s regime is remembered as dynamic and benevolent. He had a genuine interest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander welfare and devised a number of schemes to improve their lot. He was awarded an OBE in 1964. He died at his home in Brisbane in 1971 and was survived by his wife, Frances, their daughter and two sons.

PADDY O’NEILL 1874-1953 Trade Unionist BORN at Wentworth, NSW, the seventh of nine children of Irish-born parents, O’Neill was educated at the local Catholic school.

The family moved to Broken Hill and Paddy and his brothers became mineworkers. In 1899 he married Mary Anne Gearon, from South Australia.

They had six children.

In 1908 he became secretary of the South Broken Hill branch of the Amalgamated Miners’ Association. His outlook was informed by social

conservatism and his resulting preference for direct bargaining with employers, rather than arbitration, transformed him into an astute union leader and formidable negotiator.

In April 1913 he became a sanitary-cart driver with the Broken Hill Municipal Council.

In 1922 he helped to form a local branch of the Municipal Employees’ Union and was its president, then secretary from 1924. But O’Neill’s greatest contribution to Australian unionism was his involvement in forming the Barrier Industrial Council – a new, all-inclusive and powerful local peak union body in Broken Hill. With O’Neill as its leader, BIC oversaw Broken Hill’s near-complete withdrawal from the State and Federal arbitration systems and the signing in 1925 of the first of what would become a stable regime of triennial collective agreements for local mine workers. He remained BIC president until 1949.

BILL ‘TIGER’ O’REILLY 1905-1992 Cricketer BORN into an Irish family in White Cliffs, NSW, in 1905, William Joseph ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly would go on to become one of the greatest spin bowlers.

His father was a small-town schoolmaster who was moved around a lot and in 1917 the family moved north to the town of Wingello where “everyone was a cricket crank”, according to O’Reilly in his autobiography, Tiger. It was here that his love for cricket began to blossom and playing club cricket for Wingello he would face a then 17-year-old Don Bradman. Widely regarded as the greatest cricketer of all time, Bradman would go on to describe O’Reilly as the “greatest bowler I have ever faced or watched”.

Although the pair had a huge mutual respect, they did not get along on a personal level, and in many ways their relationship as one, Bradman, a Protestant, and O’Reilly an Irish Catholic, exemplified the sectarian tensions that existed in Australia at the time.

O’Reilly died in Sydney in 1992, by which time he had amassed 140 Test caps for Australia and 135 first-class appearances for NSW.

MAURICE O’REILLY 1866-1933 Priest, college warden BORN in Co Cork, the eldest of five children, O’Reilly was educated at St Colman’s College, Fermoy, before studying philosophy and theology at Maynooth.

O’Shanassy formed his third, strongest and most successful ministry in November 1861. This government was responsible for important reforms such as the Civil Service Act, which classified salaries and set out principles for promotion.

He was ordained a Vincentian priest in January 1890 and emigrated to Melbourne in 1892.

In 1899 he became information editor of the Catholic monthly, Austral Light, and was to contribute prose and verse to it for more than 20 years. He published a volume, Poems (1919), which revealed the depth, seriousness and whimsicality of his rich personality.

O’Reilly was president of St Stanislaus’ College, Bathurst, NSW from 1903-14, and from 1910 was prominent in the education debate.

He vigorously fought against the continued exclusion of Catholic schools from government funding.

O’Reilly entered into bitter controversy in 1911 over the celebration of Empire rather than Australia Day. He was firmly of the view that “everything that was best and noblest in Australia was Irish”.

A powerful orator, he was greatly concerned for the poor and for the victims of sectarian bigotry, and once declared that the “Sydney ‘pommy’ Press is the vilest on earth”.

His funeral mass at St Mary’s in Sydney was so packed that 3000 people, unable to find room in the cathedral, stood in Hyde Park during the service.

MAURICE O’SHEA 1897-1956 Winemaker O’SHEA was born in 1897 in North Sydney, to John Augustus O’Shea, an Irish-born wineand-spirit merchant, and Leontine Frances, who came from France.

The young O’Shea trained as a viticulturist and analytical chemist at the University of Montpellier before returning to New South Wales in 1920. He began to make wine on the family property at Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley and in 1925 he named the vineyard Mount Pleasant – a brand still well known and respected to this day. He died of cancer in May of 1956 in his flat at Newcastle.

DR JOHN O’SULLIVAN Born 1945 Scientist WITHOUT John O’Sullivan, modern life would be very different.

He invented key technology which is used in nearly every wi-fi

device in the world. In the late 1980s and early ’90s O’Sullivan devised a computer chip that cleared up fuzzy signals. This enabled wireless networking to operate five times faster than was previously possible.

He works for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which was awarded international patents on the technology in 2005.

It has earned CSIRO hundreds of millions of dollars, but O’Sullivan does not hold intellectual property rights over his invention.

“I don’t think I and my co-inventors have any problems with that,” he told the Irish Echo in 2009.

“We inventors received a bonus for which we’re extremely grateful.”

O’Sullivan said he was researching his Irish antecedents.

“I have not been able to track the O’Sullivans far enough back yet, but I found other ancestors from Galway on my mother’s side,” he said.

JOHN HUBERT PLUNKETT 1802-1869 Attorney General of NSW PLUNKETT was born the younger of twins at Mount Plunkett, Co Roscommon and graduated from Trinity College in 1823 before being called to the Irish Bar in 1826.

Daniel O’Connell gave the Roscommon man credit for the success of his candidates in Connacht at the 1830 general election which put the Whigs in power.

Plunkett moved soon afterwards to Australia, where he was appointed as the Solicitor-General of New South Wales – the first Catholic to be appointed to high civil office in the colony.

And in 1836, four years after arriving in Sydney, Plunkett was promoted to AttorneyGeneral.

In his last years, Plunkett devoted more time to his lifelong love of the violin and Irish folk music.

ELIZA POTTIE 1837-1907 Community Worker BORN in Belfast, Eliza Pottie (née Allen), came to Sydney with her mother, Ruth, and siblings when she was seven. Her father, William, a soap and candle manufacturer, had preceded them by three years.

Eliza married John Pottie, a veterinary surgeon, in 1862 and they had 10 children, four of whom died in infancy.

By the 1880s she was an active member of 17 organisations supporting her Quaker, evangelical Christian beliefs and commitment to social reform for women and children.

Pottie regularly visited aged and destitute women in government asylums in Sydney, and in 1886 was appointed to the ladies’ committee of the Asylums Inquiry Board.

Her blunt evidence about the brutal treatment and neglect of inmates led to improved care.

She represented the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union at the meeting that created the National Council of Women in 1896.

Pottie died in her home at Manly and was buried in Waverley cemetery in Sydney’s east.

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

GEORGE PRENDERGAST

PETER RICE

HANNAH SEXTON

1854-1937 Printer, Politician

1935-1992 Sydney Opera House Engineer

1862-1950 Surgeon

PRENDERGAST was born in Adelaide in 1854 to Irish parents who had migrated the previous year. He grew up in Stawell, Victoria, and was apprenticed to a printer after leaving school. He became a member of the Typographical Association and represented this union at the Melbourne Trades Hall. Prendergast was also a member of the United Irish League and the Celtic Club.

He was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a Labor member for North Melbourne in 1894. At the same time he was also president of the Eight-Hours Committee which agitated for a standard eight-hour working day.

In parliament, Prendergast was outspoken on land reform and the need for free secondary education. In 1924, with Prendergast as leader, Labor emerged for the first time as the largest party in Victoria, but was still six seats short of a majority. But to his great surprise, with Country Party support, he found himself premier and treasurer at 70 – the oldest anyone has ever been when taking the office for the first time.

JAMES QUINN 1819-1881 Archbishop of Queensland BORN in Rathbane, Co Kildare, Quinn made many enemies over the course of his lifetime but his influence over the development of Queensland was immense.

He took up the post of Archbishop in 1859 and landed in Brisbane in 1861 where he found an enormous diocese plagued with financial debt and low on personnel. He made rapid progress in the establishment of the Catholic education system, but in alliance with the Anglican Bishop Tufnell he sought to divert the tendency towards secularism in education.

In 1862, Quinn founded the Queensland Immigration Society which brought out 10 ships with about 6,000 Irish migrants.

The “Hibernian flood” immediately aroused sectarian hostility, however, fanned by an unguarded remark of the bishop that the colony might yet be called ‘Quinn’s land’.

He had angered many religious orders with his almost monarchic style – including Mary MacKillop who withdrw her Order of St Joseph from the state.

But overall Quinn’s piety, zeal and energy was never in doubt.

He fell ill on the way to Hobart and died at Brisbane in August of 1881.

MARY RONAN 1904-1989 Sister of Mercy BORN in Co Kerry to Eugene Doherty, a farmer, and Elizabeth (née Ashe), she was registered as Ellen, but known as Eileen Francis. In 1924 she travelled with a group of 49 young Irish women to join the Sisters of Mercy Congregation in Brisbane. Two of her sisters later followed her to Brisbane and also became nuns.

Known as Sr Mary Ronan, she taught in Toowoomba, Mitchell and Gympie before transferring to All Hallows’ School, Brisbane, where she remained for the rest of her teaching career.

At All Hallows’ she collected supplies of

BORN in Dundalk, Co Louth, Rice is the forgotten man of Sydney’s Opera House.

Working for Danish firm Ove Arup, he travelled to Australia in 1963 to work on Jørn Utzon’s design. The Queen’s University graduate was soon responsible for the structure of the Opera House roof after the on-site engineer fell ill.

Rice was just 28 at the time.

His geometrical knowledge enabled him to write a computer program to correctly locate the segments of the Opera House’s famous shells.

He later wrote about his time in Sydney.

“I worked in [Utzon’s] ambience for six years during the design development and construction of the roof of the Sydney Opera House. It was a long slow apprenticeship in the art of architecture, where there was sufficient time to observe and to understand surplus uniforms and other requisites for poorer students, but her most remarkable work came after retirement from teaching.

In 1973, Sister Mary Ronan began working fulltime with Brisbane’s most disadvantaged.

She was seen on the city’s streets and buses every day as she travelled around, helping people in their homes and visiting patients in hospitals and nursing homes.

She carried a jar of Vegemite because it was “very good for helping alcoholics to dry out” and a supply of silver and blue miraculous medals of Mary.

KEVIN RUDD 1957Prime Minister RUDD was Australia’s Prime Minister from November, 2007 to June, 2010 and again from June 27, 2013 to September 18, 2013.

His Irish background emerged in 2009 when he spoke at the Queensland Irish Association’s St Patrick’s Eve Dinner. In his speech he revealed his maternal grandmother Hannah Cashin was the daughter of Irish parents from Ballingarry, Co Tipperary, a parish with impeccable Australian connections.

The village – which is about 15km northeast of Cashel, was at the epicentre of the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848.

Many of the rebel leaders, including William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Patrick O’Donohue, Kevin Izod O’Doherty and John Mitchel were subsequently transported to Tasmania.

“I stand proud of my mum’s Irish heritage,” Rudd told the QIA dinner.

He added that Australia is a country “enriched by his Irish heritage and proud of it”.

MICHAEL SAVAGE 1872-1940 Prime Minister of New Zealand SAVAGE was born in March of 1872 at Tatong in Victoria as youngest of eight children to Irish parents Richard and Johanna.

As a young man Savage held various labouring jobs in NSW but emigrated

precisely the elements which contribute to making that building the masterpiece it is.”

His later work included the construction of the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Stansted Airport outside London. He died after suffering a brain tumour at 57. to New Zealand in 1907 to became a trade union organiser. He played a part in forming the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916 and three years later became the party’s national secretary.

He went on to succeeded Henry Holland as leader on the latter’s death in 1933.

Savage led Labour to its first general election victory in 1935 and soon began to tackle the economic depression with the introduction of a minimum wage, by restoring wage cuts and expanding social welfare.

Savage was rewarded by an even greater victory in the 1938 election and his work helped set the social agenda in New Zelanad right up until the 1970s.

He died in Wellington of cancer on March 27, 1940, while still in office.

JAMES SCULLIN 1876-1953 Prime Minister AUSTRALIA’S first Catholic Prime Minister, Scullin was born in Trawalla, Victoria, the fifth child of John, a railway platelayer, and Ann (née Logan), who were both from Derry.

He attended public schools till he was 14 and then night school in Ballarat, while also reading many Irish writers in books borrowed from the local library.

He developed debating skills through the Catholic Young Men’s Society.

He joined the Political Labor Council in 1903 and helped Labor campaign in State elections. Though he lost when he ran as Labor’s candidate for Ballarat against then Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in 1906, he won the seat of Corangamite at the 1910 Federal election, when Labor became the first party to win a majority in both houses of parliament.

After losing his seat in the 1913 election, he became, until 1922, editor of a Labor daily, the Ballarat Evening Echo.

He became more radical, opposing conscription and supporting the Irish struggle against British rule.

He returned to Parliament in the seat of Yarra in 1922, and held it until 1949.

After becoming party leader, he led Labor to a landslide victory in 1929, winning 46 of the 75 lower house seats.

After his death on January 28, 1953, Scullin was given a state funeral, with Archbishop Daniel Mannix presiding at a requiem Mass in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.

A Celtic cross was erected at his gravesite on behalf of the Australian labour movement.

BORN in Melbourne to Irish parents, Sexton planned to study medicine in England, as the medical school at the University of Melbourne was not open to women. Meanwhile, she enrolled in arts and with the support of other interested women wrote to the university council asking to be allowed to study medicine.

Eventually, in March 1887 women were finally admitted to medicine.

In 1892, Sexton became the third woman to graduate in medicine in Melbourne. Frustrated by the unwillingness of hospitals to appoint women, she was one of the group of medical women who founded the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children in 1896. Sexton was the surgical leader until she resigned in 1908, remaining on the consultant staff as a gynaecologist. She offered her services to the Australian authorities on the outbreak of World War I, but was refused. Instead she joined several other women in starting a 25-bed field hospital at Auteuil in France.

She died, unmarried, in London on October 12,1950.

THOMAS H. SMITH 1830-Unknown Co-founder of Aussie Rules BORN in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, and educated at Trinity College Dublin, Smith became a teacher and headmaster after moving to Melbourne. He was one of the founders of Melbourne Football Club and one of few people present at the club’s incorporation on May 17, 1859. It was at this meeting that the first laws of Australian Football were written. He captained Melbourne Football club in 1862 and also umpired many of the club’s early games.

He was one of the first people to introduce football games to Australian public schools.

Nicknamed “Red” because of his hair, Smith is said to have had a fiery temper. In 1864 he was suspended from teaching due to his anger and strict discipline methods, before resigning from his position in 1875.

HENRY ‘HARRY’ STOKER 1895-1966 World War I Naval Officer, Actor HENRY ‘Harry’ Stoker was born in Dublin in 1895, and his actions as the commander of an Australian Navy submarine changed the course of World War I. At 18, Stoker joined the fledgling submarine service, and by 20 he had secured his first command. By 1914, he had become an experienced submariner, but upon hearing of an opportunity to potentially play professional polo in Sydney he opted to transfer to the Royal Australian Navy at which time he took control of the AE2. The AE2 set sail for Sydney in March of 1914 and after 83 days arrived at Sydney Harbour – becoming the first ever submarine to travel such a distance in the process.

After a brief time in Sydney, the AE2 was called back to Europe to take part in the Gallipoli campaign and became the first vessel to breach the Dardenelles off the coast of Turkey – in the process tilting the war effort in the favour of the Allies.

Stoker and his crew were captured during their daring mission and spent three-and-a-half years in a Turkish prison camp.

After his release, Stoker left the armed forces to pursue an acting career which saw him star in the West End and Broadway.

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

JOHN JOSEPH THERRY

JIM STYNES

WILLIAM CHARLES WENTWORTH

1790-1864 Catholic Priest

1966 – 2012 Footballer, Philanthropist

1790-1872 Explorer, Politician

BORN in Cork and educated in Carlow, Therry was ordained in 1815 and did parochial work in Dublin and Cork before moving to Sydney in May of 1820.

His interest in Australia had been aroused by the transportation of Irish convicts, and though respectful of the British authority in Sydney, Therry was impatient of anything impinging on what he considered his rights to minister as a Catholic priest.

From the first days of his chaplaincy, the building of a church in Sydney was one of Therry’s main preoccupations.

Having assured the assistance, or at least tolerance, of the leading colonists, on October 29, 1821, Governor Macquarie laid the foundation stone of what would become St Mary’s Cathedral on a site near the convict barracks.

Therry was proud of his friendship and contacts with non-Catholics and his funeral, on May 25, 1864, was widely attended.

JIM Stynes moved from his native Dublin to Australia in 1984, making his senior AFL debut in 1987 with the Melbourne Demons Football Club.

Having given up a promising Gaelic football career to come to Australia (he was a star player with Dublin club side Ballyboden St Enda’s and won an All-Ireland medal with the Dublin minors in 1984), Stynes went on to break many records over the course of a glittering AFL career. He holds the record for the most successive best and fairest awards at the Demons (three), but his career-defining moment arrived in 1991 when he became the first overseas player to win the prestigious Brownlow Medal (for best and fairest in the AFL).

His legacy as a trailblazer for Irish players in the AFL continues, and his record for the most consecutive games played in the league (244) is unlikely to be broken.

Jim also became renowned for his charity work after his retirement from football, particularly with the Reach Foundation which he co-founded in the mid 1990s.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and died at his St Kilda home on March 20, 2012.

WENTWORTH was born at sea to unmarried parents who were being transported from Britain. His father D’Arcy Wentworth was a surgeon and descendant of the Anglo-Irish Earl of Roscommon.

D’Arcy had been accused of highway robbery but accepted transportation in order to avoid conviction. William’s mother, Catherine Crowley, was an Irish teenager, transported for stealing clothing.

In 1813, Wentworth, along with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney, and opened up vast new grazing lands. The Blue Mountains town of Wentworth Falls was named in his honour.

Wentworth sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts and their descendants. He was elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 1843 and soon became the leader of the conservative party.

BOB TISDALL 1907-2004 Athlete BORN in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), raised in Co Tipperary and dying in Queensland, Tisdall led an interesting life.

At the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles he won the gold medal in the 400m hurdles. It was only his sixth time ever competing in the 400m event, and his time of 51.7 seconds would have been a world record, but was not recognised under the rules of the time because he had hit a hurdle. The rules were later changed because of this incident and the International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch presented Tisdall with a Waterford crystal rose bowl etched with the image of him knocking over the final hurdle.

Tisdall later ran a gym and nightclub in South Africa, grew coffee in Tanzania, and farmed fruit and cattle in Nambour, Queensland.

He ran in the Sydney Olympic torch relay at 93.

When he died, aged 97, he was the world’s oldest track and field Olympic Gold medallist.

JOHN AND JAMES TOOHEY 1839-1903, 1850-1895 Founders of Toohey Brewery JOHN Toohey was born in Limerick in 1839 to father Matthew and mother Honora, and moved to Melbourne in 1841 with his family where his brother James was born in 1850.

After moving to Sydney, the brothers began brewing beer in the Darling Brewery on Harbour Street and by the 1880s the brothers’ beer – Toohey’s and Tooth’s – had become widely popular.

James (above) campaigned for the Legislative Assembly seat of South Sydney in 1885 which he won and held until 1893. He died at Pisa, Italy, in September of 1895 and was buried in Rookwood cemetery, Sydney.

John, meanwhile, was a leading Catholic layman, benefactor to numerous Catholic

charitable institutions and a financial supporter of the Irish nationalist movement. A leader in the Home Rule movement, he was prominent in the erection of the monument over the grave of Michael Dwyer in Waverley cemetery in 1898.

In 1902, the brewery became a public company, Toohey’s Ltd, with John as chairman, before he died suddenly in Chicago in May 1903. He was also buried at Rookwood cemetery.

ROBERT TORRENS 1814-1884 Premier of South Australia HIS name lives on through the Torrens land title – whereby land titles no longer passed by the execution of deeds but by the registration of dealings on a public register – but the Cork-born law reformer achieved much more than just that in his life. He and his wife Barbara arrived in South Australia on December 12, 1840, where he became a collector of customs on a salary of £350.

Torrens quickly garnered a reputation for controversy, particularly by not supporting some of Governor George Grey’s policies. He topped the poll in the seat of Adelaide for the House of Assembly elections in 1857 – a victory achieved due to his land titles reform work – and went on to become Premier of the state.

He spent much of the last 30 years of his life espousing land titles reform, lecturing on the Torrens system in Ireland, England and Scotland. He settled in England and died there of pneumonia, aged 70, in 1884.

PL TRAVERS 1897-1996 Author BORN Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland, on August 9, 1899, the future Mary Poppins author moved to Allora, when she was three.

After the death of her father (who was English, but of Irish heritage) in 1907, the family – her mother and two sisters – moved to a cottage rented for them by a wealthy aunt in Bowral, NSW. The family lived there until 1917, though Helen attended boarding school in Normanhurst, Sydney, from 1912 until 1916, returning to Bowral for the holidays. The family then moved

to Ashfield in Sydney in 1917 where a statue has been erected in her honour.

Taking the name, Pamela Lyndon Travers, she pursued a career on the stage, touring with a theatre company through regional NSW and New Zealand during 1921-22.

By this time she had begun to write and publish poetry, as well as newspaper columns.

In February 1924, she fulfilled a long-held dream and sailed for England and Ireland and began her career as the writer, PL Travers.

She only ever returned once to visit Australia, for two weeks in 1963.

In England, she worked as a journalist, becoming friendly with WB Yeats and George Russell, while some of her poems were also published in The Irish Statesman.

In 1934, she wrote Mary Poppins – her first novel – and the endearing story of the magical nanny was an immediate success.

She went on to write seven other Mary Poppins books.

The Disney film of Mary Poppins (1964) became a huge international success, though Travers is understood to have despised Dick Van Dyke’s portrayal of Bert.

Travers never married but did adopt an Irish baby boy. She died in London in 1996.

PATRICK TREACY 1834-1912 Christian Brother BORN in Thurles, Co Tipperary, and educated at the local Christian Brothers’ school, Treacy joined the Christian Brothers in 1852. After eight years of teaching at Wexford schools he became headmaster of the CBS in Carlow.

In 1868, Treacy was asked to establish CBS schools in Victoria. He opened a primary school in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, the following year. With generous help from colonists of all creeds a college was opened in January 1871, with a final cost of about £12,000.

Having observed the lamentable state of diocesan schools during his collecting tours, Treacy advocated to the Catholic Education Committee a rise in teachers’ salaries and a training college.

His further inspection of metropolitan schools resulted in getting up-to-date equipment, and the Brothers starting a training scheme. He also arranged for many trained Irish Brothers to migrate each year.

Treacy extended the studies of the more talented of his pupils beyond primary level and helped to prepare them for civil service and matriculation examinations.

His initiative and dedication has had a lasting effect on Australian education. By 1900, when he retired after 30 years as a provincial superior, he had established 27 schools in the principal cities of Australia, and one in New Zealand.

ELLEN WHITTY 1819 – 1892 Sister Of Mercy BETTER known as Mother Vincent, she was born in Co Wexford, daughter of William Whitty and his wife Johanna (née Murphy).

She joined the Sisters of Mercy at 19, and within a decade was elected to the highest post in the Order as Reverend Mother of the Dublin Headhouse.

In 1860, Mother Vincent and five Sisters were invited by Bishop James Quinn, who was also Irish-born, to become the first women religious in the newly formed diocese of Queensland. They arrived in Australia on the Donald Mackay in April 1861.

Though she had great difficulty tolerating the degree of control the bishop sought over her work, Mother Vincent was eventually appointed assistant to the Queensland head of the Order, an office she retained until her death.

JOHN WORRALL 1861-1937 Co-founder of the Victorian Football League (VFL) BORN in Maryborough, Victoria to Irishborn parents, John went on to become a noted Aussie Rules footballer and international cricketer.

Worrall captained the Fitzroy Football Club in Melbourne for seven of his nine seasons at the club up until 1892. He was also a renowned cricketer, playing 140 first-class matches between 1883 and 1902.

His most notable achievement came in 1896 when he assisted in the foundation of the Victorian Football League (VFL) after which he went on to coach Carlton, reaching the finals from 1903-05 and winning three premierships from 1906-08. He died on November 17, 1937.

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ALAN JOYCE

TADHG KENNELLY

1966 – Businessman, Qantas CEO

1981 – Footballer

BORN into a working class family in Tallaght, Dublin, Joyce gained a masters degree from Trinity College and worked with Aer Lingus for eight years before emigrating to Australia in 1996 to work with the now defunct Ansett airlines.

He joined Qantas in 2000 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer of its budget subsidiary Jetstar in October 2003. He turned down an offer to return to Aer Lingus after its CEO Willie Walsh left in 2005.

In November 2008, he was appointed CEO of Qantas. Despite his success, Joyce has a reputation as a man with his feet on the ground.

“I’ve always been very conservative, with no elaborate expenditure. Maybe it’s my working class background; you appreciate the resources you have,” he said.

Of his position as head of Qantas, Joyce said: “I think it’s one of the best, if not the best, aviation jobs in the world.”

BORN in Listowel to mother Nuala and Kerry football legend Tim, Tadhg came to Sydney in 1999 to try his luck at Aussie Rules after a successful underage GAA career with his county.

He made his senior debut with the Sydney Swans in 2001, and forged a reputation as one of the best running backs in the competition. In 2005 he became the first Irishman to win an AFL Premiership medal when the Swans defeated the West Coast Eagles in the Grand Final.

After receiving his medal, he did an Irish jig on the presentation dais. He also played in the 2006 final but the Swans lost out to the Eagles on that occasion by a single point.

Kennelly retired from the AFL in February 2009 and returned to Ireland to play Gaelic football with Kerry. He was part of Kerry’s All-Ireland winning side that year, scoring two points during the game and becoming the first person to win an AFL Premiership and a Senior All-Ireland Championship. He then returned to the AFL to play two more seasons for Sydney.

DAVID GREENE, JONNY MURPHY Musicians

SONIA O’SULLIVAN 1969 – Athlete BORN and raised in Cobh, Co Cork, O’Sullivan now lives in Australia and holds dual citizenship. She is one of Ireland’s greatest ever athletes, winning a gold medal in the 5000 metres in the 1995 World Athletics Championship, and silver medals in the 5000m at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and in the 1500m at the 1993 World Championships. She also won three European Championship gold medals and two World Cross-Country gold medals.

In 2006 O’Sullivan was chosen for Australia’s Commonwealth team for the 5000m, but wasn’t able to compete due to a hamstring injury. In March 2008, she was appointed as Australia’s team manager for the 2008 World Cross Country Championships.

She is married to Australian athletics coach Nic Bideau, with whom she has two daughters.

“Ireland will always be home, but I suppose home is also where your family is,” O’Sullivan recently told the Irish Echo. “[My children] go to school in Melbourne so we are basically based here.”

TOM POWER 1930 – Community Activist WHEN Tom Power left his home village of Powerstown in Co Tipperary to set sail for Australia back in 1956, he could hardly have known the lasting impact he would have on the cultural heritage of his new home.

Back in 1995, during her state visit to Australia, President Mary Robinson suggested that some memorial be erected in remembrance of the Great Famine, which had driven so many people to Australia in the 19th century.

A committee was formed to do just that, with

how Christ would have fared amid the recent violence. “Where was he born? He was born in the Middle East. And what did he look like?

He looked Middle Eastern. I would like to say as gently and as strongly as I can, to rail against racism of every kind.”

Born in Co Limerick, he moved to Australia in 1955 after being educated by the Jesuits in Limerick and ordained at All Hallows College in Dublin. His work with Aboriginal people has justifiably been lauded, with the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, saying Bishop Cremin “has acted as a shining beacon to all who seek justice and, in that most Australian of terms, a fair go”.

the new wave Irish immigrants who have made their mark in Australia

Tom as chairman, and in 1999 they succeeded in creating a permanent memorial in the form of the Great Famine Memorial at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.

The monument has become a sacred site for the Irish in Australia, attracting large numbers to the annual commemoration.

JIMEOIN 1966 – Comedian JAMES Eoin Stephen Paul McKeown (better known as Jimeoin), was born in England, raised in Northern Ireland and made his name in Australia.

After high school at the Dominican College in Portstewart, he worked on building sites in London for four years before moving to Melbourne.

Jimeoin began to make his mark as a stand-up comedian in the early 1990s.

Following increasing success in his adopted homeland – through national tours, television shows and two films which he co-wrote and starred in – Jimeoin has also found an international audience.

He has appeared on BBC, Channel 4 and ITV in the UK, the Conan O’Brien Show in America, and on festival shows such as Montreal’s Just For Laughs.

He and his wife, Catherine Arena, have four children.

Jimeoin will anchor SBS television’s World Cup daily show, The Full Brazillian.

DR URSULA STEPHENS 1954 – Politician DR Ursula Stephens was elected to the Australian Senate for NSW in 2001 and re-elected in 2007, the first Irish-born woman to do so.

Born in Wicklow, she emigrated to Australia with her family when she was seven years old. She has four adult children and two grandsons.

She holds a PhD in Public Administration and a Bachelor of Education.

After the election of the Rudd government in 2007, she was appointed Parliamentary Secretary Assisting The Prime Minister On Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector where she won praise for her work. Her vision, she says, is for a “strong Australian democracy where everyone has the chance and choice to be actively engaged in their communities”.

DAVID CREMIN 1930 – Catholic Bishop IN HIS homily in St Patrick’s in Sydney’s Bondi beach suburb on Christmas Day 2005, the racial riots in Cronulla were fresh in Bishop Cremin’s mind.

He asked the congregation, including a huge number of Irish backpackers, to consider

FORMED in Sydney in 2003, Potbelleez founders David Greene (aka Dave Goode) and Jonathon Murphy (Jonny Sonic) were both born in Dublin. Their current line-up also includes singer Ilan Kidron The dance music group’s breakthrough hit, Don’t Hold Back, was released in October 2007.

It stayed in the Australian charts for months, peaking at number five in February 2008. By 2011 it was certified double platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association, with shipment of more than 140,000 copies.

It is currently used in the Jeep TV commercials.

The band has won the Australasian Performing Rights Association’s Dance Work of the Year award twice; in 2009 for Don’t Hold Back, and in 2012 for From The Music.

“It’s just great to be Irish and to be over here and to be intertwined in the music industry,” Greene told the Irish Echo last year.

MICHAEL MALONE 1970 – Entrepreneur BORN in Co Clare, Malone emigrated to Perth with his parents and two brothers in 1978. Having worked through university as a fencing contractor, he founded Western Australia’s first internet service provider (ISP), iiNet, in 1993 in the garage of his home.

“No one had heard of the World Wide Web yet, but that changed in October 1994. A year after we started, there was a piece of software released called Netscape, which changed everything,” he said.

From such humble beginnings, Malone led the company to become the second largest ISP in Australia with revenues of over $700m. The company became publicly listed in 1999.

In 2006, he won the Business News award for the most outstanding business leader in WA under the age of 40. In 2009 he was named CEO of the Year in the Australian Telecom Awards and National Customer Service CEO of the Year in the Australian Service Excellence Awards. In 2011 Malone won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Two months ago, he quit iiNet. He said he had “come to the point where I want to dedicate my time to other opportunities”.

25th Anniversary Edition 1989 – 2014

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