John Flood
John Flood was born in 1947. He is from Athlone, Co. Westmeath. Well, I was born in Athlone, which is the dead centre of Ireland. I’ve three sisters fairly close in age to me, basically, all within five years. I was the oldest. I wasn’t wild because I listened to my mother. She had me earmarked for the priesthood and my sisters for the nunneries. My mother was very religious and dad as well. He used to go to Mass quite a bit. The Franciscan friars in Athlone were very good to our family when I was younger. We were very involved with promoting Blessed Martin de Porres from Peru. He became Saint Martin de Porres. My mother and I used to sell about 60 to 70 Blessed Martin magazines, to families around Athlone every month. We’d have to go around to people’s houses to do that. I came to Dublin when I was 17. I got a job with the College of Technology in Kevin Street as a trainee laboratory technician, because I had a group certificate instead of a Leaving Cert as my parents hadn’t got much money. So I was very lucky to get into the College of Technology as a trainee lab technician. I was [still] involved as a Scout in Athlone and also as a Cub Master. I had about 50 Cubs who dressed to the nines every Saturday morning. I used to come down from Dublin to Athlone. Looking back on it, I mean, it was fabulous. I managed full houses every week, organised games for them and [held] their attention. They would have been in the eight to twelve age group. Afterwards they would have moved on to the Scouts. Then I started to do my O levels, which is what I needed to get my junior technician status and then I went on to get one A level from the University of London to get my technicianship. Then I found out that you could go a bit further. If you got two A levels you were entitled to go on for the Bachelor of Science degree. I was attending the lectures in the college I worked in, and then for some of the chemistry and biochemistry practicals I had to fly to London. Eventually I qualified in 1976 with an Honours Bachelor of Science as an external student from the University of London. When I did get my degree, we all had to go to the Royal Albert Hall [and 72 | THE IRISH SCENE
be] presented to the Queen Mother. I had two sisters in London at the time and they came and they were dressed up. When we got married we lived down in Ashbourne, Co. Meath. I was involved in the Mater Hospital radio, the internal radio station at the Mater Hospital. And I organised a couple of interviews there. We had Daniel O’Donnell and Dickie Rock. People wouldn’t know nowadays, who they are, but they came into the hospital. We’ve been here [Perth] now for close on 30 years, which is just amazing. Oh, where the time has gone. We came out prior [to moving]. We had an offer of the flight where you could go to five or six cities, open to anybody, and we took that offer up and we came out. We went to all the cities except Darwin. We felt Perth’s a nice place. It’s a lovely atmosphere there and we were thinking of emigrating. There was talk of cutbacks and redundancies [in Ireland] and there was a possibility that we might have been affected. The Irish television had been out here, as well, doing a programme on Perth, a lot of promotion of Australia as a possible immigration place, a lot of people here already. And then we said, ‘Yeah, we’ll go back [to Ireland] and we’ll put in for a visa [for Australia]’. That was it. We put our house up for sale. We were going hell for leather, you know, hey, whatever happens. The recession in Ireland, the cutbacks and houses weren’t selling that much so our house in Ashbourne didn’t
