Astral weeks ahead
for Australian ambassador in Ireland BY LLOYD GORMAN
Van Morrison and Scott Morrison both have a lot to do with Australia’s new ambassador to Ireland. The incoming diplomat - who fills the position that has been vacant since the start of the year - has enjoyed a life long love of the music of the ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ singer. Last August the former Australian politician Gary Gray made a pilgrimage from Perth to Ireland for a very special concert by the Northern Ireland artist at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, Derry. Just twelve months later Gray will return to Ireland as Australia’s envoy in August. Irish Scene was the first Irish media to break the story of his appointment on social media, and here Mr Gray speaks exclusively with editor Lloyd Gorman in his first interview in his new role as ambassador elect. His journey to the ambassadorship has been paved by a long and varied professional and public career and a personal life that has known great heartache and loss.
“Prior to the Van Morrison trip, my wife Deborah and I visited Ireland in 2012,” said Gary. Deborah’s family name was Walsh and her ancestors on both sides could be traced back to Ireland. Her grandfather was Robert Walsh - known as Bob or Pop Walsh - and his father was also Robert Walsh, and is believed to have been born in 1862 in Ireland. “Robert’s mother died when he was born and Robert was reared by an aunt in Carrick on Suir, an Irish village on the River Suir near Clonmel Tipperary,” explained Gary. “Robert married Margaret Agnes Kelly, the daughter of Peter Kelly. Peter Kelly was born in Cork, in 1844, the son of Cornelius Kelly and Mary Murphy. They arrived in Victoria via South Australia in about 1842. His daughter Margaret Agnes Kelly married Robert Walsh Senior in 1901.” Gary and Deborah were happily married and had three sons. Tragically, the same week that Michael D. Higgins was in Perth in October 2017 and they should have been celebrating Deborah’s Irish heritage, was the same week she died. In August, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she died on October 20 and was buried in early November. “That part of 2017 is deeply etched on my psyche,” said Gary, who spent that time caring and grieving with their boys, family members and loved ones. Together with some of her best friends, Gary has just written and compiled a book about his wife ‘A Life That’s Good’ as a way to preserve her memory and life and share it with their children. He has now read all the speeches President Higgins gave on that visit and found them to be “an eloquent description of a modern view of the Irish Australian relationship”. It was a relationship that would reach out to him in his darkest hour. “When Deborah died, a number of members of the government THE IRISH SCENE | 4
