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Armchair Riot Review...........................48 Around The Irish Scene.........................66 Australian Irish Heritage Assoc...........77 Australian Irish Dancing Assoc...........88 Bill Daly - The Cappoquin Sighting..... 52 Book Reviews..........................................83 Claddagh Report.................................... 62 Delicious Inspired Ineptitude................72 Family History WA.................................80 Famine Views..........................................30 Fear of Flying Just Part of the Fun For This Flying Doctor............................18 Fenian Sites of Significance in Western Australia..............................56 From Home to Home: Oral Histories of Irish Seniors in Western Australia......64 From Ireland to Perth.............................50 GAAWA................................................... 92 GAA Junior Academy............................95 G’day From Gary Gray........................... 42 G’day From Melbourne.......................... 70 Honorary Consulate of Ireland.............48 Irish Choir Perth......................................86 Irish Escapees and Escapades in Freo......................................................34 Irish Theatre Players...............................76 Isteach Sa Teach.....................................36 Matters Of Public Interest.................... 32 Oidhreacht Rann na Feirste................... 61 Paula From Tasmania............................. 78 Psychiatrist President Welcomes New Thinking for Australia’s Oldest Irish Club.....................................................4 Restoring Our Faith in the Past.............24 Shamrock Rovers....................................91 Traditional Irish Music and Traditional Owners.................................28 Ulster Rambles.......................................58 You are now entering Wunaamin Miliwundi Country.....................................6
Psychiatrist president welcomes new thinking for Australia’s oldest Irish Club BY LLOYD GORMAN Main image: AAP
A FORMER (2010) AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR IS THE NEW PRESIDENT AT MELBOURNE’S TROUBLED CELTIC CLUB (INSET). BUT IRISH BORN PROFESSOR PATRICK McGORRY ALSO HAS DEEP ROOTS REACHING BACK TO EARLY DAYS OF WA’S GOLD RUSH ERA. AN ABC RADIO INTERVIEW OF MR McGORRY BY MELBOURNE BASED HOST DAVID ASTLE WAS BROADCAST ON ABC RADIO PERTH ON JUNE 15. THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON THAT INTERVIEW. 4 | THE IRISH SCENE
Born in Dublin and raised in Wales, he came to Australia with his family when he was fifteen years old. “I thought I’d landed on my feet,” he said about the move and his new home and life in Newcastle, NSW. Prof. McGorry said that growing up then and even now his identity was “completely Irish”. “You know, I never felt Welsh at all, even though you have an affinity and connection with the place you grow up, but identity-wise, absolutely Irish down to my toenails basically, and I still feel that even though I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in Australia. The Irish-Australian identity is very, very strong for me and I know for hundreds and thousands of Australians if you think about it, maybe even millions have a connection with Ireland.” His father hailed from Monaghan and Donegal while his mother’s family’s background was also Donegal, and Belfast. But curiously his mother was actually born in Tasmania – a story that reveals a long familial association with Australia. “My grandmother had emigrated to Australia with her parents before the First World War,” he explained. “Her father was a North of Ireland Protestant Doctor while the other side of my family was Catholic, but he was a doctor in Western Australia on the Goldfields. Just after the First World War my great grandmother and my grandmother’s siblings were on a boat back to Ireland in 1919 and their father was killed in a tram accident in Perth. So the family went back to Dublin. My grandmother married a British soldier, an Englishman who had actually been in Australia before the First World War as well, and he was at Gallipoli in the AIF and then in Palestine with the Light Horse. So she married him and they settled back in Dublin but for a couple of years they were in Tasmania and that’s where my mother happened to be born. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing in those days.” Prof. McGorry said he was grateful for the “fantastic decision” by his parents decision to emigrate.
PSYCHIATRIST PRESIDENT WELCOMES NEW THINKING FOR AUSTRALIA’S OLDEST IRISH CLUB
“I do feel Australian as well, its the complexity of this thing, like any migrant it could be in one way that there is nothing special about Irish migrants – in area of Melbourne where I work you’ve got about 80 different nationalities so is the same thing for everyone who comes here and becomes adapted to the Australian cultures. “I’ve got an Australian accent, I’ve spent 45 plus years here so I’m more Australian than anything else, but that Irishness is a gift that I feel that I have and for a fair amount of my life Irish identities were looked down upon and I would say if you look at the history of the Celtic Club, it was founded with the intention of protecting the Irish people in Australia from discrimination, from the underclass they were at that time. There was a lot of sectarianism in Melbourne and Victoria which we’ve been able to overcome in the last sixty years but I think those migrant identities are part of the essence of Australia along with our indigenous heritage.” He signed up as a member two years ago and did not set out to become president or anything of the like. “I soon learned the Club was going through a pretty tough time,” he explained. The first Irish Club* to be set up in Australia in 1887, it looked after people incredibly well back in a time when “being Irish wasn’t 100% popular with everybody”. Despite its ‘celebrated history’ the organisation has ‘struggled’ in more recent years. “The Club’s premises in Queen Street were being redeveloped and the Club was required to move out of the premises while the redevelopment was taking place,” McGorry explained. “Without going into all the details – which I’m not that familiar with – it proved impossible for the Club to move back in and they had to be bought out by the developer. This caused a lot of distress amongst the membership of the Club... it was like your home being pulled out from underneath you. The temporary home proved to be a bit of a loss maker and the Club started to get into financial difficulties because of this sequence of events and then it ended up as an ordeal or crisis of sorts in which people’s distress at what actually happened led to division and a lot of dissatisfaction with the way things were going, so there was a real need to navigate the crisis by the committee.”
Astle – who is also a famed crossword writer and puzzle master in his own right – suggested that as a respected psychiatrist experienced in the areas of reconciliation, mediation and mental health as well as his Protestant and Catholic family background, made McGorry ideally suited for the task ahead. “It needs a healing process and we are on our way to navigating that,” he said. “Its a challenge, I don’t underestimate it but I think inclusivity is the key. There’s a need for new venue. There’s a need for a new plan. The committee probably needs to be reinvented a bit and strengthened... but I think we are headed in the right direction, we’ve got a positive agenda.” Prof. McGorry paid tribute to the Club’s existing members for their tremendous contribution but strongly indicated that it was time to get others involved – people who were not traditionally ‘joiners’. “The average age of the Club is probably around my age… they love the Club and that’s where that concern and distress comes from about the future of the club,” he continued. “But in terms of the future of the club we have to regenerate, we have to get new members, we have to get younger members. We have to make the Club relevant to new generations of Irish Australians, recent arrivals and people with a long history in Australia. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Victorians who could potentially be members of the Club if they identified with it so that’s the thing, reinvention, renewal while respecting and bringing existing membership with us.” As a country, Ireland has in the last two decades completely reinvented itself and its culture and it was this type of spirit and new thinking he hoped the Club and its members would embrace. He invited people who felt a bond with Ireland or who had fresh ideas for the Club to come forward and share them. New members would be very welcome and he pledged to work closely with other Irish community and cultural groups. “If you look at the history of Ireland, division, blame and negativity and having to fight off foreign powers has been one of the big things we’ve had to deal with, so I think fighting is not great,” he said. “The other big tradition in Ireland is the welcome. The Failte and generosity is a classic Irish quality so I think we need to rise above the ordeal the club has been through and we’re doing that. I can also reveal a new venue is on the immediate horizon, we’ve got elections coming up in September so there’ll be a chance to strengthen things even further and I’m feeling very positive about it and getting great support from the members so far.” *The Celtic Club in West Perth, was formed in 1902 - just one year after Federation. THE IRISH SCENE | 5
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Wunaamin Miliwundi Country BY LLOYD GORMAN
Bell Gorge, Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges Conservation Park Image courtesy Tourism Western Australia
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IT MIGHT WELL BE THE ONE AND ONLY TIME A ‘KING HIT’ COULD BE SAID TO BE JUSTIFIED OR EVEN DESERVED. AROUND THIS TIME LAST YEAR AT THE PEAK OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTERS AND ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT, THE KING LEOPOLD RANGES – A 600KM LONG MOUNTAIN CHAIN FORMING THE SOUTHWESTERN EDGE OF THE KIMBERLEY PLATEAU, NAMED IN HONOUR OF LEOPOLD II OF BELGIUM – CEASED TO EXIST AND OFFICIALLY BECAME THE WUNAAMIN MILIWUNDI RANGES.
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF HISTORICAL BRUTALITY
At a key moment in world history, the name change was ushered in by the McGowan government, but its origins could be traced back several state administrations. But peering back even further into the past, it can be seen the origins of the tide of change against Leopold started to turn more than a hundred years ago, thanks to the incredible parts played by some Irish men, including a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. “[Wunaamin-Miliwundi] is a combination of the Ngarinyin and Bunuba traditional names for those ranges,” WA’s Aboriginal Affairs minister Ben Wyatt said on July 3 2020, the day the blot on the local landscape was officially removed and replaced with the consent and input of the traditional owners of that country. “It’s a combined name, recognising those ranges cover across a couple of traditional country areas. It’s much more appropriate for what those ranges are, and what they represent as a key Kimberley landmark. The former name of these spectacular ranges was not worthy and did not reflect the deep cultural history of these lands. It has troubled me for years that an extraordinary area of Western Australia should be named in honour of a person who is widely regarded as an evil tyrant with no connection to our state. The Traditional Owners of the region have always known the Ranges by their own name, so it’s momentous to finally remove reference to King Leopold II and formalise the name.” The ranges are a mere 2,300km north of Perth and a popular outback area with visitors to the region. They were originally named by Alexander Forrest (ancestor of Andrew Forrest) in 1879 in honour of Belgian King Leopold II, who reigned from 1885 to 1908. Despite being one of the smallest European nations, the Belgian monarch’s empire building ambitions matched those of bigger powers such as Germany, France and England. In particular the head of the tiny state founded and laid total claim to the Congo Free State – today the Democratic Republic of the Congo – from 1885 until his death. His private ownership of the Congo was approved by the other big powers at the 1884/85 Berlin Conference in a bid to improve the lives of the native people. The opposite would be the case. An ‘absentee landlord’, Leopold mercilessly milked the entire country of ivory and later natural rubber for his personal gain. The native population were forced to work as slaves and lived under the brutal and ruthless force of mercenaries who enforced the king’s wishes. When quotes of rubber were not met, the hands of men, women and children were hacked off and collected as proof of the mercenaries enforcement measures (above), just one form of atrocity and oppression carried out in Leopold’s name. It is estimated that as many as ten to 15 million Congolese died from torture, brutality and enslavement as a direct result of the way he ran the country. 8 | THE IRISH SCENE
At home, Leopold was popular with his people and considered a builder monarch who strived to make Belgium a powerful and prestigious country both domestically and on the world stage. The Congo allowed him to do that. Even by the standards of the day – when the European powers lusted for colonies with scant regard for the wellbeing of the native peoples – Leopold’s blood-thirsty rule caused disquiet in ‘civilised’ quarters. Just one year before his death, control of the Congo was seized from the monarch by the Belgian government and when the time came, his funeral procession was booed in the streets. By sheer coincidence the events leading up to the inglorious end for the tyrant were precipitated in very different ways by two Dublin men – who both happened to be gun runners.
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IT STARTED WITH THE STOKES AFFAIR Charles Henry Stokes (left) was a colourful character whose death in the Congo in 1895 marked the start of the turn in public opinion against Leopold’s cultivated persona as a benevolent despot. Stokes was born in Dublin (1852) and went to school in Enniskillen. He was twenty years old when his father died, and together with his mother he went to Liverpool where he found an administrative job with the Church Missionary Society. Not long afterwards he became a missionary himself and set off for Africa (initially Zanzibar) in 1878. Stokes had a talent for this work and would organise massive ‘caravans’ and expeditions into regions he wanted to Christianise. He married a European nurse on one of these caravans in 1883, with whom he would have a baby daughter who only survived a week. Stokes remarried – this time to an African woman related to a chief of the tribe – and also had other local concubines with whom he fathered children, for which he was excommunicated by the Church of England. By now a veteran explorer and leader, the former missionary used his skills, experience and connections to become a trader, including in ivory and guns which he sold to British, German and other groups. His prolific arms trading upset the leader of the Belgian forces in the region, who tracked him down and arrested him in his tent in December 1894. Stokes was found guilty by a military field court of selling guns and
gunpowder to the Afro-Arab enemies of Belgian and was sentenced to death. He was hanged from a tree the next day. There were many legal problems with the execution, including that as a British subject, Stokes was entitled to appeal the judgement, but didn’t. When the press got wind of the story it sparked international outrage and became widely known as the Stokes Affair. Britain and Germany demanded that Belgium put the officer responsible for Stoke’s death on trial. Britain and Germany were paid compensation by Belgium but more importantly the Belgians declared that Europeans could not be killed by martial decree or death sentence. Stokes’ remains were returned to his family. The incident saw widespread British public opinion turn against the idea of King Leopold and helped bring about the establishment of the influential Congo Reform Association.
A JAMESON IN CONGO It was not the first time an Irish man was at the heart of a horrific episode in the country. James Sligo Jameson (left) – the grandson of the original Irish whiskey maker – was the only Irish officer to take part in the 1887 expedition to explore the ‘dark heart’ of Africa by travelling up the Congo river. That expedition was led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh American adventurer and agent for King Leopold, who helped him carve out the country. CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
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The story goes that Jameson offered six white handkerchiefs to a local tribal leader to witness someone being killed and to watch them being cannibalised, so that he could draw the scene. Jameson wrote to his wife to explain there had been a terrible mistake. “I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke, and that they were not in earnest, but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about 10 years old by the hand, and then I witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life,” Jameson wrote. “He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she fell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never muttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell.” Jameson admitted to sketching the horror in front of him, after they had begun to dismember the body. News of the grisly incident reached The Times of London before he could account for his version of events. A fever claimed Jameson’s life a few months later, before he was able to defend his name. 10 | THE IRISH SCENE
THE FALL OF KING CONGO In Ireland, Roger Casement (left) is hailed as one of the great champions of Irish freedom. Curiously it was his career as a British diplomat in the Congo that helped guide him towards this status as a national hero who also happened to help in no small part bring about the downfall of King Leopold. Casement was born in September 1864 in Dublin to an Anglo-Irish family and grew up in Sandycove. As a young man, Casement went to Africa where at the age of 27 he joined the British Colonial Service. Before that however, he had worked in the Congo for Henry Morton Stanley and the African International Association which was set up as a front to further King Leopold’s interests and eventual control over the Congo in 1885. In the years following the Stokes Affair, word of terrible atrocities and abuses against the native people refused to go away. In 1895, ten years after the Congo became the private property of the Belgian royal, another Irish missionary – Dr Henry Grattan (right), the Dublin born grandson of Arthur Guinness – raised the alarm in public once more. Guinness, who along with his son of the same name, set up the Congo-Balolo Mission in 1889. King Leopold eventually promised him action would be taken, but conditions remained as bad as ever and showed no sign of improvement. On May 20 1903 the House of Commons passed the motion: “That the Government of the Congo Free State having, at its inception, guaranteed to the Powers that its Native subjects should be governed with humanity, and that no trading monopoly or privilege should be permitted within its dominions, this House requests His Majesty’s Government to confer with the other Powers, signatories of the Berlin General Act by virtue of which the Congo Free State exists, in order that measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that State.” The daunting task of substantiating those allegations and claims of human rights abuses was given to the British consul in the Congo, Roger Casement. But Casement was perfectly suited for the role. He had several postings in different part of the country in his years as a diplomat, he knew the country and its people well and even better - he could speak several of their languages well. He went to great lengths and efforts over four weeks collecting as much information and evidence as possible, including gathering evidence and the accounts of eye-witnesses and survivors of the murderous regime, as well as overseers, workers and even mercenaries. The result of his relentless research
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was a detailed 40 page report that laid bare the rampant and routine brutality on the native people. Here are just two small sections taken from that report detailing one of the many locations he visited in July 1903. “We reached Lukolela, where I spent two days. This district had, when I visited it in 1887, numbered fully 5,000 people; today the population is given, after a careful enumeration, at less than 600. The reasons given me for their decline in numbers were similar to those furnished elsewhere, namely, sleeping-sickness, general ill-health, insufficiency of food, and the methods employed to obtain labor from them by local officials and the exactions levied on them.” “Two cases (of mutilation) came to my actual notice while I was in the lake district. One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree; the other a young lad of 11 or 12 years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the wrist... In both these cases the Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose names
were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during the rubber regime, all except one were dead at the date of my visit.” Casement returned to London in 1904 to deliver his report in person. It was hugely controversial. Vested political and business interests in the exploitation of the Congolese rejected it but when the shocking nature of its content became known, it sparked a large public reaction. Private individuals and groups came together and formed the powerful Congo Reform Association lobby to campaign for better conditions. Governments followed their lead. The British Parliament recalled an assembly of the 14 nations that signed the 1885 Berlin Agreement, which had sanctioned Leopold’s ownership of the African country. This, together with pressure from the United States, saw the Belgian Parliament set up an independent commission of inquiry. The King tried to discredit the inquiry but it reinforced the findings CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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Left: Casement Aerodrome (named for Roger Casement) is a military airbase to the southwest of Dublin. It is the headquarters and the sole airfield of the Irish Air Corps, and is also used for other government purposes. of the Casement report. As a result, in November 1908 the parliament of Belgium took back control of the territory from the King and became responsible for its administration as a colony. Leopold said the parliament did not have the right to know what he did in the Congo Free State and concealed his own crimes by having his records destroyed. About twelve months later he died and the funeral cortege of the once popular monarch who had ruled his country for 44 years, was booed through the streets over the Congo.
THE BIRTH OF AN IRISH REVOLUTIONARY Roger Casement could not have known it at the time, but his return to London would have a profound impact on his life and the future of Ireland. In 1904, he took the opportunity to visit Ireland and while he was there he joined the Gaelic League, a cultural organisation which promoted the Irish language. He also held talks with the Irish Parliamentary Party to lobby them for their support in the British parliament in relation to the Congo. But the interaction also saw some of the politics of Irish freedom rub off on him. Towards the end of his time back in England, Casement was despatched to Brazil for his next posting but before he left he joined the newly formed Sinn Fein in 1905. His exposure of the evil excesses of the rubber trade in Africa were once again called upon in 1908 to help expose similar if not even greater abuses of indigenous tribes at the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a British company. On 17 March 1911 Casement submitted his report to the British foreign secretary. Without the luxury of delving into that issue, it is worth mentioning that it was for this work that Casement was awarded a knighthood later that year. It is also worth noting that the determination and unflinching nerve he showed in bringing unspeakable atrocities to public awareness and accountability against powerful forces have seen him called the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”. Aged 49, Casement retired from the British consular mid 1913 and returned to Ireland at a critical time in the country’s history. By the end of that year, he had helped form the Irish Volunteers and worked tirelessly
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to raise funds for the fledgling force, including travelling to America with its large sympathetic and cashed up Irish community. Casement worked closely alongside John Devoy, the same man who had helped mastermind the Catalpa Escape of the six Fenian prisoners and colleagues of John Boyle O’Reilly from Fremantle in 1876. Most Irish people or those with a knowledge of Irish history will be familiar with some of the highlights of Casement’s career as an Irish nationalist leader. The daring - even brazen- daylight Howth gun running incident in July 1914 which saw 1,500 rifles openly smuggled to arm the Irish Volunteers, was organised by Casement. It was another gun smuggling attempt that brought about his downfall. World War I broke out shortly after the events at Howth and Casement made advances to the Germans and eventually secured their agreement to provide 20,000 rifles, machine guns and ammunition to the Irish fight for independence. The weapons were to be delivered on April 21 1916 to Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, Co. Kerry where Casement and co-conspirators would receive them. The German sub was apprehended by the British navy and Casement, who was at that time suffering from a bad bout of malaria he picked up in the Congo and too sick to make a getaway, was arrested at Ardfert. The former British diplomat was arrested for High Treason and hanged at Pentoville Prison in London in August. He was 51. His body was buried in the prison grounds. It took fifty years for British authorities to agree to the repatriation of Casement’s remains to Ireland for burial in Ireland, as Casement had requested.
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Above: July 28th, 1960 – Irish soldiers boarding the plane to leave Baldonnell airport for Congo just a few months before the Niemba Ambush (left)
A CONGO IRISH CRISIS As it happens, the Irish public were at this time well acquainted with the Congo. Indeed, it was a raw memory in the minds of many Irish around that time. The Congo gained its independence from Belgium on June 30 1960, and almost immediately a horrendously complicated and bloody civil war started as the mineral rich province of Katanga in the south declared itself an independent state. At the request of the government of the newly created Republic of the Congo, the United Nations was called in to restore order and suppress the Katangan separatists. Ireland’s bid for UN membership was finally realised in 1955 (after being blocked for nearly a decade by the Soviet Union) and the country was eager to prove its credentials on the world stage and offered to send soldiers as a Peacekeeping force in the conflict. The first detachment of Irish soldiers – made up of the 33nd Battalion – arrived in July 1960 and they
didn’t have to wait long for their baptism of fire. On November 8, an Irish army unit of eleven men were on a routine patrol when they were attacked by a large force of Luba tribesmen – also known as Balubas – armed with bow and arrows and blades and clubs. Eight of the soldiers were killed outright (and their bodies badly mutilated), while another badly wounded man escaped into the bush, only to be killed the next day. Just two survived the incident which became known as the Niemba Ambush. Half a million people turned out on the streets of Dublin to watch the funeral cortege that took their bodies to Glasnevin cemetery. It was the first time Irish soldiers had fought and died in action since the Irish civil war almost forty years earlier, and the word ‘balubas’ is still commonly used in Ireland today to describe someone or something that went berserk. CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
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UNDER SIEGE In their four years in the Congo, the Irish Defence Forces deployed 6,000 Irish soldiers to the Congo – including my late grandfather Laurence Gorman – of whom 26 died while in service there. Incredibly none of those casualties happened during what was perhaps the single greatest battle ever fought by the Irish army. On September 13 1961 a contingent of 155 Irish Peacekeepers – made up largely of men from the army base in Athlone – were sent to the mining town of Jadotville to protect the Belgian settlers and local population. Their arrival was not welcomed or wanted by a hostile townsfolk who were anti-UN and who supported Katanga’s bid for freedom. The troops, led by Commandant Pat Quinlan from Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry, dug in and fortified their position. They were celebrating mass when a sentry spotted an advancing military force and he fired a warning shot that signalled the start of five days intensive fighting. The attackers numbered between 3,000 to 5,000 and were made up of Katangese tribesmen, Belgian settlers and hardened European and African mercenaries who were well armed and even had air support at their disposal. Despite their superior strength and firepower, the first wave of attackers – and following waves – were held or driven back by the Irish soldiers who, despite having very little combat experience, were well trained and well led. The stiff resistance offered by the outnumbered and encircled Irish troopers is reported to have surprised many of the attackers, so much that they began to desert the battlefield. The response of mercenaries to try and 14 | THE IRISH SCENE
Above left: Laurence Gorman. Above: On duty in the Congo during the Siege of Jadotville, and the Netflix movie made about the event (right) restore their fighting force was to start shooting fleeing natives. In the face of repeated attacks, the Irish held their ground for five days until they ran out of ammunition, food and water supplies. An attempt to reinforce them with other UN troops was defeated before their back up could even get anywhere near them. One air drop did get water through to the men but it came in tanks that had been used to store petrol and had not been properly cleaned out, rendering the water inside undrinkable. Lacking clear orders and the manpower or equipment needed to defend themselves, Cmdt Quinlan made the decision to surrender. The siege of Jadotville was finally over. An estimated 300 men from the attacking force were killed in the battle while approximately another thousand were injured. There were plenty of injuries on the Irish side of the wire yet by some miracle, no deaths. The Irish men were held as prisoners of war for a month and used to try and force humiliating terms on the United Nations. Several weeks after their release, some of their number saw further fighting but this time they were supported by soldiers from Sweden and were successfully backed up by fellow Irish peacekeepers. There is much to say about Ireland’s contribution to the United Nations Peacekeeping efforts in the Congo – and every UN peacekeeping mission since – and we may well return to the subject for the September edition, which will mark the 60th anniversary of that incredible encounter. In the meantime, if you haven’t already seen it, the 2016 action war film The Siege of Jadotville offers a realistic and gripping account of those events and is well worth a watch.
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING WUNAAMIN MILIWUNDI COUNTRY
THE WILD GEESE OF THE CONGO As seen previously, throughout the Congo’s long and unhappy history there has been no shortage of men who were prepared to use violence and force to accomplish their goals at any cost. One name stands out amongst the countless numbers who fit into that category – Thomas ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare (below), an ‘Irish’ mercenary who was the ultimate walking, talking war machine. Hoare was born on St Patrick’s Day 1919 to Irish parents (Thomas and Aileen) – in Calcutta, India but got most of his education in England. At the age of 20 he joined the London Irish Rifles when WWII started. He would see action in Burma and India and by the end of the war he had risen to the rank of major. Not long after the war finished, he got married in New Delhi and the newly-weds had three children. He also went on to become an accountant, but that and life in London were dull and did not interest him, so he moved to South Africa where he ran safaris and became a soldier of fortune in various African conflicts. He would lead two different mercenary groups during the Congo Crisis. The first time was in 1961 when he was recruited by Moïse Tshombe, a powerful businessman and politician behind the succession of Katanga from the Congo. The breakaway government and its rebel forces were defeated in 1962 by the Congolese government with the support of the United Nations.
Hoare lived to fight another day and in 1964 was again employed by Tshombe – who was by now prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – to quash the Simba rebellion, which was backed by Communist forces. Working with hundreds of other European mercenaries – including apparently some from Ireland – Hoare defeated the Simba rebels. Unlike other operators in what was normally a shadowy trade, Hoare welcomed and even enjoyed media attention and wasn’t afraid to give journalists a good line or CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
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story. Returning from the Congo to his home in South Africa, Hoare reportedly told a waiting journalist that “killing communists is like killing vermin, killing African nationalists is as if one is killing an animal. My men and I have killed between 5,000-10,000 Congo rebels in the 20 months that I have spent in the Congo. But that’s not enough. There are 20 million Congolese you know, and I assume that about half of them at one time or another were rebels whilst I was down here.” On another occasion he told a journalist that you can’t win a war with choirboys. Perhaps Hoare’s greatest publicity coup was the 1978 film The Wild Geese, which was based largely on his exploits and reputation. Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore were just some of the big names of the day in the star-studded action flick about a band of 50 battle scarred mercenaries paid good money to snatch a deposed president from the clutches of a new ruler in a power struggle (over mineral resources) in an African nation. The supposed three hour snatch-and-grab job becomes a prolonged battle for survival, as the mercenaries are betrayed and left to die by the same interests that hired them. An Irish missionary priest comes to their salvation by telling them where there is a plane they could use to escape the country and pursuing soldiers intent on killing them. The film’s title was borrowed from real life. In what would suggest a pride in his heritage, Hoare borrowed it from Irish history. The Flight of the Wild Geese saw the Irish Jacobite army, commanded by Patrick Sarsfield, forced to leave Ireland for Europe as a result of the 1691 Treaty of Limerick. The image of a flying goose was the symbol he used for his 5 Commando Group (above). Hoare died in South African in early February 2020, just as the global proportions of COVID-19 were starting to emerge. 16 | THE IRISH SCENE
A GLIMPSE OF THE CONGO TODAY It is worth noting that at 2.345 million km², the land mass of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Africa’s second largest country – is slightly smaller but roughly the same size as Western Australia (2.646 million km²). Despite the comparison of both being big mining states with abundant natural resources, the Congo is ranked in the top ten poorest nations in the world according to the Irish charity Trócaire, which operates there. “The DRC has vast amounts of oil, diamonds, gold and other natural resources like cobalt, which is used in making our smart phones. At the same time, 74% of this country of 84 million people live in poverty. Many people are affected by chronic hunger and the spread of diseases, like measles and ebola. Violence against women is widespread”.
Left: Six year old Kampale washes his hands at a water tank provided by Trócaire to his school, to improve hygiene to halt the spread of diseases. Photo : Garry Walsh / Trócaire
Using public donations, Trócaire states that it provides lifesaving support such as food, water and shelter and long term projects to build resilient communities and to protect women who have survived violence.
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Fear of flying
just part of the fun for this flying doctor BY LLOYD GORMAN
IRISH MEDICO MARK RUDDY KNOWS YOU HAVE TO BE READY FOR ANYTHING WORKING FOR THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTORS SERVICE (RFDS). NOTHING IS PREDICTABLE AND FROM ONE HOUR TO THE NEXT HE COULD BE GIVING LIFE SAVING ADVICE OVER LONG RANGE RADIO TO THE A SHIP OFF THE WA COASTLINE WITH A SICK CREW MEMBER FROM THE RFDS BASE IN BROOME, A MINE SITE ACCIDENT OR A TOURIST INJURED WHILE BRAVING THE KIMBERLEY’S GIBB RIVER ROAD.
18 | THE IRISH SCENE
It would be an unusual day when he didn’t find himself boarding one of the many planes in the RFDS fleet on a mercy dash to a life or death emergency situation, or to reach a health clinic for a remote Aboriginal settlement or some settlement in the WA outback. Never a dull moment. But even Mark wasn’t quite expecting it when a medical mission brought him face to face with an old friend from Ireland. “Only an Irish person could bump into one of their best mates while on patient retrieval in very rural Western Australia and get offered a cup of tea,” Mary O’Dea tweeted on May 27 of herself, with a photo of herself and Mark. The social media shout out naturally caught the interest of Irish Scene which investigated further. Mark, who hails from Dalkey in Dublin, explained that they were old friends who studied medicine together at Trinity College. “The last time we saw each other was in Dublin in December 2019 for mine and Gemma’s engagement party. It was also a bit of a going away party because we left very shortly afterwards for Australia. We went to Townsville, where I worked on the Rescue 521 helicopter. That was January 2020 so we just got in before COVID.” Apart from dealing with an all consuming virus, Mark – who worked as a GP in Dublin – had to grapple with another major difficulty in his new role in a rescue helicopter – a fear of flying. “I never really liked flying full stop but I’m a doctor with an interest in pre-hospital care which means in countries like Australia a lot of aviation work as well. So you can imagine I had a bit of anxiety at the beginning but not for long. Being in a helicopter with the headphones on so that you can
FEAR OF FLYING JUST PART OF THE FUN FOR THIS FLYING DOCTOR
hear the pilots and crew talking to each other lets you understand first hand how good these guys are at their job and skilled in dealing with every sort of situation that can crop up. They are very experienced and skilled professionals. You are in the best of hands.” His newfound faith was put to the test again when the couple came to WA in February of this year and he took up his new role as a flying doctor in Port Hedland and then Broome. “I’d never been in a small plane before and here I was in them often landing aggressively and taking off from dirt and gravel runways and airstrips in the Kimberley.” The RFDS in WA has 16 Pilatus PC-12 aircraft which are all fitted out so that they can operate as flying critical care units. As well as these prop planes, the service also has two specialised jets which can fly faster and further and still be able to operate from air strips that would be off limits for most jet pilots. Now Mark doesn’t even blink an eye. “I’ve given into it now, its all part of the fun,” he laughed. There is a strong sense of comraderie in the service, which attracts a lot of people from across the world. “There’s loads of Irish here too,” added Mark. “There’s two or three doctors in Broome and a doctor in Kalgoorlie whose sister I worked with in Ireland.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
Opposite left and above: Irish RFDS pilot Mark Ruddy.
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What he didn’t know was that Mary – a neonatal consultant – was now living in Perth for the past year and working at Perth Children’s Hospital and King Edward Memorial hospital. She was despatched as part of a specialist team from Perth on the flight to Broome where they had their impromptu reunion. “Talk about a surprise, for both of us, it was great,” he added. The friends made plans to catch up again, including a return trip to the tip of the state for Mary. Now in the second year of their two year visa stint, Mark and Gemma are applying for residency so they can stay and experience more of what Australia has to offer. Eventually Mark sees them returning to Ireland and his former role there as a GP. “That’s the plan anyhow,” he added. “And assuming that’s the case I will always be able to look back at the incredible and unique experiences I had here.”
Above: The Irish Air Ambulances at work across the country
THE RISE OF IRELAND’S AIR AMBULANCES Every Australian – country folk and even their city cousins – knows about the Royal Flying Doctors Service. The life-saving service has been around since 1928 and as we explored in the January 2020 edition of the magazine, has some Irish DNA running through it. It’s Victorian born founder John Flynn was the second son and one of four children of Irish emigrant Thomas Eugene Flynn, originally a school teacher. The concept of aviation medical care is less well known and not as developed in Ireland, but major strides in the field have been taken in recent years. It is only fair though to remember that the Irish Air Corps has since the 1960’s provided critical medical air support and transport for not only the Irish Defence Forces but also the civilian population. In early June for example, 104Sqn completed an air ambulance transfer of a nine month old to the UK for treatment. The child and it’s carers were carried across the Irish Sea in a PC 12 plane, the same type that makes up most of the RFDS fleet in WA. A few days earlier “a precious cargo” of a baby weighing just 1kg – being transported in a 250kg pod – was carried by an Air Corps helicopter crew to where it needed to be. These and other mercy dashes are typical of the daily duties of these men and women and their flying machines. New operators have emerged in recent years. In June 2012 the Department of Health and the HSE’s National Ambulance Service launched the country’s first emergency aeromedical service, based out of the army’s Custume Barracks in Athlone in the midlands (where the Irish UN Peacekeepers in the Jadotville battle came from). A military helicopter was dedicated to the service for the rapid transfer of patients to hospitals across the country. By October last year this service had airlifted its 3,000th patient and is going strong.
Mark off-duty with fiancee Gemma
20 | THE IRISH SCENE
In June 2019 the Department of Health and HSE (Health Service Executive) extended this original service to cover the southern half of Ireland. “The service will see the establishment of a charitably funded Helicopter Emergency Medical Service in the South, which will operate from Rathcoole Aerodrome, just northeast of Millstreet, County Cork,” then health minister Simon Harris said. “I am also pleased that this service will fulfil recommendations made by
FEAR OF FLYING JUST PART OF THE FUN FOR THIS FLYING DOCTOR
TURBULENT FINAL FLIGHTS HOME TO IRELAND
the National Trauma Steering Group in respect of improving aeromedical services in Ireland. Looking to the future, and adopting a whole system approach to care delivery, it is clear that the National Ambulance Service will be a key enabler of Sláintecare and, in that context, it is important that we support the development of aeromedical services which will improve service efficiency and effectiveness.” In its first year (2020) of operation, Irish Community Air Ambulance responded to 490 incidents, ranging from farm accidents and falls from heights to car crashes and cardiac arrests. March of this year was its busiest month to date, with 47 emergency call outs. Similarly, Air Ambulance Northern Ireland Charity started operations on 22 July 2017 – a month earlier than expected – when it dashed a young child seriously hurt in a farm accident at Castlewellan to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. Since then it has carried out more than 2,000 ‘taskings’. Its EC135 helicopter and crew (pilot, doctor and paramedic) gets to wherever its patients find themselves in trauma and flies them to the the most appropriate hospital for their situation. “If a patient reaches hospital within the Golden Hour (60 minutes after their injury) their chances of survival are dramatically increased,” Air Ambulance Northern Ireland says on its website. Interestingly it also reveals that it costs £5,500 pounds a day or £2m a year – all from donations, fund raising and sponsors – to keep the service in the air. The Northern Ireland service came about as the result of the efforts of a lot of people, but none more so than that of Dr John Hinds, a Northern Irish medic interested in pre-hospital care CONTINUED ON PAGE 22
Every week about five (usually young) Irish people die while holiday or living and working abroad. It’s a terrible tally. Families and friends often find themselves suddenly balancing grief and the daunting and difficult administrative task of trying to get the body of their loved one home from a foreign country. That traumatic task started to change for many affected families with the establishment of the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust. The charity was started around the kitchen table of Newry couple Colin and Eithne Bell, who lost their 26 year old son Kevin to a hit and run accident in New York in June 2013, and were plunged into the process of trying to get his body home as quickly as possible so they could pay their respects and give him a proper funeral. Shortly after their experience, they heard about another Irish family who lost a young person abroad and reached out to them, offering to help guide them through the process and use excess money they had to pay for the costs involved, including for air freight for a coffin. The Trust was born as a legacy to their son. Since then they have intervened and helped return the remains of more than 1,000 men, women and children from overseas to every county in Ireland. Before he went to America, Kevin had spent time in Australia and his parents have been here to Perth where their services have been needed in dozens of cases in WA and hundreds Australia wide. In an interview on RTE radio Colin Bell said that they have faced this scenario in most countries so often that their response had become so streamlined that one phone call from them could usually set in motion the steps needed to retrieve a body from local authorities, and fly them home. Seven years after they began their merciful mission, the Bell’s consider it “an honour and privilege” to help where they can. THE IRISH SCENE | 21
FEAR OF FLYING JUST PART OF THE FUN FOR THIS FLYING DOCTOR
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
and motorbike trauma medicine. Hind was himself known as a “Flying Doctor” because he was one of two doctors who rode motorbikes so that they could get to the scene of an accident quicker than other road vehicles. But he also campaigned for Northern Ireland to have its own air ambulance service, and in June 2015 met health minister Simon Hamilton to lobby for the service. A month later he was taking part in the Skerries 100 event outside Dublin when he was in a serious accident on his bike. Hind was taken to Beaumont Hospital but died shortly afterwards. He was just 35 years old. His widow Janet Acheson took up the cause and pushed authorities to introduce the air ambulance service, which, as we have seen, came into being in early 2017. DFES manages the service, which is funded by the state government and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) WA as main sponsor (hence he name). “CHC Helicopters provide the helicopter and flight crew,” the DFES website states.
IRELAND AND WA COVERED BY SAME SEARCH & RESCUE OPERATOR Dublin, Shannon, Waterford and Sligo are the bases for the Irish Coast Guards Search and Rescue helicopters. The fleet of five Sikorsky S-92 Helibus Search and Rescue helicopters however, belong to the CHC corporation. Unlike the entities behind the Royal Flying Doctors or the Irish air ambulances which are charities, CHC is a private enterprise, which is paid in the region of €50 million a year to provide the aircraft and crews, dating back to 2012. In a high profile incident, one of their helicopters (Rescue 116) crashed on March 14, 2017 off Mayo while on a mission to save an injured fisherman. The Irish crew of four were all killed. After the tragedy the lost helicopter was replaced with a newer version sourced from Australia. Ireland is just one of the countries where CHC operates, Australia – and Western Australia in particular – is another. The distinctive (and busy) RAC Rescue helicopter service was first introduced in August 2003, with a second in February 2016. Between them the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) estimates that with an operating range of 200km the two helicopters cover 95 per cent of WA’s population. “Based at Jandakot and Bunbury, the crews include a pilot, air crew officer and St John Ambulance critical care paramedic. During critical hospital transfers a doctor may also be on board. This vital air service transports critical care specialists 22 | THE IRISH SCENE
The RAC helicopter in Western Australia is operated by the CHC corporation to an incident and airlifts the injured to the nearest or most suitable hospital. Working alongside the Perth-based helicopter, the second Bunbury-based helicopter not only benefits community members in the South West, but also increases the capacity of the vital emergency rescue helicopter service to respond to patients across our vast State.” Major traffic crashes, cliff and sea rescues and search operations are just some of the types of operations the helicopters and their crews are called out for on a daily basis.
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Restoring our faith in the past BY LLOYD GORMAN
THE 2021 MARCH STATE ELECTION PRODUCED AN UNPRECEDENTED – EVEN HISTORIC – RESULT FOR THE LABOR GOVERNMENT OF MARK McGOWAN GOVERNMENT. NO WA PREMIER BEFORE HIM HAD BEEN HANDED SO MUCH CONTROL OVER BOTH HOUSES OF STATE PARLIAMENT. But an important political anniversary for Western Australia and the suffragette cause went largely unnoticed, overshadowed by election fever. The eve of the March 13 poll quietly marked the 100th election anniversary of Edith Cowan to the state parliament, the first female MP in Australia and only the second in the British Empire, if you take an Irish technicality into account. The first woman ever elected to the Westminister parliament in London happened just three years earlier. Anglo-Irish woman Constance Markievicz won the Dublin seat of St. Patrick’s (one of four seats for the capital as a UK parliamentary division) in 1918. Markievicz, who took part in the 1916 Rising and stood as a Sinn Fein candidate, romped it in. But instead of taking her place in London (she was in prison at the time of her election), she took part in the revolutionary establishment of an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann. Cowan’s election came close to never happening. 24 | THE IRISH SCENE
Top: Monument man Frank Smith. Photo: courtesy of POST Newspapers and photographer Paul McGovern. Above: The Edith Cowan memorial clock located at the entrance to
Kings Park.
Not long before the 1921 ballot, then attorney general Thomas Draper from the Nationalist Party changed the law to allow women to stand for parliament. This came 22 years after Australian women had won the right to be able to vote in elections. Cowan, then 59, ran against Draper for the seat of West Perth and just won by a razor thin margin of 46 votes. She lost her seat in the 1924 election but in
RESTORING OUR FAITH IN THE PAST
Far left: Anglo Irish woman Constance Markievicz took part in the revolutionary establishment of an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann Left: A young Edith Cowan
her one term as a parliamentarian she campaigned for women’s rights and pushed through legislation which gave women greater rights and opportunities, including the right to enter the male dominated legal profession. Her life was a shopping list of achievement and accomplishment against impossible odds. She died in Subiaco on June 9, 1932 aged 70 and her funeral service in West Perth drew huge crowds. She was buried at Karrakatta. On the second anniversary of her death, a memorial clock was unveiled and dedicated in her name at the Perth entrance to Kings Park. There were plenty who argued it shouldn’t be built. The Kings Park board for example, did not support it as they said only memorials of national significance were appropriate, but Perth City Council, which was building a small roundabout island in the road, supported the project. It is thought to be the first civic monument erected to an Australian woman. Recent years have not been kind to the 87 year old monument. For at least ten years the four clocks on each of its facades were either broken or displayed the wrong time. Decades of pollution from the increasingly busy roads around it also took their toll on the stonework and bronze fixtures. Work to restore the heritage listed landmark began in March, to mark the anniversary of her election, thanks in no small part to some residents prodding the authorities to look after it. The delicate job of fixing, repairing and restoring went to a Perth firm with Irish links and heritage
expertise, Colgan Industries. In particular the task was largely carried out by Galway man Frank Smith. Scaffolding went up around the modest monument and came down again about two months later. “The clock faces have been fully restored and are now accurately telling the time,” a Perth council spokesperson said. “The repatination and rewax of the bronze profiles will be completed by Friday 28 May.” About two weeks earlier Colgan won a four month contract worth just over $76,000 to restore another three of the many monuments in Kings Park. The company has a lot of expertise in this kind of work. In fact, it – and Frank who is a stone mason by trade – have toiled over the park’s main memorial which dates back to 1929. In 2004/5 they completely dismantled and rebuilt the 18 metre granite obelisk and cenotaph of the State War Memorial so that badly needed conservation works and waterproofing to the crypt below it. For most of us it would be impossible to imagine taking apart such a massive and significant thing, but not Frank. There are landmarks across WA that have benefitted from his craftmanship (including the Beagle Bay ‘Mother of Pearl’ Mission Church) and countless fellow workers who have enjoyed working alongside an “artist” of his calibre. The stone plinth and path around the Irish Famine Memorial – An Gorta Mor – in Subiaco is his handiwork. CONTINUED ON PAGE 26
THE IRISH SCENE | 25
RESTORING OUR FAITH IN THE PAST
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25
Just a short walk away from the haunting Famine figure, the heritage listed 1935 built ticket gates for Subiaco Oval are just another example of the authentic efforts of Colgan, who were commissioned to restore them as part of the demolition and redevelopment of the former AFL stadium by the state government. One of the last big pieces in the completion of that project was the installation of original style turnstile gates. Subiaco man Dave Murray was the one who noticed the gates were missing (whereabouts unknown) and thanks to the efforts of the heritage sleuth, the council and other authorities combined forces to reinstate them, which happened in December of last year. The actual job of putting them where they belong was carried out by Irish born tradies Bill White (Offaly) and Michael McCormack (Galway), pictured here with a happy Mr Murray.
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Traditional Irish music and traditional owners
BY LLOYD GORMAN
MOST MUSICIANS ARE BORN INTO THE WORLD OF TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC. OTHERS DISCOVER IT LIKE SOME FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR COUNTRY. STEVE COONEY IS ONE OF ITS GREATEST EXPLORERS AND EXPONENTS. AND AS HE TOLD RTE PRESENTER MIRIAM O’CALLAGHAN ON HER SUNDAY MORNING PROGRAMME ON MAY 2, HIS JOURNEY WAS A HOMECOMING OF SORTS THAT HAD AN UNUSUAL STARTING POINT. “I was born and grew up in Melbourne, Australia” he said. “I didn’t know much about Irish culture at all, I didn’t know any Irish music until I was 28”. He was separated from his Irish heritage for good reason. “My father had grown up from an Irish Catholic family in Manchester. His mother died in the TB epidemic in the 1920’s and his father brought him to Australia to escape the TB and to get the fresh air in Australia, so they came for the health. I remember my father saying the first time he saw oranges and bananas and fresh fruit was when he came to Australia. They were a Republican family. His aunt kept a safe house in Manchester but he fell out with my mother who was from a staunch line of protestant ministers and that didn’t go down well with his father, my fathers father. He was disowned and subsequently we were disowned for having a Protestant mother so I grew up as part of the schism between Protestants and Catholics.” While it might be seen as an excessive reaction by today’s standards, Cooney knows that it was not uncommon in Ireland or even here in Australia for feelings to run that strong over the religious divide. “The Catholic faith was very strong and when you think about the Famine and people not taking 28 | THE IRISH SCENE
the soup and they would rather die, condemn their own families to death rather than convert their religion, shows how strong that was. So my dad said he was an Australian, an egalitarian society and he put his Irish heritage into the background because it was hurtful to him I suppose and thats one reason why I needed to come here and discover that heritage.”
TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC AND TRADITIONAL OWNERS
In 1980 at the age of 27 he first came to Ireland and has remained in the country since. But the inspiration to move to the land of his ancestors – in particular Tipperary, Cavan and Galway – came from an unexpected quarter. “It came about as a result of living with the Aboriginal people in a tribe in the Northern Territory of Australia,” Cooney explained. “I had gone up to learn the Didgeridoo and they said – after I’d been through processes with and initiation with them – how do you expect to understand our culture when you don’t even understand your own culture, go back to the land of your ancestors and a series of things they told me to learn and I came here as a direct result of their interaction, their direction.” He has maintained a connection with the Aboriginal culture that launched him towards Ireland where his contribution to Irish music has been prolific and prodigious. Based in “beautiful Donegal” which he says is home, Cooney is a fluent Irish speaker and has been closely involved in making more than 250 CDs, countless collaborations with other Irish and international musicians and writes poetry as well. He completed a PhD in 2018 at NCAD on an intuitive musical notation system that he developed for early learners and those who experience difficulties with staff notation, and he lectures in tertiary institutions on the calculation of harmony and syncopation. In 2020 he was given the RTÉ Folk Awards ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award. His latest project is a harp based record with the incredible sean nos (old style) singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. Ó Lionáird spoke for many when he said on the programme that he was relieved that Cooney never returned to Australia. “He has brought so much to our culture and speaking personally he has brought so much to my musical world, my musical landscape,” he said. “He has shown the way in how one might accompany and investigate traditional Irish music using the guitar in new and beautiful sophisticated ways that just weren’t attempted before. We do need people like Steve to teach us – to reteach us – how to become aware of these possibilities [of culture/folklore/landscape) again, we have been playing music for a long time but we have not managed that.” As a working muso, Cooney is also happy with his choice for another reason. “Ireland is ideal size, when you are touring Australia by road for a gig between Melbourne and Sydney it’s a long days drive there and a long days drive back, but here in Ireland you can drive there and get
back if you have to, its a nice size of a country.” Cooney’s encounter with the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory and experience with traditional Irish music is yet another example of the strong connections and crossover between the two cultures as exemplified by the Hand in Hand Irish Aboriginal Festival in Kidogo Arthouse, Fremantle in March of this year. Hopefully this incredible event – which may have been the first of its kind to date – will return next year and become an international fixutre.
Tony and Veronica McKee PO Box 994 Hillarys WA 6923
Tel (08) 9401 1900 • Fax: 9401 1911 Mob: 0413 337 785
info@mckeefamilyfunerals.com.au www.mckeefamilyfunerals.com.au THE IRISH SCENE | 29
Famine views BY LLOYD GORMAN
GOOD WEATHER AND A LARGE CROWD TURNED OUT FOR THE 2021 ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FAMINE COMMEMORATION IN SUBIACO ON SUNDAY MAY 16TH. An interpretative panel for An Gorta Mór sculpture in Market Square Park was officially unveiled by former mayors of Subiaco, Tony Costa and Heather Henderson. Fred Rea, chairman of the Western Australia Famine Commemoration Committee, said the new panel “completed” the memorial, first unveiled by President Michael D Higgins in October 2017. As well as the fine weather, event goers enjoyed an incredible showcase of Irish creative culture themed around the Famine. Fiona Rea sang her new song ‘An Gorta Mór’, dedicated to the women who fled Ireland for Australia. This haunting number led into a spectacular Irish dance performance taken from The Journey, a production due to be staged in The Regal Theatre in Subiaco later this year. Actor Michael Sheehy then stunned the gathering with his powerful enactment of two very different Famine era characters. Mr Jim Egan read the Famine prayer and Honorary Irish Consulate Marty Kavanagh also addressed the event that was hosted by Tom Murphy. At the end of the ceremony members of the audience were invited to leave flowers at An Gorta Mór memorial. Photos: Lloyd Gorman – assisted by Ewan Gorman (7)
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FAMINE VIEWS
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Matters Of PUB-Lic Interest
BY LLOYD GORMAN
A GOOD DAY FOR IRISH PUBS – AFTER 476 DAYS BAD ONES It has been a long time coming but from July 5 all pubs in Ireland will be allowed to take the big step of reopening for indoor service. Watering holes across the country closed their doors 15 months ago, on March 15 2020, the eve of their biggest and busiest time of the year. That’s 476 consecutive days of being out of business. Just for reference, pubs in Perth shut down by the end of that same month but were back in business after a couple of months, serving takeaway orders at first and then by degrees opened up to ever increasing numbers of customers, and things have largely returned to pre-COVID ‘normal’ for the WA hospitality sector. At 12.01am Wednesday 23 June, WA moved into Phase 5 of the COVID-19 roadmap. This meant the removal of the 2 square metre rule and that pubs could now have 100% (not 75%) of punters on the premises, while major venues and events no longer face any limits on crowd size. Some controls – such as mandatory contact registers – will stay in place but essentially punters and revellers in WA will be able to party like its 1999 all over again (please forgive the Prince pun). Meanwile, back in Ireland, outdoor service was allowed at Irish pubs 32 | THE IRISH SCENE
Above: Twitter user @Gaothmhor posted on this image on June 8 with the caption, “The Universe has returned to its proper order, #Sham and #ThePrince are back in @jackcsbar (Killarney, Co, Kerry) #GuinnessTime” from June 7, marking a slow return to something like normal business for them. “We are pleased to have finally received confirmation that all pubs will be able to reopen for indoor service from 5th July,” said Donall O’Keeffe, Chief Executive of the LVA. “It has been a long time coming, but this is a time for hope and optimism. The 5th July will mark the beginning of the recovery for pubs and other hospitality businesses. Many pubs will not be in a position to offer outdoor service, so confirmation of the date for reopening indoors was vital. It is extremely important that all pubs, food and traditional, will now be able to open together. We are absolutely delighted that the Government has taken this on board and that there will be no further divisions in our industry. Our members are all simply ‘pubs’ once again. Hopefully no one will ever have the need to use the term ‘wet pubs’ in future.” Ireland’s second pub lobby body the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI), which represents drinking dens outside Dublin, welcomed the resumption of business on June 7 with its “We’ve missed you” campaign.
MATTERS OF PUB-LIC INTEREST
Padraig Cribben, VFI Chief Executive, said: “It’s a big day for the pub trade as 4,000 pubs are set to reopen for outdoor service. There is a strong sense of anticipation among publicans to get open and get back to what they do best. The message from publicans to old regulars and new customers alike is ‘we’ve missed you and welcome back’.
“For the vast majority of publicans, outdoor service will keep them ticking over until indoor trading resumes on 5th July. We’re acutely aware that thousands of our members cannot open this week at they have no outdoor space and will have to wait another four weeks to resume trading. We’re hoping for a busy summer once all pubs open. There is a sense in the trade that people want to get out of the house and meet up. To get pubs back open will be a great sign the country is returning to normal.” Ireland’s hotels and guesthouses were allowed to reopen a little earlier (June 2) than their publican counterparts. The Irish Hotel Federation welcomed a resumption of trade but issued a press releases warning that its members were facing €60 million in reopening costs. “Our members are delighted to be reopening and are really looking forward to welcoming back team members and guests. However, the cost of reopening a hotel after months of prolonged closure is significant given the volume of operations and facilities involved,” Tim Fenn, IHF CEO said. The Federation called on the government to provide extra grant support to operators in the hard pressed sector.
EARLY ADVANTAGE FOR NI LOCALES Pubs and punters in Northern Ireland had a bit less of a wait than their cousins over the border. They were able to offer ‘indoor hospitality’ from May 24. Their shut down was also less severe, with the sector closed down before Christmas. But there were restrictions of course, including six people to a table, table service only and no dancing, live music or playing pool or gaming machines. “This has been a difficult and draining period for everyone within the hospitality industry and [this] announcement will bring hope to businesses, with people getting back to work and livelihoods restored for many across the sector,” Colin Neill, Chief Executive of Hospitality Ulster said. “The health and
wellbeing of customers, staff and the wider public will be the priority for all the hospitality sector business owners. I know that our members have stringent Covid secure processes in place so that customers can enjoy the hospitality offer once again. “However, this is not ‘job done’ - with extensive restrictions still in place, many businesses will still struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. It is vital that we see these restrictions removed as soon as possible and engagement from the Executive as we begin the long road of rebuilding what was Northern Ireland’s fourth largest private sector employer, preCovid,” he continued.
WINTER STINTER The winter and wet might be here but that shouldn’t be a bother now for punters in the beer garden at Masonmills Gardens. Surrounded by its own village of traditional Irish pub and shopfronts, the alfresco drinking area is a popular place for punters to enjoy the outside areas of the Hills venue. The one drawback of the beer garden has now been dealt with, with a new covering that provides plenty of shelter from the elements. The only danger now is the risk of spending even longer there than you might have expected to be the case. Right: The revamped Masonmills Gardens undercover beer garden, and prior to the renovation (inset) THE IRISH SCENE | 33
Irish escapees and escapades in Freo FREMANTLE WAS ONCE AGAIN AWASH WITH IRISH HISTORY AND CRAIC OVER THE WEEKEND OF JUNE 12/13th. Kidogo Arthouse in Bathers Beach was the perfect venue for the frolic filled fun of Céilí in the Kitchen on the Saturday night. Presented by Caroline McCarthy and members of Torc Céilí Club accompanied by a collective of traditional musicians the evening event opened allowed the world of Irish music and dancing – and even cuisine – to run riot with the broom dance a particular highlight.
Sunday, on the following day, saw another sold out Irish event in Fremantle’s Maritime Museum – the 2021 Wild Goose Lecture, organised by the Fenians, Fremantle & Freedom Festival. This year’s lecture was titled ‘The Life and Legacy of the Galtee Boy John Sarsfield Casey – Fenian political prisoner, writer, keen observer of colonial life’. After a fascinating presentation by Chair Margo O’Byrne and other speakers, 34 | THE IRISH SCENE
the event saw a live cross to Dublin for a Q&A session with Sarsfields relatives, internationally renowned Irish historian Dr Patrick Maume & his mother and co-author Mairead Maume worked with Casey’s granddaughter to compile his writings into two books: ‘A Mingling of Swans’ (an unpublished account of his experiences as a convict on roadwork parties in the colony) and ‘The Galtee Boy’ (articles by Casey on his impressions of Western Australia, published in Dublin separatist newspapers). Casey was a 21 year old native of Mitchelstown, Cork. As things transpired, he returned, lawfully, to Ireland in late 1869 and died in 1896 and was a prolific writer. Many of the approximately 150 people who packed out the auditorium carried on to Kidogo where the traditional Irish music, fare and fun continued unabated!
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isteach sa teach
BY LLOYD GORMAN
IRISH BLOOD IN THE MIX FOR PARLIAMENTARY BLOODBATH By any measure the March state election represented a hammering for the Liberal Party and just about every other political party and candidate outside of the Labor Party. The McGowan government was swept back into power with an unprecedented election result that wiped out any prospect of an effective opposition in the state parliament. Labor’s group of MPs of who openly wear their Irish heritage with pride – Stephen Dawson, Jessica Stojkovski (nee Gorman), Alanna Clohesy, Alannah McTiernan and even the premier himself – held onto their seats and even gained promotion in the new McGowan era. Kate Doust, whose Irish credentials are also strong, was also returned to office but was stripped of her position as President of the Legislative Council by the Premier over the ongoing feud between the Corruption and Crime Commission and the powerful Procedures and Privileges Committee she headed up, over a parliamentary laptop of a disgraced former MP. A few fresh faces with an Irish story to tell have now also entered the parliament. “Growing up, my mum would tell me stories of her upbringing in Northern Ireland during the troubles,” newly elected MP for Hillarys Caitlin Collins said Caitlin Collins (left) in her maiden speech to the Legislative Assembly on May 4. “I developed a natural interest in the history and politics of Ireland. In 2008, I took the opportunity to study abroad in Dublin and undertook an internship in the Irish 36 | THE IRISH SCENE
houses of Parliament. This was my first exposure to the mechanics of government. This was also the year that the global financial crisis hit. The Celtic Tiger was wounded and I witnessed the immediate human impacts of economic mismanagement and the despair of a boom-and-bust economy. I saw how a bright economic future could disappear virtually overnight.” The next day we discovered that another newly minted MP had dabbled in the Irish bureacratic system. “For most of the past 20 years, I have been working internationally in the field of public procurement and on its reform,” Christine Tonkin, member for Churchlands said in her first parliamentary speech. “Having based myself in Brussels while undertaking research, I was offered a secondment from the Queensland government to the Department of Finance in the Republic of Ireland. For a year I worked with 11 civil servants who had little or no background in procurement, helping them develop their capabilities in modern procurement management and practices. From Ireland, I was recruited by the United Nations Development Programme, where I held a director-level post for three and a half years.” Lara Dalton took to her feet in the Legislative Assembly on April 29 to talk about the honour of representing Geraldton, becoming the first woman in the seat’s 131 year history to do so. Her heritage was a big influence on her becoming a politician. “Our parents raised us with strong Labor values. My dad loved the Labor Party—he still does—and my grandmother on my mother’s side, Julia, was a staunch Labor member. When she was a young
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Lara Dalton in the late 1960s with the dream of buying their first home,” she explained on May 25. “That was a big dream for my father who had grown up in relative poverty on the west coast of Ireland and my English mother raised in war-torn south London. Unfortunately, that dream of home ownership in the United Kingdom was short lived. My father, as an unskilled builder’s labourer, was part of a casualised migrant workforce and his ability to support his family was impacted by severe winters, snow and even floods shutting down construction projects in that part of England. By 1969, my parents, facing repossession of their home, sought a better life for their two young children.
woman, she migrated from Ireland with her sister. She married my grandfather Jim, an Irishman, in Geraldton, and went on to raise nine children with her railway worker husband. Life was really tough for them, but that did not stop Julia from working hard for others. She helped out with charities and when the cyclone hit the north west in 1961, she was at the recreation ground preparing food for the evacuees who came down from Carnarvon. I learnt from an early age, sitting at my grandmother’s knee, that there is always “My migrant someone who could use a story is similar helping hand. The lesson to many Western was not to make you feel Jackie Jarvis Australians, and better than others, but to be perhaps similar grateful for what you had and to to some in this place. I arrived know that you can always spare in Fremantle in April 1970 as a something of yourself to help out toddler, with an older brother, someone else. My parents and my my parents and not much more. grandmother have really been the My parents lived and breathed inspiration for me. We lived the the idea of Australia as the Lucky values of fairness, compassion, Country, and worked hard to workers’ rights and equality. Now make their own luck. Dad spent that I have the privileged position decades helping to build this state. of being in this place, that will From grain receival bins across be the lens through which I will the wheatbelt to mine sites in the look at everything. It guides and goldfields and the north west, supports me and I am grateful for there are few places in WA my dad the counsel of the wise people has not worked. While dad was who raised me.” working away for weeks on end, New MP for South West Jackie Jarvis had a similar background. “My journey to this place, however, started in the English town of Bletchley, north west of London, where my parents moved
my mum raised two children in suburban Wanneroo, working as a cleaner and a farmhand. My mum and dad both worked in physically demanding jobs into their 60s but I never once remember them
complaining about the work they did or the life they had. When they retired to Busselton in their 70s, they had enough money to buy a modest house, a late model car and to take overseas holidays every few years. They considered themselves the luckiest people in the world for being welcomed to Western Australia.” Before she was dumped as President of the upper house, Kate Doust spoke about the responsibilities and rewards of the role.”One of the highlights I want to mention—there are a number— was a visit from the President of Ireland, Mr Michael D Higgins, and Mrs Sabina Higgins in October 2017,” she said on May 13. “You will remember that President Higgins addressed the Legislative Assembly from the floor of the house. It was a significant event, especially for those members of Parliament of Irish heritage. I was indeed fortunate to again meet with the President and Mrs Higgins early last year when on holiday in Dublin, not long before the pandemic hit. On that same visit to Ireland, I was also able to meet the presiding officers of the two houses of the Irish Parliament.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 38
Kate Doust and husband Bill Johnston with President Higgins THE IRISH SCENE | 37
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DOING IT TOUGH! Greens MP for East Metropolitan Tim Clifford (whose own father we suspect may have come from Ireland) is not one of the newbies in the House, having been returned by voters. On May 11 he spoke at length about the hardships being imposed on many people in his and other electorates by the pandemic. In particular, he highlighted the experience of an Irish family in Perth who rent their home and have more than their fair share of problems who contacted him about their situation. “These were Tim Clifford people who worked,” Clifford said. “They had full-time jobs, they studied, they did the right thing, but through these circumstances they faced hardship and an unfair rental system. I think we need to listen to these stories and ensure we apply them to whatever legislation might be put forward in this Parliament. This is what the constituent’s email said. It was written just before the rental moratorium was about to expire. I quote: “I am writing to express my concern regarding the upcoming removal of rent restrictions. Similar to loosening of covid restrictions there needs to be a controlled and planed exit strategy that allows owners to raise rent at a reasonable and controlled rate. As it stands the rental market is cut throat and the moment that the restrictions are removed there will be a dramatic and unstainable increase, this will have a profound impact on peoples well-being, financial status, marriages, and mental health. Homelessness will rise along with suicide rates, substance abuse, and domestic violence. I am personally experiencing this, over the past year we have experienced a lot of financial and mental hardship. A family of five, our youngest daughter with special needs was diagnosed with Leukemia early March 2020, her treatment required full time hospital care, this resulted in my wife becoming her carer and losing her job ($40,000 loss in income). To help we had to get a special visa for my mum to fly in from Ireland, flights and quarantine cost $12,500. Three 38 | THE IRISH SCENE
weeks ago my wifes mum was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, my wife will need to return to Ireland to help look after her for a duration between my wifes nursing semesters, estimated $7,000 in flights and return quarantine, plus extended loss of income. On top of this my wife is in her second year of nursing, which she managed to keep on track while supporting our daughter during chemotherapy. Nursing involves up to eight weeks of unpaid placement, no dole, no food expenses, no childcare covered, no fuel— nothing—basically free apprentice labour—this does not happen in any other industry. This week we have had a notice that on the 05/04/2021 our rent will increase by $100 (approx. 22%). This has potential to send us homeless. I am currently applying for second jobs to try and make ends meet. Our finances have been decimated with approx. $60–$70k in reduced income. Now any spare cash that we have for our kids will now go to a greedy money hungry landlord. I am one of thousands of stories across Western Australia that will be facing financial decimation once the ban is removed completely. This restriction needs to be removed in a controlled manner. My vote this election time will go to whoever places controls on the out-of-control dictatorship that is the real estate rental market. I have nothing against rent increases, in line with inflation, interest rates and wage increases.”
YOU’LL NEED THE LUCK OF THE IRISH FOR THAT! Another veteran MP Colin Holt is a true blue Aussie but is at least aware of some Irish quirks. “My daughter, Ebony, was 19 when I was sworn in,” he told the Legislative council on May 6. “She is the most wonderful, Colin Holt remarkable and determined young woman you would want to meet. She bought and ran her own cafe in Harvey when she was just
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22. She is now a mother of two ratbag kids, Sienna and Niamh—spelt the Irish way; good luck with that!—and is completely supported by her brilliant husband, Matt. Even though he is from Victoria and is a Collingwood fan, we have still adopted him.”
IRELAND WIPED OFF WA RULE BOOK Every so often parliaments will tidy up archaic laws and regulations considered to be outdated or redundant. To that end, the Statutes (Repeal and Minor Amendments) Bill 2021 was introduced to the WA parliament in May. The 93 page document outlined an omnibus of clauses in various ‘Imperial’ statutes that needed to be cleaned up, including Section 14 of the Judgements Act 1839. The 182 year old legislation relates to issues around debtors and creditors to the Crown. In one section the old fashioned law states that: “it shall be lawful for the commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the time being, or any three of them, by writing under their hands, upon payment of such sums of money as they may think fit to require into the receipt of Her Majesty’s Exchequer.” But then Section 14 states: “that this Act shall not extend to Ireland.” The new Bill introduced recently to Parliament simply said; “this [section] does not need to form part of Western Australia statute book”.
REMEMBERING NEIL Stuart Aubrey, Labor MP for Scarborough, spoke at length about sporting clubs and groups in his electorate and Stuart Aubrey their need for lighting in the Legislative Assembly on June 3. He talked about how the Wembley Downs Soccer Club could not develop and grow new teams as the playing fields could not be used at night time because there were no floodlights. This broke the Clubs’ heart, he said, when all it wanted to do was to support the community and its members. The Club faced another heart breaking challenge. “In recent years, the club has lost one of its members, Neil Fitsimmons, who was a fly-in fly-out worker,
to suicide,” Mr Aubrey said. “The club continues every year to raise funds to support Neil’s son back in Ireland. Further to this, the club suffered another tragic loss when its then president, Natalie Harding, was killed late last year in a car crash. The club is holding a memorial next Sunday for both Nat and Neil to honour their contributions to the club and to the community. I will be attending this memorial, but I would like to take a moment to pay my respects and gratitude to both Neil Fitsimmons and Natalie Harding for everything they did for Wembley Downs Soccer Club and the Scarborough community”.
WA HOSPITALS NO JOKE, SERIOUSLY! The pressures on the WA’s public health system were raised in the Legislative Assembly on May 26 by Labor’s Simon Millman. Local hospitals are heavily
Simon Millman
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39
dependent on medicos from Ireland, he pointed out. “Many of our clinicians and nurses come to Western Australia from overseas,” Mr Millman said. “Members know this because when we rock up at an ED or a hospital, we speak to that many people with an Irish accent it is not funny.”
VONNIE’S CLAIM TO FAME Newspapers and titles of every kind love printing photographs of their publications being read by high ranking politicians and the higher the better. In Western Australia there is no politician no more senior or indeed popular pollie than Premier Mark McGowan. Irish Scene is now taking its place in in that age old publishing tradition courtesy of Vonnie McGrath, a friend of the magazine. For the last ten years Vonnie has earned a crust working for the Government Insurance Division – where she is a senior claims officer in the area of workers’s compensation – within the Insurance Commission of Western Australia, which falls under the remit of the Department of Treasury. Towards the end of May she and her colleagues welcomed a VIP guest to their humble but hardworking workplace. Of course the Premier doesn’t need any introduction, but he popped in wearing his other hat as treasurer, a portfolio he gave himself in the new Cabinet he formed in the wake of the landslide state election in March. In fairness to Vonnie she spotted a perfect opportunity for some good publicity for the magazine and seized the moment. “Its my claim to fame,” she laughed. “With the new treasurer visiting us I just had to promote the Irish Scene with him featured on page 7 from his appearance at the Irish Club in Subiaco on St. Patrick’s Day. He actually mentioned that he remembered chatting to Paddy and Lena Costello for their 65th wedding anniversary. He was very impressed [with the magazine] and asked if he could keep it which was great, because it was a spare copy I wanted to give to him.” Vonnie’s one on one encounter with her new boss also went up on the Commission’s social media site, which said the treasurer had a friendly chat with staff. “In this photo, Claims Officer Vonnie is sharing a story with Mr McGowan about what’s happening in the Irish Community in Perth,” a post on its Facebook said.
Vonnie McGrath showing Premier Mark McGowan the article in Irish Scene Issue 3 featuring him (above)
JOBS FOR THE BOYS? Over in Canberra on May 11, New South Wales Labor Senator Kristina Keneally tried to put the Morrisson government under pressure over an issue if truth be told that all governments are guilty off. Keneally challenged the minister for Industrial Relations Michaelia Cash to confirm that 13 former Liberal MPs and political staffers had been appointed to “plum federal government jobs since the start” of 2021.
Vonnie loves her job and the fact that WA was the first Australian state to introduce workers compensation. In fact, in mid June the Commission celebrated 95 years of operation.
Cash – whose electoral office is in West Perth – said that every appointment the coalition government government has made since 2013 were all based on merit and that Labor was trying to have its cake and eat it.
It was established by an act of Parliament in 1926 and came to be based on the dangerous work being done in the Goldfields Region by miners who were often left unable to work after injury or, if they died, left their families without income.
“I completely, totally and utterly reject the accusations you are making,” Cash said. “Whether it is a Federal Court appointment... a Fair Work Commission
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appointment... an AAT appointment or any other appointment, we carefully and methodically look through candidates to ensure that the most suitable candidate is actually appointed to the role.” The WA Senator gave the example of Australia’s ambassador to Ireland.”We have also appointed, over a period of time, a number of persons of a different political persuasion—in other words, from the Labor Party—because we believed they were the best person for the role,” she said. “In particular, I go back to Mr Gary Gray. He was an outstanding member for Brand back in Western Australia. When he left the parliament, I think those from Western Australia would say we worked incredibly well with Mr Gray in relation to representing our great state. And, as a result of that, the government appointed him as the Australian Ambassador to Ireland. I confirm he was not a member of the Kristina Keneally Liberal Party.” Irish Scene asked Mr Gray about this and other issues in his first interview given shortly after the announcement was made public (Astral Weeks Ahead For Australian Ambassador In Ireland, Irish Scene Issue 4 2020). Cash referred to the Ambassador’s job for Ireland no less than three times but made one mistake in what she said. “On any analysis, Gary Gray was an outstanding representative, and that is why we appointed him as the Ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See. We thought he was the best person for the role,” she said. The error – not that it matters much – is that Mr Gray is not the Ambassador to the Vatican. The two roles were first combined in 1983 and held by several ambassadors to Ireland – including Brian Burke – but that has not been the case since about 2008. About that time the Australian government made the role in the Vatican city a full time position. It is currently held by diplomat Chiara Porro, whose appointment was announced about a week after Mr Gray’s!
TOP TABLE TALK Staying in Canberra, Irish born McGowan government Minister Stephen Dawson’s name popped up in a speech about the Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council by another WA Senator, Sue Lines, on May 12. “It was really, again, another privilege for me to sit and see those women present to the Western Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Stephen Dawson, in such a strong and powerful way,” the federal Labor Sue Lines member said. “The Minister was given a very clear pathway to follow. As the women said over and over again: ‘We don’t want a seat at your table. You need to come to our table.’ That is what we saw Minister Dawson do — come to their table, which last week was up in Broome.”
BRINGS TO THE A TEAR EVERY EYE OF RISHMAN. TRUE I
Available at
European Foods
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G’day from Gary Gray AUSTRALIA’S AMBASSADOR IN IRELAND Stay up to date with what’s happening in the Australian Embassy, Ireland by following:
@ausembire
Australian Embassy, Ireland
@AusEmbIre
IRISH AUSTRALIAN MARTIN O’MEARA, VC:
“Don’t ever think yourself above taking mother’s advice.” In July 2020, I visited the Australian Army Museum of Western Australia at Fremantle. A terrific facility holding a great deal of WA military history.
officer salutes VC recipients even if the recipient is a Private. There have been (depending on criteria) 195 Irish recipients of the VC.
It holds machines, materials, medals and awards including the Victoria Cross (VC) awarded to Irishborn ANZAC Sergeant Martin O’Meara, currently on loan to the National Museum of Ireland in Collins Barracks, Dublin.
Martin O’Meara was a Tipperary native, born on a farm in Lissernane in the parish of Lorrha and Dorrha, usually just called ‘Lorrha’, Ireland. His father, Michael O’Meara, was a Roman Catholic tenant farmer. Martin worked as a farm labourer and wood worker before working his passage on a steamer to South Australia in 1911, arriving at Port Augusta. He worked on the Transcontinental Railway before again boarding a steamer and making his way to Perth in 1914.
The VC is a unique recognition introduced by Queen Victoria in 1856. All ranks are eligible for the award which was given for conspicuous valour in the presence of the enemy. As a mark of respect for the award, which is never referred to as a “medal”, every 42 | THE IRISH SCENE
G’DAY FROM GARY GRAY
O’Meara worked as a labourer cutting jarrah railway sleepers south of Perth in the Pinjarra area before making his way to Collie, where he was a timber cutter and was active in the Timber Workers Union. He was known as a quiet man, a committed Catholic and a supporter of Home Rule. He was also a teetotaller who sent money to his Mum Margaret (nee Connors) back home in Lorrha. O’Meara’s work at Pinjarra dried up following state Labor government measures limiting access to timber. The union met to protest the closure of sawmills, but the jobs dried up; O’Meara needed work. In July 1915, when he was 29 years and 9 months, and 5 foot 7 inches tall weighing 140 pounds, Martin enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) at the Collie municipal offices. The AIF were recruiting for reinforcements for the 16th Battalion. Then, at the location now called Belmont Park Racetrack, in Perth he found himself in training: physical fitness, .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, machine gun and bayonet, grenade throwing drill, trench digging, drill, drill and more drill were his day. It is known that O’Meara put his affairs in order, completed a will, assigned his shares in timber camps to mates and attended church before boarding the steamship Ajana at Fremantle and sailing to Suez, Egypt just before Christmas 1915. He was one of nearly 200 troops who joined 200 already aboard from Melbourne. The Ajana disembarked 7 officers, 2 warrant officers and 411 other ranks at Suez in mid-January 1916. O’Meara then travelled with the reinforcements by train (third class) from Suez to Cairo. We know he carried one small loaf, a bottle of tea and a tin of beef. While in Egypt, O’Meara took part in extensive weapons training, becoming a firstclass machine gunner. On 25 April, while still in Egypt, it is probable that O’Meara took part in the first anniversary church commemorations of the landing at Gallipoli a year earlier. Meanwhile, at home in Dublin the Easter rising was taking place. By June, O’Meara and his 16th Battalion were on their way across the Mediterranean to the south of France. They travelled from Marseilles to Northern France by train then, marched to billets near the front. The 16th Battalion began taking the measure of the terrain and the trench warfare they would face in coming days. O’Meara’s mother died in Tipperary in May 1916 and was laid to rest in the family plot in St Ruadhan’s Catholic Cemetery, Lorrha. O’Meara wrote to a friend
in Western Australia: “Don’t ever think yourself above taking mother’s advice.” In late June 1916, he joined the 16th Battalion’s newly formed Scouting Section in northern France. O’Meara served as a scout, observer, and sniper during his time on the Western Front in Belgium and France. By mid-June he was issued a steel helmet and gas respirator. The 16th Battalion did lose one man in Northern France that June; killed by a lightning strike in a thunderstorm. When the 16th Battalion arrived at the Western front that Summer of 1916, they were confronted by a battle tactic and logistical reality unlike that for which they had trained: complex, established enemy and friendly trenches separated by no man’s land. No man’s land meant scouting work would become important so the newly arrived Australian battalions established groups of scouts who then received specialist training in scouting, observing and sniping. Martin O’Meara was perfect for the scouting role. Allied forces had prepared a heavy weeklong artillery barrage in preparation for the great offensive known as the Battle of the Somme, which commenced on 1st July. The battle around villages that are now part of Australian history, raged, destroyed and devastated a 30 kilometre front, turning the village of Pozières to “nothing but an ash heap” according to Australian Military Historian Charles Bean. In early August, the 16th Battalion marched through the night to take up camp in “rain and under shell fire.” The 16th was included in the 4th Division which moved into position on a battlefield covered in rubble and destruction. In the Battle of Pozières, three Australian Divisions suffered 23,000 casualties. Of these, 6,800 men were killed or died of their wounds. These losses are on the scale approaching that of Gallipoli but were sustained in less than 7 weeks compared to 8 months at Gallipoli. During the bitter and desperate fighting around Mouquet Farm, about two kilometres from Pozières, Martin O’Meara from Lissernane in Ireland via Collie in Western Australia performed repeated acts of bravery. There are many eyewitness accounts of the actions of O’Meara. They read, with withering clarity, of action; of bravery under the screaming bombardment; blackout and fire, during which CONTINUED ON PAGE 44
THE IRISH SCENE | 43
G’DAY FROM GARY GRAY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 43
O’Meara was himself struck and wounded. Promoted to Sergeant in mid-1918, O’Meara was awarded his VC for actions as a private with the West Australian 16th Battalion AIF at Pozières in August 1916 when, after 4 days from 9-12 August he repeatedly ventured into contested land to rescue wounded men and to replenish ammunition stores, conduct reconnaissance work and raid enemy trenches. The award of O’Meara’s Victoria Cross was published in the London Gazette, in September 1916, while he was in hospital recovering from his battle wounds. He returned to France in late 1916 and was wounded again at Bullecourt in April 1917. King George presented his Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 21st July 1917, almost exactly a year to the day since his deeds of valour on the Somme. Fortuitously, a film recording of this award ceremony was discovered a few years ago. After the ceremony, O’Meara returned to battle and was wounded again late in 1917. By then, news of his valour and bravery spread in Ireland and Australia. In his home county there were receptions and many newspaper reports. On 6th November 1918, as for all soldiers returning to West Australia, O’Meara was in isolation in camp at what we now call Woodman’s Point, south of Fremantle. Isolation at that time was to keep the Spanish flu out. O’Meara gave an interview by phone to the West Australian newspaper.
Above: O’Meara’s VC medal on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Collins Barracks, Dublin. Right: Martin O’Meara
“For most conspicuous bravery. During four days of very heavy fighting he repeatedly went out and brought in wounded officers and men from “No Man’s Land” under intense artillery and machine gun fire. He also volunteered and carried up ammunition and bombs through a heavy barrage to a portion of the trenches, which was being shelled at the time. He showed throughout an utter contempt of danger, and undoubtedly saved many lives.” Not long after returning to his adoptive home, Western Australia, O’Meara’s mental well-being deteriorated rapidly. His condition was recognised and noted as suicidal, homicidal and violent. He was treated at Claremont hospital in Perth and was frequently kept under restraint. By late 1920 O’Meara was discharged from the army receiving a veteran pension plus an annuity for his VC. O’Meara died in Perth in 1935. He was laid to rest with military honours at Karrakatta cemetery in Perth.
“That was my first experience of war, and it was pretty hot,” he told the reporter.
We are indebted to Ian Loftus, Gerard O’Meara and Jeff Kildea for their work in researching and writing of the lives of Ireland’s ANZACS.
O’Meara’s VC citation attests to the heat of O’Meara’s war, it reads.
GARY GRAY
44 | THE IRISH SCENE
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MARTIN KAVANAGH
HON CONSUL OF IRELAND
AT THE TIME OF WRITING IT SEEMS THINGS ARE OPENING UP IN IRELAND. THIS IS A VERY WELCOME DEVELOPMENT. IT CLEARLY HAS BEEN A VERY DIFFICULT TIME FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN IRELAND. WHILST COVID-19 HAS TAUGHT US TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED, I HOPE THAT LIFE WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE TOWARDS SOME DEGREE OF NORMALITY IN IRELAND AND THAT WA CONTINUES TO BE RELATIVELY COVID-19 FREE.
LEAVING AUSTRALIA It’s very understandable that many of us wish to travel to Ireland to see friends and family. The reality is that the Australian government is taking a very cautious approach to overseas travel. Australia is very keen to keep the number of Covid-19 infections to an absolute minimum so we can all have relatively few restrictions on our lifestyles in Australia. I hope you find the following information useful: 1. The situation on Covid-19 changes almost daily, so keep checking the Irish and Australian government websites. Please don’t assume that last week’s situation is still valid today. 2. Assuming you can get a flight, temporary visa holders can leave Australia without too much difficulty. 3. Dual Irish/Australian Citizens and Permanent Residents are required to apply for a travel exemption to leave Australia. You can apply for an exemption here: https://travel-exemptions.homeaffairs.gov.au/tep.
4. If you do not intend to return to Australia, please make that clear in your application, as it is likely to increase your chances of a successful application and reduce the processing time. 5. Expect to be asked to provide independent evidence to support your application for an exemption. For example, in the unfortunate event of serious illness it’s not enough to say that a relative is sick. Doctor and hospital evidence will be required. We are all understandably very emotional and upset at times of death and illness. However, failing to give the necessary evidence to Border Force will only increase your anxiety and stress and delay your departure. 6. If you apply for an exemption, the Consulate is very happy to provide you with a letter of support if needed. Please email your request to info@consulateofireland.com.au. 7. Should your passport be out of date, in appropriate circumstances we may be able to provide you with an emergency travel document that will allow you
165/580 Hay Street, East Perth WA 6004 By appointment only CONTINUED ON PAGE 24
Tel: (08) 6557 5802 Fax: (08) 9218 8433 Email: info@consulateofirelandwa.com.au Website: www.consulateofirelandwa.com.au Office Hours: Mon-Fri 10.30 - 2.00pm 46 | THE IRISH SCENE
to travel to Ireland. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance. 8. Just because you are granted an exemption does not automatically mean you will be permitted to return when you want to. There are many dual citizens stranded overseas. So, difficult as it may be, ask yourself if you really must return to Ireland and ask yourself how being unable to return at your desired time will affect you, your family, and your work. These are not easy questions to ask but they are worth considering. 9. We’re here to help and we will do everything we can to assist. However, our experience to date is that the Australian authorities are very strict in their requirements.
ONLINE PASSPORTS There are quite a few changes concerning Irish passports that are worth noting. a. ALL passport applications are now ONLINE ONLY. This includes new applicants and renewals, first time children’s and those applying for their first passport who are resident in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. b. To obtain you or your child’s first passport please go to: https://www.dfa.ie/passportonline/ c. Please note that Embassies and Consulates no longer process passport applications. We can issue an Emergency travel document in exceptional cases if you need to return to Ireland urgently. d. Paper applications are no longer accepted.
FOREIGN BIRTH REGISTRATIONS The routine processing of Foreign Birth Registrations is currently paused due to Covid-19 restrictions and prioritisation.
WA FAMINE MEMORIAL Congratulations to the organisers and those who attended the recent unveiling in Subiaco. It was a wonderful occasion and a very important site to the Irish community in Perth.
We get what matters to you. Same Sex Family Law Adoption Property Settlements Surrogacy Binding Financial Agreements Family Violence Orders De Facto Relationships Contact/Custody Enduring Power of Attorney Enduring Power Guardianship
Family Friendly, Family Lawyers 165/580 Hay Street Perth WA 6000 T: (08) 6557 5888 E: reception@kavlaw.com.au kavanaghfamilylawyersperth.com.au THE IRISH SCENE | 47
Armchair Riot Review BY PETER MURPHY
Dublin man Glen Breslin, who use to front Irish rock band Wish Cow, has formed a band in Bunbury called Armchair Riot. Uncompromising, reckless and unnerving are words I’d use to describe their sound.
Then from back of the stage to the front, sauntered singer/songwriter rhythm guitarist Glen Breslin (ex Wish Cow), his six foot two inch frame and shaved head adding recklessness to the set.
This was evident when I caught their gig at The Prince of Wales (Bunbury, Western Australia) a couple of months back.
Breslin doesn’t mince words with his songwriting, which go straight for the jugular, accentuated by his punkish/country sounding vocals and grungy guitar riffs.
‘The Prince’, as it’s affectionately known by serious rock aficionados across Australia, is for new bands, difficult to cut through the musical mustard. But once Armchair Riot stepped on stage, their vintage vibe told their audience they were in for something rather special.
Songs that stood out were ‘Hydro’, the punishing punkish ‘Crush’, and their new single ‘Submission’. Not easy to win over is The Prince’s rock aficionadas, with some of Australia’s best using the iconic venue as the ultimate Aussie pub test. Leaving punters yelling for more, Armchair Riot didn’t disappoint.
The band’s rhythm section, led by drummer Paul Howard (ex Angle Grinders, Blind Dogs) and bassist Ian Thompson (ex Bourbon Street) opened the original set with a pulsating beat, followed by jarring lead guitar bytes from Jason Rechichi.
What separates Armchair Riot from the pack, is not only their songs and unnerving sound, it’s that these guys throughout their long musical journey, have mixed it with the best, and are now in a league of their own.
As the band’s rhythm section began to ratchet up pace, and Rechichi sonar licks punctuated the beer drenched air, it didn’t take long for barroom chatter to fade, followed by much toe-tapping and headchooking.
You can sample Armchair Riot’s new single ‘Submission’ on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ACFrl4i1yDw
48 | THE IRISH SCENE
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From Ireland to Perth (VIA HOTEL QUARANTINE IN BRISBANE) BY DEBBIE CASHMAN If you are lucky enough to be granted an exemption to visit Ireland, or unlucky enough to need it, mandatory hotel quarantine is par for the course. These days depending on which route you take, you may need to do it on either side of the big trip. As if having a loved one at home in Ireland sick or dying isn’t hard enough! Saying that, I count my blessings everyday that I was able to get back home to Cork last January to spend my Dad’s last few weeks with him, he got to see myself and my three kids and was surrounded by family in the end.
kids sleeping on airport benches, then onto Doha, where you are praying your Covid tests a couple of days earlier are still valid, before an eventual flight to Brisbane – because it’s any port in a storm! It ain’t home but it’s as close as we can get for now! The past few months in Ireland I would joke about the trauma I had ahead of me, being locked in a hotel room with 3 kids, ok, I was only half joking. I knew, like the trip I had just done, it was not going to be fun, but it was a case of get the head down and just get through it, as freedom beckoned on the other end. After four months of lockdown in Ireland, it was enough of a carrot to dangle!
We were brought through the airport by the police with the rest of the overseas potential contaminants, and processed, processed, processed, even In an Ireland that my passport had jet lag! After was ravaged by a few hours we were assigned Coronavirus at the a hotel in Brisbane city, other time, we were the families were being sent to lucky ones, just to the Gold Coast, which I knew be there. After he was another hour or two on passed, we had to a bus so I was happy enough wait months to get to get somewhere closer. Our flights back to Perth, cohort were taken by police and just when our and army to the city, we were Top: Happily reunited at home. Above: The empty airports we travelled eventual flights forbidden to take photos or film through on our way home to Perth home were coming of this surreal escort, not quite to fruition, they got the cead mile failte you like cancelled in early May. The lady who we after travelling for 3 days, but with Covid raging through India, booked our flights with was great, she and the rest of the world far from having a full handle on this answered emails at 2.30am her time and pandemic, there was a huge relief in just being back into the desperate phone calls at 3.30am my time. safety of Australia. From Ireland having over a thousand cases We got flights booked, not the usual one a week for months, you’d be constantly and anxiously trying to avoid people and surfaces, where as here in Australia, you hop from Dublin to Doha and then onto would be very unlucky to catch it. Perth, but Dublin to Germany overnight, 50 | THE IRISH SCENE
FROM IRELAND TO PERTH (VIA HOTEL QUARANTINE IN BRISBANE)
Above: Sleeping at the airport in Germany. Right, from top to bottom: The exercise bike which we used to kill many hours while in quarantine, the view from our hotel in Brisbane, home to freedom at last in Perth Once we were processed at the hotel reception, we were sent up in the lift by one cop, met at the 22nd floor by another cop, and told not to open the door for any reason, bar food deliveries or Covid tests. They said when you open the door, you must wear a mask, the windows must be closed and everyone inside also had to wear masks, we had been wearing face masks so often for months it was like a second skin. I thought – you had me at windows! Once inside I was only too delighted to see we had a two bedroom, two bathroom, two balcony apartment. Fully fitted kitchen, proper bathroom, two TV’s, washing machine, dryer, iron (not that I’d use it) for pajamas… Gorgeous views over Brisbane city, out of my daughter’s bedroom you could see Suncorp Stadium and see the fireworks after a big game! Life looked so normal from inside looking out! I know, I am probably bucking the trend of whiners, but our quarantine wasn’t too bad at all! I dare say I enjoyed it a bit. We played card games and board games, watched movies, pulled the furniture around and did some class of ninja warrior course, ordered Uber Eats, watched electrical storms, housework, homeschool, Facetime, exercise bike competitions, then more Uber Eats. Seriously it could have been a lot tougher. Or maybe that feeling comes when I get the bill! Flew six hours home to Perth (only in Australia could a domestic hop take so long and still be in the same country!) to be finally reunited with my husband, emotional airport scenes, and gratitude of the life we have and all we enjoy. Readjusting to a normal life, kids back in school, I am back to work, we have been to the cinema a few times to see movies we’d hadn’t known were released, been to playgrounds that had been so long out of bounds, to Latitude (the kids fun centre in Joondalup) to watch my kids, jump, flip, sweat and laugh with their friends, and know that the little sacrifice we make to keep the unseen serpent that is Covid out, is more than worth it. THE IRISH SCENE | 51
The Cappoquin Sighting December 26th 1965 was a beautifully clear and sunny day in West Waterford, as it was over most of Ireland and the British Isles. Between 3.15pm and 3.30pm in the afternoon, Jacqueline Wingfield, who worked at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, was driving along a road near Cappoquin with a Danish friend, Lisbet Mortensen. Suddenly they saw a bright object passing steadily from right to left across the sky in front of them. Afterwards they described it as a solid, metallic-looking, rounded thing trailing a big elliptical plume of brightness. The plume behaved as if it were attached to the smaller object and was being dragged across the sky by it.
52 | THE IRISH SCENE
BY BILL DALY
Miss Wingfield stopped the car, turned off the engine, and the two girls got out with their cameras. Jacqueline found, to her annoyance, that hers had no film in it, but Lisbet, using a cheap Agfa snapshot camera with only two range settings, was able to take a picture before the object disappeared. They estimated that it was in sight for three or four minutes altogether. When they got back to London they gave the film to Charles Gibbs-Smith, a colleague of Miss Wingfield and an experienced and enthusiastic investigator of reports about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s). He had it developed by Percy Hennell, a professional photographer, who certified that in his opinion the negative was genuine. What does the photograph show? According to Gibbs-Smith, the object’s brightness, trailing plume, and relatively rapid horizontal movement across the sky rule out between them such possibilities as an aeroplane, balloon, rocket, satellite, or meteorite. “I’m not going to stick my neck out and say what it is”, he said, “but I don’t see what alternative explanations there are except that it’s interplanetary”. He further added; “it is the small, bright object at the left hand end of the bright area which is the actual ‘saucer’ and the large oval area is just the efflux from it.” That was the story of what became known as ‘The Cappoquin Sighting’ on St. Stephen’s Day 1965, and it made headlines across the world in the early months of 1966, featuring on the cover of ‘The Flying Saucer’ magazine and even reported in the very historic and prestigious ‘London Illustrated Times’. I first came across it when I was about 9 years old in 1966 from a British weekly comic. There was never a mention of Ireland in these comics, and a mention of Cappoquin was quite extraordinary to me at the time. I never heard anything more about it, never heard anybody speak about it afterwards either and it just disappeared from my memory. About a year ago, when I was doing some research for something else online, it came to my attention once again and that is why I decided to investigate it in a little more depth.
THE CAPPOQUIN SIGHTING
Right: Ms Mortensen’s photograph of the sighting made the cover of ‘Flying Saucer Review’ magazine in 1966 I also came across an interesting little article from Liverpool, which stated that at approximately 2.30pm on the same day, it was reported that somebody had sighted a similar object and which was on a trajectory heading for South-Western Ireland. Also in the town of Syracuse, New York State, there was heightened activity in the sky during November and December of 1965. On a related matter, as I watched a news item recently in relation to the Probe mission to Mars, my thoughts turned to this little blue planet in which we live. We have the money and resources to tackle and eradicate world hunger but we choose not to do so. We spend billions of dollars on space exploration each year. Is this for the benefit of acquiring additional knowledge about the universe in which we live, or is there another and much deeper motive? Our little planet is under a lot of pressure from a variety of sources, which may question its continuation as the future place of habitation for ourselves, the human race. Since the days of the Industrial Revolution and our continual drive towards progress, we have started to interfere with the stability of the ozone layer. This could ultimately lead to the melting of the glaciers, the subsequent rise in ocean levels and an overall temperature increase in the atmosphere. The tsunami at the end of 2004 actually shook the earth and if it had been a little stronger, it could have managed to take us out of orbit and drive us into eternal darkness. The earth is moving on five continental plates and when these encounter each other, it can lead to major earthquakes beneath the oceans and on the surface. Experts are in agreement that in the space of the next three billion years, the moon is moving away from us and the sun is coming closer. No prizes for guessing what is going to happen in this instance. There has been much discussion on Iran’s alleged preparation for nuclear capability over the past few years. However, the biggest nuclear threat to the world may not be from a super power but that which is bubbling under Yellowstone Park in the USA as we speak. If this ever explodes, it will potentially take half of North America with it and plunge the world into darkness and eternal winters for many decades afterwards. Mankind is also accelerating its own downfall by poisoning the rivers and lakes, CONTINUED ON PAGE 54
CÉILÍ AND SET DANCING IN PERTH!
TUESDAYS AT THE IRISH CLUB, SUBIACO Sean Nós - 5.30pm Set Dancing & Céilí - 6.00-7.00pm $15 pay as you go Teacher: Caroline McCarthy
www.facebook.com/TorcCeiliClub torcceiliclub@gmail.com THE IRISH SCENE | 53
THE CAPPOQUIN SIGHTING
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 55
promoting acid rain, destroying the natural forests and wiping out more and more species on an annual basis. As you can see, our planetary home as not as stable as we think, and I firmly believe that one of the major objectives of the current space programme will be to find us a new planet on which to live over the next ten thousand years. A ‘Plan B’ is being put in place. The objective would be to find a planet similar enough to our own. In the beginning, we would have to construct an artificial oxygen atmosphere mantle to support life, and then over an evolutionary period we would begin to adapt to the particular climate of the planet and its universe. It may sound a little far fetched, but an amount of change can happen in the space of one thousand years. Remember, one thousand years ago, we were riding to the Crusades on horseback with the primary weapons being the sword and the longbow. Change is inevitable, and change will bring farreaching and abrupt challenges for us as a human race on planet earth in the millennia to come. In terms of evolutionary time, our short lives hardly register on the radar screen, and we are not as important as we would like to think we are. However, as intellectual beings we have a moral responsibility to take care of our planet while we are here so that it can be passed on as a viable entity for the benefit of future generations. It is important that we take care of it while we are here, as good planets are hard to find these days. I managed to track down an interview by Charles Gibbs-Smith to the American Network CBS in 1966 not very long after the Cappoquin Sighting. The following is a small extract: ‘My position now is that I believe about 5% of sightings come from outside our planetary system, some of them are manned by intelligent beings of some kind, and some look like they are remotely controlled. Who really do we think we are? We’re a fifth rate miserable and measly little system out on the edge of the milky way, fooling around the universe with about 7,000 years of so called civilization behind us. We think we’re the cat’s whiskers, we’re not, we’re a fifth rated lot of conceited apes. And here we go, the moment that somebody should suggest that something should come in from the outside, no, no, it can’t be that, it’s quite out, these things can’t happen! We’re all thinking medievally’. 54 | THE IRISH SCENE
Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith was a British polymath historian of aeronautics and aviation. His obituary in The Times in 1981 described him as “the recognised authority on the early development of flying in Europe and America”. Richard P. Hallion called him “the greatest of all historians of early aviation”. At this stage, I got an inclination to do one more search online. After the search, and to my complete surprise, the following is what I found and the reported details closely resemble those of 1965. At 9.23pm on Thursday 7th October 2004, a man from Cappoquin was picking his son up from football training when an extremely bright object with a tail crossed the sky in front of him. The object developed a large halo and then he lost sight of it. It was travelling from East to West and his location was map ref 223.113 on sheet 22. He picked up his son who did not see the object, but himself and his friends did hear something whistling overhead. His son was at map ref. 227.104 on same sheet. A man from Cavan responded and said he saw it too at around the same time, observing it shooting from East to West, leaving a huge grey trail visible for about 5 seconds, no noise though. A third man from Dungarvan looked at the map reference and established it was close to the ‘bend at Gabe Foley’s’, if anybody is familiar with this particular area. Maybe, generations from now we will finally know the answer in relation to the puzzle of ‘The Cappoquin Sighting’, but for now all we can do it review the facts and leave it at that for the moment. They say ‘seeing is believing’, but sometimes we may also have to believe to see.
BILL DALY Originally from Tallow in West Waterford, Bill spent 30 years in Cork as a Senior Manager in the Electronics Manufacturing industry with such companies as Apple, EMC and Logitech. He has been working on his own as a Consultant/Contractor in Manufacturing Operations and Materials for the past 18 years. He also attended UCC and has a BA Degree in Archaeology and Geography. Bill resides in Connemara, Co. Galway since 2009.
Irish Mams NOR Playgroups
Monday, Wednesday & Fridays
EIMEAR BEATTIE
IRISH FAMILIES IN PERTH IS A VOLUNTARY NON PROFIT ORGANISATION WITH OVER 16,000 MEMBERS ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA GROUP. We provide Irish emigrants with advice on how to best assimilate into the Western Australian culture and lifestyle. We communicate with our subscribers through social media where topics such as long lost relatives, housing, jobs and social events are covered. It is a vibrant active forum that provides a wealth of knowledge to young families and singles emigrating to Western Australia. IFIP contributes to a cohesive Irish Community by working together with many of the wonderful groups in Perth that support Irish culture and heritage.
IFIP AIMS TO: • Coordinate Irish family events including twice weekly playgroup.
NOW THAT COVID 19 RESTRICTIONS HAVE BEEN LIFTED, OUR PLAYGROUPS ARE BACK WITH A BANG! Our playgroup meetup is a purpose-built playgroup centre which has undergone recent refurbishment. It has a bright indoor area and a small kitchen complete with small fridge, microwave, tea and coffee making facilities. Outdoors, there is a covered playground attaching to the building and the outdoor area is fenced with a locked gate ensuring the safety of our little ones. It also has a large selection of indoor and outdoor toys ensuring that all parents and kids receive a warm reception. We have a number of vacancies for our Wednesday meetups 9-11am and a few on Monday Playgroups for any families interested in joining. We offer 2 free trials for you and your little ones to come and play prior to joining. We cater for children from 6 weeks old to 5 years. Please contact Sorcha McAndrew for Wednesday group queries and Lynsey Staunton for Mondays. Based at Padbury Playgroup on Caley Road. New members are always welcome.
• Develop Irish Culture & heritage. • Help Irish people with any problems that might arise and provide a link to Australian and Irish support services.
www.irishfamiliesinperth.com facebook.com/groups/irishfamiliesinperth THE IRISH SCENE | 55
Fenian sites of significance IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA BY PETER MURPHY
PHOTO 1
WHILE THERE IS MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT THE 62 FENIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS TRANSPORTED TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA IN 1867 ON THE HOUGOUMONT AND CATALPA RESCUE IN 1876, LITTLE IS KNOWN OF THE WHEREABOUTS OF SITES THAT HOUSE MURALS, SCULPTURES, EXHIBITS AND PARKS DEDICATED TO THEM. PHOTO 2 Fremantle is probably a good place to start if you’re keen to follow the Fenian Heritage Trail. On the ramp leading to the Fremantle Prison entrance (photo 1), there are six life-size metal sculptures depicting the six Catalpa escapees (photo 2), while inside the prison, there are a number of exhibits mentioning the Fenians including several books about them in the souvenir shop. Not far away in Bannister Street (at the rear of the Hougoumont Hotel), there is a giant mural depicting one of the Catalpa escapees floating on the Indian Ocean along with six geese in full-flight gliding above him (photo 3). On the corner of High Street and Henry Street, you’ll find a sculpture that pays homage to one of the most celebrated of the 62 transported Fenians, poet John Boyle O’Reilly (photo 4), while at the rear of ‘Peaches’ on Hampton Road, you’ll find O’Reilly Close (photo 5). The Catalpa Memorial on the Rockingham foreshore is one of the most significant Fenian sites, and which pays homage to the six Catalpa escapees, who with the help of their fellow countrymen, managed to execute one of the greatest prison escapes in Australian history (photo 6). Incidentally, Fred Rea tells me that on Guildford Road (beneath the railway 56 | THE IRISH SCENE
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Image: Reddit u/AjdeJednuRakiju
bridge) locals refer to that site as Fenians Crossing. That site is still yearning for a plaque. Scattered throughout the City of Bunbury, there are also sites dedicated to the 62 Fenians, such as the Old Bunbury Post Office (circa 1865) where a flurry of telegrams were sent during the Catalpa Rescue, while JB O’Reilly Park on Vittoria Rd in Glen Iris (photo 7), Fenian Park in Glen Iris (photo 8), and the JB O’Reilly Seat overlooking Koombana Bay in Marlston Hill (photo 9), are also worth a visit.
FENIAN SITES OF SIGNIFICANCE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
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Bunbury Museum + Heritage Centre (Arthur Street) also pays homage to the Catalpa Rescue including JB O’Reilly with exhibits. JB O’Reilly is also remembered by the JB O’Reilly Memorial on Buffalo Road, Australind (photo 10) including the interpretative boardwalk trail that takes the visitor into the heart of the location where the poet hid before his dramatic escape to America. The town of Dardanup, 20kms east of Bunbury, boasts several sites connected to the Fenians, such as the JB O’Reilly Tavern (Dardanup Hotel) which houses a large copper mural dedicated to JB O’Reilly and voyage of the Hougoumont (photo 11).
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Should Covid be preventing you from leaving WA for a winter break, and you have an interest in the 62 transported Fenians including their contributions to our state’s history and heritage, why not visit the above mentioned sites. Incidentally, the Fenians Freedom Festival Committee will be conducting a 2-day tour of Fenian sites in the Bunbury/Dardanup region Sept 18 – 19. For more information contact FFFC on 0414 635 188 or email info@feniansfestival.com.au
PHOTO 11 THE IRISH SCENE | 57
Ulster Rambles BY DAVID MACCONNELL
I was reading the newspaper yesterday and after my useless search for any good news, I looked at what exciting program might be on the tele, and to my surprise there was one new serial on SBS which had been filmed in Ulster, County Down, or to be more precise, the area around Strangford Lough, which at one time I knew so well. When an expensive car is pulled from Strangford Lough, veteran Northern Ireland police detective Tom Brannick (James Nesbitt) instantly sees the connection to a notorious and long-buried series of mysterious disappearances. He recognises the calling card (an image of the Harland and Wolf crane) of a legendary assassin known as Goliath. It’s a case that comes from Tom’s - and his country’s - dark past. The series is called Bloodlands. Apparently it has already been viewed in the U.S. and in Canada and it stirred up quite a few memories of the Province for me. Now that I have resided in Australia for the last forty years, I know that Ulster and even Ireland are not large areas but I was very familiar with the area shown above on the map. Well I was born in Downpatrick, lived in Shrigley, went to school in Killyleagh, was a teenager in Newtownards, sold the family home in Bangor, cycled and drove all around that area during the late sixties and lastly my parents are both buried overlooking the Lough. Because of the very narrow inlet, the tide had a significant effect on Strangford Lough which consequently had many treacherous currents. Of course all these small towns were very close to the capital so very few inhabitants from the area actual spent much time in the Belfast hotels. I probably do not know anyone who spent a night in one of these hotels. There was another reason as well! 58 | THE IRISH SCENE
The most famous one of course is the Europa Hotel. Built on the site of the Great Northern Railway Station, it dates back to 1971. During the next twenty years, it became the hang-out for journalists from all over the world, with the hotel itself often making the headlines. It officially joined Hastings Hotels in August 1993 and after a major refurbishment, reopened its doors in February 1994. It is classed as a four star hotel and is best known as the “most bombed hotel in Europe” and the “most bombed hotel in the world” after having suffered 36 bomb attacks during the time of conflict between certain factions. It thus earned the name “the Hardboard Hotel” due to the fact that there was a standing order with a warehouse that had every pane of glass duplicated or triplicated, so they could be immediately replaced, as the windows got blown numerous times, the steel frames got warped, so they had to cover them up with hardboard instead. Grand Met bought the Inter-Continental Hotels chain in 1981 and placed the Europa in their Forum hotels division. They renamed the hotel
ULSTER RAMBLES
Left: James Nesbitt plays an Irish police detective whose investigation into an apparent suicide opens up historical wounds in Bloodlands, set in Northern Ireland. Image: Steffan Hill/HTM Television Right: Hotel Europa in Belfast, the “most bombed hotel in the world” the Forum Hotel Belfast in February 1983. When the hotel was sold to The Emerald Group in October 1986, it regained its original name. After a bomb placed by the Provisional IRA at the hotel badly damaged the building, it was sold for £4.4m, a price well below its value. Well it was probably the best offer they had. It may well have been the only offer! The Europa Hotel became part of the Hastings Hotels group on 3 August 1993, whereupon it was announced that it would close for refurbishments. Following an £8m investment, the hotel reopened in February 1994. Its first event after reopening was the Flax Trust Ball, attended by 500 local and international dignitaries. Sorry no one I knew made the grade. The next year U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton stayed in the hotel. This visit boosted confidence in Belfast’s flagship hotel and launched the profile of the Europa Hotel worldwide. In fact, the suite the famous couple stayed in was renamed the Clinton Suite. The presidential entourage booked 110 rooms. Quite an entourage you might say. In early 2008, an extension to the hotel increased the height of a rear wing to twelve floors and increased bedrooms from 240 to 272. I wonder if it was ever near full capacity. VIPs aplenty still make it their choice as they arrive in peacetime Belfast to attend political meetings, do business, appear on television programmes or perform at the Opera House. It has great transport links, with it being right beside the Europa Bus Terminal and Great Victoria Street train station. It is possible to get a bus or train to any major destination within Ulster and even Ireland itself. There are also buses to both of the Belfast airports. If you visit Belfast in the near future and stay in the hotel, although I confess that in the current situation (thinking of Covid here) both these events seem more than
unlikely, you might be impressed by its rooms, food and service, but you also might just be impressed with the fact it’s still standing. Today, the four-star hotel is central, modern, distinctive – and perfectly safe or so I am unreliably informed. Rooms are plush and comfortable, and the Piano Bar provides views of the historic Crown Bar across the street (a bar I only visited once before boarding a train to Dublin). A recent refurbishment effort has added seven new floors to the back wing of the building, so it’s clear that the hotel isn’t going to fall into disrepair any time soon. If with the number of guests coming in and out of the hotel is any indication, The Europa is going to stay open and bustling for the foreseeable future. Now I have a confession to make here. When my good wife (from Dublin 4) visited Belfast with me a few years back, I am sorry to say that she booked us into the Jury’s Inn which of course was situated about one hundred metres from its more famous neighbour. She also booked me on the ‘hap on’ bus tour which took me places where I used to avoid! CONTINUED ON PAGE 60
THE IRISH SCENE | 59
ULSTER RAMBLES
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 59
Eventually, she persuaded me to venture down a street from which I could see no exit. A real “no-no” when I lived there. I was more than nervous. We even ventured into various pubs in that area. One of them was called the Northern Whig (right). This bar is housed in an old newspaper office building and has a rather unremarkable exterior. However the interior is quite impressive and has a Soviet theme in the form of 3 two-ton sandstone statues commissioned to celebrate the October 1917 Russian revolution and hailing from the Prague Communist party headquarters. You might well ask (as I did) why go to all the trouble to import these huge Russian statues? Let me know if you find out because no one I spoke to could give me a satisfactory answer. Typical of Ulster folk though... they all did have an answer! Besides a mesmerizing fish tank built into one wall, the Whig offered everything from morning coffee and pastries, to lunch, dinner, classic black and white movies and a four page long cocktail menu. I bought a pint of the black stuff. On a saner note I discovered various famous Harland & Wolff Star Line ship Icons situated on narrow monoliths in Donegal Place near the City Hall. When I left the Province over forty years ago, I remember we were almost embarassed by the unsinkable ship that sank on her maiden voyage. Nowadays, of course we embrase the whole story and the Titanic museum is well worth the visit. Yes of course I went there. Isn’t it great to reminisce at times like these. Yes, watching ‘Bloodlands’ certainly did that for me. I do hope the next few episodes will be worth watching.
Best wishes for the upcoming winter and as always may your God go with you.
60 | THE IRISH SCENE
Oidhreacht Rann na Feirste
Seanchaithe, Filí agus Amhránaithe Rann na Feirste I Rann na Feirste bhí scéalta fada agus gairide ann, scéalta na Tána agus scéalta fada Fiannaíochta, a raibh anam agus corp iontu. Bhí an seanscéal, an t-úrscéal, an scéal staire, na seanphaidreacha agus na Laoithe Fiannaíochta go fairsing ag na seandaoine. Níl na Laoithe Fiannaíochta chomh fairsing sin anois agus is mór an trua nó b’ansin a bhí saibhreas na Gaeilige. Cumadh go leor filíochta, mín agus garbh agus raiméis ráscánta nár cureadh i gcló riamh. Bhí scéalaithe fir agus mná ann agus tá go fóill i measc na hóige. I gcuid de cheantair eile Gaeltachta a raibh an scéalaíocht láidir ann ba bheag bean a raibh an ghairm sin aici. Ní raibh an líonmhaire ann a bhí i Rann na Feirste. Thart faoi chéad teach atá i Rann na Feirste anois, mórán tithe úra tógtha le tamall. Bheadh an méid céanna ann i dtús an chéid seo caite sular ghéaraigh imirce na gcaogaidí agus béaloideas de chineál inteacht in achan cheann acu. D’ainneoin an liosta fhada is cinnte go bhfuil daoine fágtha ar lár agus go leor ar an choigríoch nach bhfuair an deis riamh a gcuid scéalta a chur ar taifead. D’imigh beagán teaghlach fosta go Meiriceá nach mbeadh fuíoll ábhair orthu. Má chuaigh mórán den tseandream chun na huaighe thug a gclann leo cuid den oidhreacht luachmhar a bhí acu. Is sampla amháin de sin, Donnchadh Ó Baoighill
(Donnchadh Chassie), mac dearthára do Mhicí Sheáin Néill a bhain an chéad áit i scéalaíocht an Oireachtais dornán blianta ó shin. Déarfainn anois gur Bríd Anna Ní Bhaoighill, Máire Ní Ghairbheith agus iad an triú glúin ón dream a d’éirigh aníos i m’amsa a bhfuil ceannródaíocht á dhéanamh acu i gcur chun cinn na scéalaíochta agus na filíochta. Is mór an tuar dóchais é ag am a bhfuil brú ag an Bhéarla ar na pobail Ghaeltachta. Tá cuma air gur sin an teanga a bhrúigh An Bord Náisiúnta Oideachais fadó agus nach bhfuil tosaíocht dhearfach ó thaobh na Gaeilge de ó Roinn Oideachais na huaire seo, gur seo an dream atá againn anois agus go bhfuil Roinn Oideachais na haimsire ag brú an Bhéarla orthu in éadan a dtola agus go bhfuil an Béarla i gcuid mhór áiteacha i measc na hóige cineál san fhaisean. Sílim go dtiocfaidh athrach air sin má thig tosaíocht dhearfach ó Roinn Oideachais na tíre do scoltacha na Gaeltachta. Is ón ceathrú glúin, na daoine atá luaite agam cheana féin, mar Chaoimhe Ní Ghiolla Bhríde, Cassie Anna Nic Giolla Easpaig, Eoghan Mac Suibhne, dream óg na haimsire seo a bheas ag leanstan leis an scéalaíocht a tháinig anuas ó ghlúin go glúin i Rann na Feirste. Táimid faoi chomaoin mhór acu agus ag a muintir as dúshraith láidir a leagan le healaíon a sinsir a chothú agus a chur chun cinn i measc na hóige. Ba chóir daofa
Image: aislannrannnafeirste.ie
seo bheith bródúil as bheith ag caomhnú na hoidhreachta luachmhaire sin agus na seanamhráin dhúchasacha sin a chraobhscaoileadh do phobal na hÉireann. Chum Séamas Ó Domhnaill caoineadh ach bhí sé ábalta amhráin bhríomhara a chumadh chomh maith. Ach sula dtig mé a fhad leis sin, ní féidir a rá ach oiread go raibh lucht an ama seo ar chúl scéithe i dtaca le healaíon nua-aimseartha na haoise seo. Tá páirt ghníomhach glactha acu i gcúrsaí raidió agus teilifíse, aitheantas agus clú tábhaithe acu i gcláracha mar CU Burn ar TG4 agus Cois Cuain ar Raidió na Gaeltachta, Niall Mac Eachmharcaigh agus Aodh Óg Ó Duibheanaigh agus go leor eile mar Dinny Dhomhnaill anseo. Is mór an gar go bhfuil sin ann agus gur léirigh siad cumas eile a bhí i Rann na Feirste, sin ealaíon na drámaíochta. Go n-éirí leo sna blianta atá romhainn. (Oidhreacht Rann na Feirste 1, Pádraig Ó Baoighill, Preas Uladh Muineachán 2011)
BRÍD
SEANFHOCAL
Beagán a rá agus a rá go maith.
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Claddagh Report CLADDAGH SENIORS The Claddagh Seniors group (right) went exploring south in the last two months. In May they ventured to Fremantle where they had a ramble around Fishing Boat Harbour and an excellent fish and chips lunch. In June, the group took a bus trip to Mandurah where they had traditional Irish fare for lunch at Murphy’s Irish Pub. It reminded many of summer holidays spent in Mandurah over the years. Our good friends at the Irish Theatre Players hosted the Claddagh Seniors in June at the matinee of the 2021 One Act Plays. This was the second ITP performance the Seniors have enjoyed this year and they were once again impressed with the great stories and high standard of acting. The Claddagh Seniors group will be meeting up again soon for their traditional Christmas in July meal. If you would like to join them for a great celebration or if you know a senior from the Irish community who would like to attend the group’s events you can register by calling Patricia Bratton of the Seniors Subcommittee on 0417 099 801 / 08 9345 3530 or by contacting Claddagh Coordinator Anne Wayne on admin@claddagh.org.au / 08 9249 9213. 62 | THE IRISH SCENE
Crisis Support: 0403 972 265
13/15 Bonner Drive Malaga 6090. Enquiries: 08 9249 9213
CLADDAGH DIGITAL TRAINING FOR SENIORS Following last year’s very successful ‘Digital Training for Seniors’ project we are pleased to announce that Claddagh will offer more training in 2021. Participants will learn how to use email, popular messaging apps, social media and video conferencing apps so they can stay in touch with family and friends wherever they are in the world. All senior members of the Irish community are invited to attend these trainings which will take place once a month between June and November 2021. month between June and November 2021. Contact Claddagh Coordinator Anne Wayne on admin@claddagh.org.au/08 9249 9213 for more information and to register for a workshop.
CLADDAGH VISA CLINICS Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Claddagh have received many requests for help from the Irish community in Perth in relation to migration matters – primarily staying in Australia lawfully or applying for travel exemptions to return to Ireland. We are lucky to have two migration agents amongst our dedicated group of volunteers and they have helped us since March 2020 to answer questions and develop infographics with key information. Funding from the Irish government’s Emigrant Support Programme also enabled us to offer three free visa clinics for members of the Irish community in May and June 2021. At each clinic, Patricia Halley
www.claddagh.org.au (right), registered migration agent from Visa4You, based herself in the Claddagh office, offering 30 minute in-person or phone consultations and giving valuable advice on visas, citizenship and travel exemptions.
CLADDAGH WEBSITE We have been working hard on developing a new Claddagh website which is filled with useful information, easy to navigate and bright and attractive. The new website will also contain a community calendar highlighting upcoming events in the Irish community. If your Irish community group is planning an event, contact Claddagh Coordinator Anne Wayne on admin@claddagh.org.au / 08 9249 9213 to list it on our new website which will be launching soon.
CLADDAGH SAUSAGE SIZZLE On the 13th of June Claddagh hosted their annual Bunnings Sausage Sizzle. The impact of COVID-19 has meant that we have not been able to hold all our normal fundraising events this year. At the same time, we have seen a big increase in requests for help from the Irish community because of COVID-19. So, this sausage sizzle fundraiser was more important to us than ever before. The proceeds of the sausage sizzle will be enough to cover rent for a homeless person, grocery vouchers for a family struggling because of emergency medical needs or counselling for an individual with mental health issues. A massive bualadh bos to the volunteers who staffed the event and a big shout out to McLoughlin’s butchers who again donated their famous Irish sausages. Everybody loved them!
THANK YOU TO CLADDAGH’S VOLUNTEERS! Claddagh chairperson, Heather McKeegan opened her home for a National Volunteer Week event in May 2021. She invited all those who volunteered with Claddagh in the past year to a pizza party to
celebrate their generous commitment to Claddagh’s work. Claddagh employ only one staff member, Claddagh coordinator, Anne Wayne. The amazing commitment made by our voluntary committee, and our events, project and admin volunteers means that Claddagh can accomplish so much more for the Irish community in WA. If you would like to register on our volunteer list and be notified of opportunities to volunteer, such as the annual sausage sizzle, don’t hesitate to contact Claddagh Coordinator Anne Wayne on admin@ claddagh.org. au / 08 9249 Darren and family at Claddagh’s pizza party 9213.
CLADDAGH ORAL HISTORY PROJECT We continue to share highlights from the Claddagh Oral History Project 2020 with readers of the Irish Scene. In this issue you can read the story of Richard Moloney of Co Cork. He was interviewed by Claddagh volunteer Denise Keohane, also from Co Cork. The interviews from the Oral History Project were edited and collated as a book, From Home to Home: Oral Histories of Irish Seniors in Western Australia. The full book is available as a digital download at the Claddagh website here: claddagh.org.au/claddaghoral-history-project/.
CLADDAGH SUPPORT WORK If you or someone you know in the Irish community in WA needs assistance, you can contact Claddagh on our crisis line: 0403 972 265. If you are in a position to be able to contribute financially this would be gratefully received for Claddagh’s support work through the year. Tax deductible donations can be made at our GiveNow page: www.givenow.com.au/thecladdaghassociation or via bank transfer to Claddagh’s account. The details are: BANK: Commonwealth Bank ACCOUNT NAME: The Claddagh Association BSB: 066153 ACCOUNT NO: 10771928 REF: Your initial & surname +DON
THE IRISH SCENE | 63
Richard Moloney Richard Moloney was born in 1930. He is from Mitchelstown, Co. Cork
I was living in the North of Ireland, in County Down. And it was from there that I decided to come to Australia. Well, what happened was that, let me think now. I got a chance when I was working there in the North of Ireland to go to Ascension Island and do some work there for a period of two and a half years. That was in the ‘60s. Ascension Island is a very small speck of dust in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just below the equator between South Africa and South America. Interesting island altogether, it’s a volcanic island, extinct volcano in the middle of the island and very green at the top of the mountain but quite dry on the coast. The climate was perfect. You could swim all year round. There were interesting people there. It was a closed island, no tourists was allowed. I was working for the British Broadcasting Corporation. They were building a transmitting station to transmit programs to South America and South Africa. The other people who were there were the American Air Force and NASA, the space people. The workforce, the manual workorce, they were mostly from the West Indies and they were a very lively lot. They had their steel drum bands and they used to play for us in the evenings. We had a great time on Ascension Island, there was a school there for the kids. The kids all enjoyed it. They’re all champion swimmers because they learned there. Unfortunately it was only a primary school so two of my eldest children, a boy and a girl, had to stay back in Ireland in boarding school. We had to make our own entertainment there. There was no television of course. There was only one little local radio station. So we used to have all different kinds of parties and cabarets and amateur dramatics in which I acted. We had a great time. Unfortunately booze was very cheap. So cheap in fact that women used to use gin to clean the windows because it was cheaper than Windolene. We got to Ascension Island by sea. There was no commercial airstrip there at all. On one occasion I had to take one of my boys back home to get his tonsils out because they wouldn’t do it on the island in case there were any difficulties. The only way to go was via Brazil. How to get to Brazil? Well, I got a lift on an American Air Force plane. We went to Recife and then we went to Rio de Janeiro and we got a flight then from Rio de Janeiro to London and the boy had his operation there,
64 | THE IRISH SCENE
and we flew back to Ascension Island the same way. Anyway when my tour of duty finished on Ascension Island, we went back to Ireland. Couldn’t really settle because of the climate being so different from Ascension Island. Not only that, the troubles were starting in the North, continuing in the North shall we say, and they were very, very close to where we were living. So the Australia House in London had an exhibition in Belfast. Every state was represented, each had its little booth in this hall. We decided to have a look anyway because we didn’t know anything about Australia at all. I mean personally I’d never heard of Perth, I’d heard of Sydney and that was about all. We talked to all the people there and when we got to the one from Western Australia. The man there said, ‘Well, you know Perth has got the most sunshine of any capital city in Australia’. ‘And how much is petrol?’ says I. He told me it was half of what it was in Ireland. I thought, ‘I’m going to go to Australia’. It cost us £20 altogether. That was subsidized by the British government because I was working for a British Government organization at the time. Kids were all free. I was excited but I was sad leaving Ireland. Actually I cried leaving Ireland. I was leaving behind brothers, sisters, cousins. The whole lot of them. We didn’t know anybody in Australia, not one person. We knew nothing about Australia. We came over by sea, on a ship called the Fairstar. We had a great time on the ship. We got to Australia and we landed in Fremantle. Myself, my wife and six children. I came at the wrong time actually. The wrong time to be here anyhow. 1971 it was, end of November. Nobody wanted to know, because they’re all partying, all pre-Christmas parties. We had arranged accommodation from Ireland, not far
FROM HOME TO HOME: ORAL HISTORIES OF IRISH SENIORS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
from here actually. It was in Linwood, just across the road was the Catholic church. We got into the house and found that the gas had been turned off because the previous tenants had not paid their rates so we had no way of cooking. In desperation I went across the road to the priest and it was no church as such, it was a little hut he was living in. It wasn’t even a house, you know. So he said, ‘Ah come with me’. And we all went up with him, the whole family. Just on the road to an Italian woman who cooked us up spaghetti bolognese, the whole lot of us. They fed the eight of us. Well of course it was summertime and it was warm, it was hot. I thought this is great. Yeah. I can settle down here all right. Then the people I met were very friendly and they were very much like the Irish, the people that I met. You know, enjoying life and having a laugh, that sort of thing. Taking the mickey out of people. That suited me down to the ground. Well somebody said, I forget who it was now, but they said it’s the most Irish country outside of Ireland. You’ve only got to look at all the names on television, the Australian programs. Half of them would be Irish names. Have a look.
“
I’m proud to be Irish, I’m glad I’m Australian. It’s not a dichotomy”
Now I had no job. I had written to all the radio stations and television stations here in Perth asking if there were any chance of a job when I got there. Everyone said we’re going to have to see you when you come, so give us a call when you come. But when I arrived nobody wanted to know because they were all partying because it was almost Christmas time. The only time I found Australia a bit hard was when I first came and I couldn’t get a job, but that didn’t last, only a week or so. Yeah. I thought, ‘What have I done’. I suppose in retrospect now it was a bit foolhardy, coming over with six children not having a job. So anyway, to cut a long story short, there was an advert in the local papers asking for people to go for an interview for a new set up called Overseas Telecommunications Commission which was satellite communication which was just coming into vogue at the time. So I went for the interview and I got the job and it was in Carnarvon. I had never heard of Carnarvon, Carnarvon was a thousand kilometres north of Perth. So in the interview I said you know, ‘I’ve six children. Is there a high school in Carnarvon?’ I was assured there was. But when I got there I found that there wasn’t. So I had
to leave two of the children behind while myself and my wife and the other four children went over to Carnarvon. The children didn’t like it at all. It was highly different to Perth, very brown. Nothing to do. There again you had to make your own entertainment in a lot of ways. Well we used to do a lot of fishing, a lot of fishing and a lot of going to the pub. Of course. An interesting story now, how did I get there? Why did I get there? When I was on Ascension Island NASA had an open day. All the family went there to have a look round the NASA site. One of the Americans said to my children, ‘Would you like to speak to somebody in Australia?’ My children said, ‘Oh yes’. So they were speaking to somebody in Australia. Where were they speaking to? Carnarvon. So I didn’t think I’d be ending up living in Carnarvon and working the same field. There was a lot of Aboriginal people there. In fact my children were very friendly with a lot of Aboriginal people. Then when we came back down to Perth every holiday we’d go back up to Carnarvon to connect with those Aboriginal people. Carnarvon was quite interesting because a lot of Italians up there as well. A lot of them were owners of banana plantations. I enjoyed the job because it was new and it sent me on a course to Sydney for three months about satellite communication which was just coming in. But then they wanted to transfer me, after two years they wanted to transfer me to South Australia. I thought oh I can’t do that because the two children in Perth. So I decided to come back down to Perth. When I first came here I missed Ireland obviously, I missed Ireland. The culture, especially the music. I was also a great céili dancer. I missed that sort of thing. But then I discovered there was a club just up the road from where we were living called the Shamrock Club run by a Cork man. They used to have dances and concerts. Then the Irish club opened up. We joined in the Irish Theatre. Then there was a radio program every week in Irish from SBS, [I taught the] Irish language for a few years, the Irish Australian Heritage Society of which we are members, then there’s Claddagh, of course who are doing great things for the seniors. So all in all, it’s like living in Ireland really. A lot of Irish people here, a lot of Irish tradition here. A lot of Irish names here. Well I suppose I’ve always loved [living in Australia]. It’s more an open society, freer in a way. [I’ve] lived most of my life here, the best part of my life here anyway. I’m proud to be Irish, I’m glad I’m Australian as well. I feel both. I feel both. It’s not a dichotomy. Richard was interviewed by Claddagh volunteer Denise Keohane. Denise is from Midleton, Co. Cork and migrated to Australia in 2011.
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AROUND THE IRISH SCENE
SettleRs Tavern
Below: Irish girls catch up in Margaret River
Congratulations!
Above, left & below left: Congratulations to Eilis, Molly, Ruby and Holly who recently made their confirmation
Happy days
Right: Concepta Liam Matthew Healy at Fibber McGees
Up, up and away!
Above: Jean and Pearce Kerr, originally from Monaghan, got a birds eye view of at least one part of WA when they took a serene early morning ride in a hot air balloon over Northam in June. They can be seen – dressed in black – on the right hand side of the basket. There is at least one other Irish couple on the far side to them. Jean and Pearce who have done a sky dive as well said the experience of floating silently through the beautiful landscape was an unforgettable experience.
If you would like to be featured in the next issue, please email irishsceneperth@gmail.com 66 | THE IRISH SCENE
vonnie’s birthday bash
A big bash was held for Vonnie’s 40th birthday. Special mention goes to : Co Host: Dee McCarney Venue: Leederville Sporting Club who went beyond. Great venue for a party! Staff were amazing. Food: JB O’Reilly’s, Paul North Sharon Munnelly and all the staff (all my favourites). Cake: Delicious Cakes and Cupcakes. Music: Jonny Reid. Hair and Make-up: Aine McGrath and Erin Doherty. Photographer: Edge Photography
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 54
THE IRISH SCENE | 67
Birthday boys and girls
Right & below: Paddy Cannon celebrated his 84th birthday at the June Irish Seniors Lunch in the Irish Club. Wishing him many happy returns was old friend Terry O’Leary who recently became an octogenarian himself. Also celebrating a birthday on the day was Molly Gorman (below) who – having turned 11 on the same day – was visiting the Club with her dad Lloyd and little brother Ewan.
Divine inspiration from above and on the airwaves
Ollie also gives a Sunday service of his own as a DJ on community station VCA 88.5FM. Tune in, he loves playing requests for listeners.
68 | THE IRISH SCENE
Left: Longford legend Oliver McNerney and his wife Stella joined the throng of worshipers and sight seers who all made their way to 34 Santa Gertrudis Drive in Lower Chittering for a very special community occasion. On June 5, after ten years in the building, the Divine Mercy Church opened its doors to a very full congregation. The driving force behind this near miraculous undertaking is Fr. Paul Fox (above) and the blood, sweat and tears of untold supporters, volunteers and donors as well as perhaps a bit of divine assistance. Oliver – who lives in Bullsbrook – said there was great excitement in the air about the new church, which is made of local stone. Mass – which was co-celebrated by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe and Fr. Fox – was also well attended by a large number of religious from across Perth.
Vale Vale Vale Dan O’Donovan
Right: Condolences to Barry O’Donovan and his wife Sheila on the recent passing of his father Dan O’Donovan. Dan will be missed by his wife Pamela and their children Pamela, Cormac, Brian, Siobhain, Barry and Orla and many friends. But his loss was also deeply felt within the GAA community. Dan – a native of Loughill, Co. Limerick – represented his county on the football field and was a founding member of the Salthill Knocknacarra GAA Club. He was photographed (second from right) at the Prairie with fellow committee members who developed what was waste ground, before attention was turned to the building of the Árus. He promoted Gaelic games at every opportunity and played a key role in the Parish leagues where he kept the Highfield lads in particular, on their toes. Always a keen sportsman he was an active member of Salthill Knocknacarra Gaa golf society and Galway golf club.
Paddy French
Left: Once a regular fixture at Clancys in Fremantle and a stalwart at the Irish Seniors monthly lunch, it was very saddening to learn of the passing of the unmistakable Paddy French.
Myles O'Neill
Left: It is with a very heavy heart that we share with our readers and the Irish community the very sad news of the passing of Myles O’Neill in early June. Heartfelt condolences go out to Lorraine, Ciara, Brandon and the rest of his family. In our next edition we will have a fitting tribute to Myles. Ard fheis go raibh ag a anam.
THE IRISH SCENE | 69
G’Day
Image: Reuters
from Melbourne ISN’T IT WONDERFUL TO SEE SOME GOOD NEWS COMING OUT OF IRELAND WITH THE COVID19 RESTRICTIONS BEING LIFTED? I was beginning to forget what it was like to hold a hard copy of the Sunday Independent and the Cork Echo, thanks to the Australia Post being back in operation again. I do like to read newspapers from home, in a strange way, it makes me feel more connected. As soon as the papers arrive in my letterbox, I’m like a dog chasing a bone off down the pathway. I then spend hours reading every item even the deaths, remembrances and classifieds. Many years ago growing up in Cork one of my jobs at home was to cut up the newspapers into tidy size squares and then hang them up on a hook in the outside toilet. I first had hoped that there might be some serious money in this work, when a few of the neighbors gave me the job of cutting up their papers for the large sum of a penny to do their weekly lot of papers. I suppose the reason why a lot of papers and magazines have gone online is because politicians and celebrities were not amused seeing their words in print going down the toilet. The job of cutting up used newspapers for a penny was no longer fashionable with the introduction of toilet rolls and I knew from then on that there was no future in that job for me anyway. It just shows that starting off in humble beginnings doesn’t mean that you won’t succeed, of course you will if you’re determined to. I have written many times in past articles ‘that the road you start out 70 | THE IRISH SCENE
MIKE BOWEN on isn’t always the one you will finish on, as life’s road has many turns and always be prepared for the unexpected’. Who would have believed it way back then that I would spend thirty five years as a financial advisor, and then I would go on to write for many newspapers and magazines here in Australia, as well as in Ireland and the USA for another twenty years. I suppose you could say that I did start out as a paperboy? Ha ha.
Having mentioned The Cork Echo earlier, I should also mention to everyone out there from Cork, see if you can get your hand on a copy the 17th of May edition. If you can’t find one, try the net, because there is a two page spread on Joe McCarthy, only ever known as Joe Mac, the legendary drummer and a brilliant comedian with the Dixies Showband for many years. Joe was one of the legends in the music showband era. He started out as a drummer and took to comedy, he once told me that sometimes he got bored looking at the backs of the other band members. One night he decided to move forward on the stage to see what he was missing, he liked what he saw and that’s when the comic in him let go. So from then on, he often moved his drum set in front of the band on stage and played the clown. So when you went to see the Dixies expecting to dance you would
G’DAY FROM MELBOURNE
Above left: Joe Mac, drummer & comedian for the Dixies Showband. Above right: Actor Jim Bartley (centre) pictured as Willy Wolfe with the Dixies Showband in a scene from the RTÃ Television Christmas pantomime ‘The True Story of Red Riding Hood’ during filming in 1968.
often be treated to breaks of comedy and mischief. I do hope you can find a copy of the Echo and enjoy some of the magic nostalgic history of Joe Mac. Melbourne, once known as the most livable city in the world. Now the laughing stock of the nation and the city having the most lock-downed days in Australia. Not exactly the brightest news to start off an article on my home state with, is it? Well to be honest, when you go through four lockdowns plus an economy that has been totally wrecked by the Victorian state government, it’s very hard to write about optimism, here in Melbourne right now. As a matter of fact, it’s virtually impossible to even plan a visit to family or a friend for fear of extended lockdowns. What kind of a world are we living in, here in Victoria? In reality we are controlled by fear, by health officers who declare lockdowns showing no evidence or transparency for their decision. One would have to ask why we have a state government who can’t or won’t make decisions. Premier Dan Andrews (locally known as Dictator Dan) and his government are afraid to lead and are being led by the nose by his bunch of self-proclaimed ‘health experts’, who have no understanding of the effects that their snap lockdowns are causing on the mental health of the Victorian population. This whole mess that our state is in right now reminded me of the 1967 hit song by that great English band The Hollies “King Midas in Reverse”.
Just like our Premier, everything he touches turns to dust, he has broken our spirit, wrecked our economy and accumulated massive debts that will never be paid back in ours or our children’s lifetime. When Dan decided to go it alone and jump into bed with China, to take their pot of silver coins without consultation with the Federal government, he put a wedge between Victoria and the Federal Government. His decision to grab the Chinese cash then put the Federal Government at odds with China was irresponsible. I better stop here because I’m afraid I might go on for another few pages complaining and I don’t want your ears to be burning. In spite of my report re: Melbourne and the problems here at this time, I say to all my fellow Irishmen and women, rise above this. You came to this country for a better life, not for an average one. The world’s your oyster, you have youth on your side - use all the great gifts and skills that God gave you. A new world awaits for the emergence of creative and inspirational minds. When you succeed, imagine how proud your family will be knowing what you achieved on the other side of the world from theirs. Now is the time to look for opportunities as there will be many in the not too far future. Covid19 will leave a lot of businesses in ruins and from the ashes of that, creative minds will rise like phoenixes to benefit from the countless losses that Covid19 will leave in its wake.
Until next time. Stay safe and be kind to those who love you. Sláinte from Melbourne THE IRISH SCENE | 71
Delicious Inspired Ineptitude
BY JOHN HAGAN
FOR THE PAST FEW WEEKS OUR LIVES HAVE BEEN ENGULFED BY THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SPORTING EVENT - THE TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES.
WORST EVER TEAM?
Thousands of participants from (nearly) every country under the sun congregated in Tokyo to strut their stuff. Millions of us sat transfixed and mesmerised in front of TV screens watching a bunch of finely trained human specimens strive for the ultimate victory and universal acclaim.
Unfortunately things did not improve in the pistol event. The Tunisians were ordered off the range when their rather erratic ‘marksmanship’ was said to have endangered the judges. Alas, still no luck in the swimming one participant nearly drowned, while another took twice as long as the winner to complete the course.
But who says only the medal winners deserve our attention and approbation? Some of those who don’t get on the podium may be worthy of acknowledgment for their inspired fallibility, misplaced fortitude, bravado, deviousness, and perhaps even a smidgen of the real Olympic spirit. Amid the hype and hysteria of ‘citius, altius, fortius’, lurks the bizarre, the inept, and the downright funny.
72 | THE IRISH SCENE
Unable to display the customary skills required to be competitive in each of the event’s five disciplines (equestrian, fencing, shooting, swimming, cross country), the 1960 Rome Olympics was not a happy hunting ground for the Tunisian Pentathlon Team. It all began badly for the North Africans when the entire team fell off their horses in the opening equestrian event (someone unkindly suggested they had practiced on camels). This disaster however, heralded a groundbreaking Olympic statistic, since it was the first time a team had scored zero points in the equestrian section.
Their ineptness continued in the fencing. As only one of the team possessed even rudimentary fencing skills, he was sent out to impersonate colleagues and compete in each of the three contests. Despite him wearing the mandatory face protection, the delicate ruse was uncovered and the miscreant disqualified. However, in the final event, the cross country run, the team performed strongly (relatively speaking) with the members all finishing - albeit at the rear of the field. And so, blessedly the pentathlon came to an end with the Tunisians trailing the winners by a spectacular 9000 points to record the lowest ever score for the event.
DELAYED ARRIVAL The honour of taking the longest time to complete an Olympic marathon must go to Japan’s Shizo Kanakuri, who took nearly 55 years (actually 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds) to finish the course. That’s an average speed of about 0.75km per year over
DELICIOUS INSPIRED INEPTITUDE
Back on his native soil, he got married, became a father, and later a grandfather. Still feeling somewhat unfulfilled as an Olympic athlete, and regretful about quitting the Stockholm event, (he had been listed as a ‘missing person’ in Sweden for half a century), he returned in 1966 to the villa where he had terminated his marathon effort almost 55 years previously, and went on to complete the rest of the scheduled marathon course. Shizo Kanakuri
MARATHON MACHINATIONS
the 42.2km distance. While Irish–American super athlete, Jim Thorpe, was breezing through the 1912 Stockholm pentathlon and decathlon events, Mr Kanakuri lined up with the other marathon competitors. After jogging a few miles and feeling somewhat dehydrated, Mr Kanakuri tottered over to a group of spectators in their front garden seeking to replenish his depleted fluid levels. Being a social person, one drink led to another, and eventually Mr Kanakuri decided it was fruitless to rejoin the race. He returned to the start, caught a train to the city and was soon on a boat to Japan.
Polin Belisle may not have been a quality athlete, but he was gold medal standard in the art of subterfuge. A long-time native of California, Belisle spent only a few of his early years in the tiny Central American republic of Belize. Despite this, and thanks to some slick talking, he convinced the Belize Olympic Committee of his marathon potential. He produced some questionable documentation relating to his performance in the Long Beach Marathon - a race he probably started, undoubtedly finished, but seemingly never actually ran. Chosen to represent Belize in the
Musical Entertainer / Teacher
1988 Seoul marathon, Belisle brought his adopted nation little glory, finishing last (98th) by quite a margin. Undeterred by this achievement, he again approached Belize in an attempt to secure a spot in the 1992 Barcelona Games, but was rebuffed. Smitten by the Olympic bug, and armed with a swag of fake results and a birth certificate in the name of ‘Apolinario Gomez’, Belisle eventually managed to secure marathon selection for Honduras. On arrival in Spain, he was (alas) recognised by some of his former Belize team mates, and promptly booted off the Honduran team. Persistent to the end, Gomez/ Belisle somehow managed to start in the Barcelona race. He tagged the leaders for the first two or three kilometres, and then disappeared never to compete again. Or did he?
SLOWLY OLY Haiti is not a country whose athletes are renowned for garnering Olympic records, but Olmeus Charles proved a notable exception. At the Montreal Games in 1976, he ‘ran’ the worst ever time for the 10,000 metres taking CONTINUED ON PAGE 74
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Left: Eric Moussambani. Below: J.W.H.T. Douglas
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 73
just a tick over 42 minutes to complete his heat. He finished 14 minutes adrift of Carlos Lopes’ gold medal winning time, jogging the last six laps around the stadium on his own. While other competitors were soaking in the shower, the crowd, sensing that they were witnessing true greatness, erupted in deafening cheers as Oly eventually staggered over the finishing line. During the race, officials hotly debated whether he should be allowed to complete the full distance, however, much to the delight of the Montreal spectators, he was permitted to trudge on. As a consequence the entire track timetable for that day ran 14 minutes late. It was later discovered that ‘Slowly Oly’ was not in fact a well-honed, elite athlete at all. ‘Papa Doc’, the then-Dictator of Haiti, had rewarded him with an Olympic berth for being ‘a good office worker’.
ERIC THE EEL “I want to send kisses and hugs to the crowd because it was their cheering that kept me going”. No, Eric Moussambani was not voicing his thanks on the winner’s dais during the 2004 Sydney Olympic Games. He had in fact taken a whopping 1 minute 52.72 seconds to complete the 100 metre freestyle swimming event – a time slower than it took Ian Thorpe to swim twice the distance. It was this unspectacularly stellar performance which catapulted the swimmer to fame. 74 | THE IRISH SCENE
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Eric had only learned to swim a mere nine months prior to the Games, doing the bulk of his training in a crocodile infested river in his tiny African homeland of Equatorial Guinea. Before arriving in Sydney he had never swum in a pool longer than 20 metres. Granted a ‘wildcard’ to compete, he was the only swimmer in his heat, the other two competitors, from Niger and Tajikistan, both flopped into the pool and were disqualified for false starts. Taking it out hard over the first 30 metres, Eric all but stalled coming home, prompting several officials to fling off their white hats and shirts in preparation for a rescue mission, but Eric eventually finished the heat unaided. Not to be outdone by her national colleague, Paula ‘The Crawler’ Barila Bolopa (another wildcard entry) had the distinction of clocking the slowest 50 metre freestyle in Olympic history. Interviewed later, Paula revealed “It’s the first time I’ve swum 50 metres. It was further than I thought”. The performance of the Equatorial Guinea duo caused FINA to rethink its ‘wildcard’ strategy.
In 1908, having won his previous three fights in one day, Australia’s Snowy Baker encountered England’s J.W.H.T. Douglas in the final of the middleweight boxing division at the London Olympics. Away from pugilism, Douglas was infamous as a typical stodgy, stonewalling, English test batsman, whose initials were said to stand for ‘Johnny Won’t Hit Today’. In a dour bout, the judges were evenly divided as to the victor, so the final decision was left to the referee, who promptly raised the Englishman’s glove. Incensed, Baker accused the official of bias; an allegation which was duly rebuffed. The referee insisted his verdict was completely uninfluenced by the fact that he was Douglas’ father.
BUTTERFLY SPLUTTER While the United States’ star swimmer Carolyn Schuler may have won the 100 metres butterfly gold medal in world record time, it was her team mate Carolyn Wood who claimed most of the attention. During the 1960 Rome Olympics, Miss Wood easily completed the event’s first 50 metres, but after the turn she disappeared beneath the water, resurfaced in a distressed state giving every indication that she might be the first swimmer to drown during Olympic competition. She eventually grabbed at the lane rope causing her coach to dive in fully clothed to rescue her and
DELICIOUS INSPIRED INEPTITUDE
Below: ‘Spyros’ Louis. Right: Volmari Iso-Hollo administer resuscitation. When interviewed later, she explained to reporters that she “got a big mouthful of water and could not go on”.
CARRYING ON Greek water-carrier Spiridon ‘Spyros’ Louis was very proud when he won the modern Olympiad’s first ever marathon in Athens in 1896. However, it is little wonder he covered the distance faster than anyone else given the inducements dangled before him. Greek millionaire Georges Averoff offered a million drachmas and his daughter’s hand in marriage to any of his fellow countrymen who could win this most demanding event. His not insubstantial largesse was further augmented by the generous offerings by other
Athenians, including barrels of wine, chocolate, free haircuts, jewellery, meals and clothes. Fuelled by wine, milk, beer, an Easter egg and some orange juice, Spyros completed the course in two hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds. Perhaps mindful of his amateur status, or maybe due to a well nurtured entrepreneurial streak, when asked by the King of Greece if there was anything he wanted, Spyros opted merely for a new horse and cart to assist in his water delivery business.
OOPS! Finnish athlete Volmari Iso-Hollo was odds-on favourite to win the
3,000 metres steeplechase at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. In fact, he was not only aiming to acquire a gold medal, but also to break the world record. He soon left the other athletes trailing in his wake and turned into the last lap in subworld record time. By a stroke of inspired idiocy, the official lap counter was somewhat engrossed in watching the nearby pole vault and failed to ring the bell to notify athletes of the final lap. The field just kept on running and although Iso-Hollo won, he took a whopping 10 minutes and 33.4 seconds to record the slowest ever time in the 3000 metre steeplechase – but then he had run an extra lap!
FRANK MURPHY PRESENTS
CELTIC RAMBLES 107.9FM RADIO FREMANTLE SATURDAY 8AM - 10AM PRODUCER: GERRY GROGAN
Music. Conversation. Special Tributes. Interviews. Celebrating the Ireland of today and past times.
RADIO
FREMANTLE 107.9fm
THE IRISH SCENE | 75
The Irish Theatre Players this year celebrate forty years of entertaining Perth audiences. We will be hosting a celebration event later this year, and would love all members and friends of ITP past and present to attend! It has been a wonderful journey that has only been made possible by an entusiastic group of volunteers. We are always looking for more help, no experience necessary, just bring your enthusiasm. There are volunteers needed in all areas of the theatre, On Stage, Back Stage, Costumes, Props, Front of House, Technical (lighting and sound), Set Design and Set Construction.
Get in touch! itp@irishtheatreplayers.com.au
The One-Act Season has just finished and we are straight into rehearsals for ITP’s next production, “Little Gem”, a comedy/drama by multi-award winning Irish playwright Elaine Murphy and directed by the award winning actor and writer Suzannah Churchman.
“Little Gem”
is a story of love, sex, birth and salsa classes told by three generations of extraordinary women.
So much can happen in one year. Amber a carefree teenager is fresh out of school and high on life, double Sambuca’s, the odd line of cocaine and her boyfriend Paul. All is well until the indigestion starts. Her mother Lorraine, a shop assistant, attacked a customer who got on her nerves (wouldn’t we all love to do that sometimes) and was sent by HR to see a head doctor. She’s been told to do one nice thing for herself each week and although the thought of this is totally alien to her, she allows her friends to talk her in to Salsa classes. Sure what harm is there in that? Nanny Kay, meanwhile, is finding life on the wrong side of sixty frustrating. Looking after her ailing husband Gem is not easy, “he doesn’t like the neighbours coming in to mind him” and it’s not only his conversation she is missing. She has an itch ‘down there’ that Gem can’t scratch, but maybe Kermit can. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, Little Gem makes his presence felt and life is never the same again. 76 |irishtheatreplayers.com.au THE IRISH SCENE
The show opens with evening performances on August 19th, 20th, and 21st. There’s a matinee on August 22nd and then evening performances continue on August 26th, 27th and 28th. This award winning play is not to be missed! Check out our website and social pages for more info.
IrishTheatrePlayers
COMING UP ANNUAL BRENDAN AWARD
Australian-Irish Heritage Association
The prestigious Brendan award has been presented since 1997 in recognition of an outstanding contribution to Australia’s Irish Heritage which clearly reflects favourably on Ireland and the Irish.
ANNUAL MARY DURACK LECTURE
Check our website and facebook for details of 2021 Presentation which will be announced soon.
This year’s lecture will be delivered by the Honourable Alannah MacTiernan, MLC, Minister for Regional Development; Agriculture and Food; Hydrogen Industry in the WA State Labor government. Alannah is of Irish descent and has a long career of public service in Local, State and Federal Government. Her talk will touch on the Durack involvement in history of Horticulture in the North. It also coincides with Naidoc week where this year’s theme is Heal Country! – which calls for all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.
THE JOURNAL
Members of AIHA receive a quarterly book bound publication. Current edition features the winners of our annual writing competitions, an article by our new editor Julie Walsh-Banwait on her Gaelic speaking upbringing, President Michael D Higgin’s universal Saint Patrick’s day reflection, and much more in over 90 pages of quality and varied articles that inform and entertain. POETS AND WRITERS are invited to
participate and read from your work or a work of your choice with an Irish Connection in our forthcoming Winter Parlour Concert. This event has evolved from our innovative ‘The Verse’ in 2018 to ‘Sunday Miscellany’ in 2019 to our inaugural ‘Parlour Concert’ in 2020. It is an afternoon of Prose and Poetry, Music and Song with informative introductions of each presentation, illustrated slides and an Irish afternoon tea. Email expressions of interest to secretary@irishheritage.com.au
ANNUAL WRITERS COMPETITIONS will
SUNDAY JULY 4, 3:00PM
Launched in 1995 the annual Mary Durack Memorial Lecture honours the pioneering work in Australia on many fronts by the Durack family and our founding member and first patron Dame Mary Durack.
Venue: Cost:
Irish Club Theatre, Townshend Road Subiaco $10 includes Irish afternoon tea and Q&A
THE FOURTH TUESDAY BOOK CLUB MEETS FOURTH TUESDAY OF THE MONTH, WITH EXCEPTION OF DECEMBER
July 27 “The Past is Myself” by Christabel Bielenbergto, presented by Joe Purcell August 24 To be presented by Cecilia Bray
Venue: Irish Club Committee Room, 61 Townshend Road, Subiaco, 7:30pm Cost: Free. All welcome. Light refreshments provided. Tea and coffee from the Bar $2 Contact: Convener Mary Purcell, m.purcell@telstra.com If you know of someone interested in receiving our monthly ‘Noticeboard’ two-page newsletter just email our secretary to be added to our growing data base: secretary@irishheritage.com.au
AIHA COMMITTEE
be launched in June with some changes to prizes.
President
Heather Deighan
NEW IDEAS were reviewed at our
Treasurer/ Membership
Patricia Bratton
Secretary
Tony Bray
Committee
Peter Conole, Gayle Lannon, Diana MacTiernan, Julie Breathnach-Banwait
successful planning session on 23 May. The committee thank Gill Kenny and David McKnight for participating and committing to designated projects.
Supported by a tier of volunteers. Please talk to us if you are interested in being involved in some way!
Look us up on Facebook @australianirishheritage or check out our website irishheritage.com.au
Australian-Irish Heritage Association Non Political - Non Sectarian - Emphatically Australian
Be proud of your Irish heritage
PO Box 1583, Subiaco 6904. Tel: 08 9345 3530. Secretary: 08 9367 6026 Email: secretary@irishheritage.com.au or admin@irishheritage.com.au Web: www.irishheritage.com.au Find us on Facebook @australianirishheritage Membership due 1st January – Family $65, Concession $55, Distant (200kms from Perth) $45. Membership fee includes tax deductible donation of $20 THE IRISH SCENE | 77
Paula from Tasmania
BY PAULA XIBERRAS
IT’S HAMILTON THE MUSICIAN! I recently caught up with one of Australia’s stars in Hollywood, Nicholas Hamilton. Nicholas is best known for the two ‘IT’ movies. He’s also acted alongside such Hollywood stars as Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving and Jessica Chastain. As well as acting, Nicholas is a talented songwriter and musician and calls himself an actor-musician, saying each form of expression is equally important to him. Nicholas comes from a musical family with both his parents and his brother involved in music. Nicholas is back in Australia to visit his family after COVID’s exile and also take advantage of the thriving music and film business in Australia at the moment. His new single ‘In Line’ tells the story of his move to LA for an acting career as a ‘terrified’ eighteen year old, setting out alone. After a scary start, Nicholas has become independent and disciplined, the latter evidenced in his writing with staff writers in LA. Nicholas talks of the dystopian feeling of arriving back in Australia for his fourteen days of quarantine but speaks well of the hotel and the good food. ‘IN LINE’ IS OUT NOW.
WHAT’S UP WITH YOU’RE SO VAIN Aussie band, songwriters and song interpreters Chocolate Starfish have a new single and new album out. I spoke to band member, vocalist Adam Thompson recently about the new single and album. The band’s interpretive talents turn to a re-creation of 90’s hit, 4 Non Blondes song ‘What’s Up’. It was in 1994 that Chocolate Starfish did a unique cover of another of their favourite songstresses, Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so Vain’. The band were living in LA in the 90’s when the song was released in Australia and played on MTV. Adam has been a big fan of Linda Perry from the 4 Non Blondes (so called because they didn’t fit the California blonde stereotype). Adam has long fantasised Chocolate Starfish singing with 4 Non Blondes. While the pandemic was frustrating in some aspects it did afford the band time to nurture their new songs and arrangements including ‘What’s Up’ says Adam. 78 | THE IRISH SCENE
BOTH ‘WHAT’S UP’ AND THE NEW ALBUM ‘BEAUTIFUL ADDICTION’ ARE OUT NOW.
PAULA FROM TASMANIA
CATHY’S SANITY, OR SHOULD THAT BE SANITISE, IN TIMES OF COVID It’s been a while since I have called Cathy Kelly and not surprisingly, when I did make contact recently she is full of that same wit and humour. Cathy tells me the COVID experience has taught her some useful skills, in fact she’s been watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ with particular attention to the doctors’ hand washing routine, declaring that she could give them instructions on the proper way to sanitise! I have missed Cathy’s quick wit and wry observances. Observances that make her a consecutive number one author in Ireland and around the world. While Cathy’s new novel ‘Other Women’ features women and fashion, Cathy herself is not a fashionista. This was proved recently she tells me, when she wore jeans and a jacket for her speech at a children’s charity event, where glamorous clothes were almost essential. Sometimes clothes in the novel are metaphors. For instance, the main character Sid, says Cathy, wears a ‘metaphorical armour of independence to protect her from the slings and arrows of past painful events’. Guarded against romance she is navigating what she tells herself, a relationship, she wants as a friendship, with a man luckless in romance. The other women in the story are Marin, happily married with two children but feeling low self- esteem, buoyed by filling up empty spaces in her life with clothes, then there is Bea, a single mum. We haven’t seen Cathy in Australia for a while but that might change soon. The last number of years she’s been raising her twin boys, but now the boys are preparing for college life, well-equipped by mum with the talents of ironing and cooking.
NEW-REAL PLASTICITY Sydney duo Plastic Face have a new single written, produced and mixed by the guys themselves. Called BACK2TOKYO, it’s described as Lynchian, a reference to Twin Peaks creator David Lynch, and indeed he would be proud of the video by Sean Donovan who has had a ten year career as a set decorator before moving on to his own films like Headless Chicken. The theme of the song is how we fall into our old, sometimes not so good, habits instead of moving forward and perhaps the perils of those old habits which might prove to be toxic. The video is set in a creepy house illuminated by lights and candles, with a witch doing card readings as a man lies tied to a bed, and then the final macabre image of the witch dragging something large into the backyard. The guys say the song’s video is up for interpretation. I recently spoke to one half of the duo, Will Coleman. The guys are inspired in their music by an eclectic mix, relationships, films, books and almost anything that can ‘spark’ a song. While a lot of material these days is formulaic, the guys, who live far apart, are originals who used the experience of COVID to send ideas back and forth.
Cathy may have been away from Australia for a time but she has kept up to date with Aussie authors, naming Kerry Greenwood’s ‘Miss Fisher’ and the novels of Jane Harper as favourites, as well as fellow Irish/Australian authors Berr Carroll and Monica McInerney.
The fact that the duo maintain a sense of mystery and safety behind their masks, says Will, aligns with the benefit of masks used to combat COVID. In a time when masks have been used for protection as well as a feeling of safety, so too the duo says wearing a mask allows them a sense of safety and confidence.
‘OTHER WOMEN’ IS OUT NOW PUBLISHED BY HACHETTE.
‘BACK2TOKYO’ IS OUT NOW.
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Last Voyage of SS Dacca BY CHRISTINE TIMONEY 15 May 1890 - The sea was smooth as glass and a light breeze blew as SS Dacca, under Captain Dugald Stuart, cleared Suez in fine weather just after midnight and set course for five miles west of Brothers Island. She was sixteen days into an expected seventy-five day voyage, her eleventh from London to Queensland Ports, having already dropped passengers at Naples and taken on coal at Port Said. Around 8am some of her 464 passengers slept while others watched with mild curiosity as the ship passed the Big Brothers Island light. There would be plenty more daylight in which to take stock of the wide expanse of the Red Sea opening gradually before them, perhaps a gentle reminder of the even wider expanses yet to come when they would reach the open ocean. As the day wore on, the monotony was eased by sightings of majestic stingrays, pods of dolphins and even the occasional pair of turtles still courting, though the spring mating season was nearly over. With no land in view all day the passengers settled into their largely uneventful daily rhythm, contemplating the unknown life that lay ahead when this seemingly endless journey would finally be over. At 6.30 next morning, barely an hour after daybreak, the calm was shattered when the ship struck a glancing blow on Daedalus Shoal, a small rocky outcrop that rises in deep water to lie in wait just below the surface. Upon inspection she was found to have six feet of water in the forward hold. Evacuation was now the only option. Evacuation? Out here? Evacuation – to where? Lifeboats were lowered and the doctor threatened to put a bullet through the first man who got into a boat before more than 250 women and children were safely taken care of. In a letter home, written within a day after the shipwreck, a female survivor describes how events unfolded. “We were going along beautifully, without a hitch, until yesterday morning, when I was startled as I lay in my berth by the doctor who came and told me we had struck on the shoal, and all hands were to get on deck and make for the boats. How they were all got out of the ship, clothed and with their lifebelts on, seems amazing to me now… I was in my night-dress, dressing gown and slippers. The doctor came running along and put a lifebelt over me, and again as he passed he put a hat on my head; otherwise I should have gone over worse clad than I was.” Among those lining up for the lifeboats were nearly two hundred single female emigrants, sixty-three of them Irish girls. The promise of a new life as a domestic servant in the colonies now counted for nothing as each one scanned the empty blue watery horizons with wide eyes and understood just how fragile her life had suddenly become. 80 | THE IRISH SCENE
Have you ever flown between Ireland and Australia in the cramped confines of a modern aircraft? Have you ever wondered what the long sea voyages undertaken by nineteenth century Irish emigrants were really like? Christine Timoney, a committee member of the Irish Special Interest Group at Family History WA, first took a personal interest in the 1890 voyage of SS Dacca after reading a 1938 obituary for her grandmother Honorah McMahon, which placed 19-year-old Tipperaryborn Honorah on this ill-fated voyage. On further investigation she found Honorah’s name on the outgoing passenger list not of Dacca but of Dorunda, which left London a few weeks after the shipwreck and picked up a group of Dacca survivors in the Red Sea, conveying them on to Queensland. Though surviving the sinking of Dacca is not Honorah’s story after all, it is the story of 158 other Irish emigrants – most of them domestic servants, labourers and farm labourers – and deserves to be told.
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Left: The SS Dacca Source: Red Sea Wreck Project www.redseawreckproject.com
Below: A newspaper item from the Sydney Morning Herald Wednesday 2 July 1890 reporting the event Source: Trove, National Library of Australia.
and abruptly sank in about 200 fathoms. According to eyewitness accounts the last boat, with Captain Stuart on board, had drawn away barely two minutes earlier. Hundreds of passengers were transferred, either to Rosario or to the much larger Russian ship Palamcotta which arrived while the drama unfolded. Survival was all that mattered now, and it was not promised in this dangerous and unpredictable sea. As evacuation began, the leakage in the forward hold was briefly slowed but the relief was short-lived when water was found to be pouring into the aft holds. This called for drastic action, so the ship was driven forward at full power in an attempt to beach her on the steep-sided reef. When instead she bounced off the reef with great force, a watery grave must now have seemed a very real prospect. At 7.15am hope appeared in the form of the SS Rosario, whose lifeboats were also lowered, and what was later described in the official record as a calm and orderly operation succeeded in disembarking all 555 persons to lifeboats. In her letter home the unnamed survivor describes being rowed in the lifeboats to the reef where the passengers waded the shallow water to the lighthouse, across coral and soft, slippery mud. “Most of us bear the marks of the journey on our feet.” She is full of praise for the ship’s doctor who tended to the sick and injured in the upstairs room of the lighthouse. Around 11am, the entire cast of this grim tale could only watch in horror as Dacca, having drifted for a mile or two, turned her bow almost vertically to the ocean bed so that her stern rose 30 to 40 feet in the air
While the rescue was completed without loss of life, word of the shipwreck would have caused much distress to worried families at both ends of the route. The unidentified passenger’s letter quoted above and published in the newspapers of the time, begins: “I know the consternation you will be in when you read of the total wreck of the Dacca in Monday morning’s paper.” Having painted her vivid picture of the shipwreck and marvelled that not a life was lost, she begins to come to terms with having lost all of her possessions, with one notable exception: “Thanks to one of the officers I got the silver wedding present I am bringing out. I told him where to get it. My own possessions I was not able to think of. When we were once more settled down and I thought of them, my little grandson’s books were the first regret and afterwards I remembered my copy of ‘Knight’s Illustrated Shakespere’ I was taking out with me, and so on from article to article. Then it was
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that my destitution dawned on me.” While listing for her family the replacement linen she will now require, she sympathises with “the poor” who would be rendered destitute by this disaster, and wonders “whether a subscription could be got up for them in London.” Further on she asks, “Can you picture my costume? A pyjama from Mr M’Clain, the first officer on this ship, a black skirt which was rescued, and a pair of canvas shoes from Mr James, the second officer.” Signing off the letter, she concludes, “Words cannot tell you how I feel, and I do not think the horror of it all will ever leave my mind. Love to you all.” It would be another two and a half months before the frightened survivors, no doubt haunted by still vivid memories, finally reached Queensland on board Taroba or Dorunda, most of them never to face the perils of the sea again.
FOR MORE INFORMATION and an image of SS Dacca, visit Red Sea Wreck Project, www.redseawreckproject.com/2013/08/21/dacca OTHER SOURCES: UK Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960, accessed via Ancestry. Ned Middleton, The SS Dacca www.touregypt.net/vdc/dacca The Wreck of the Dacca: A Lady Passenger’s Story, www.wrecksite.eu The Wreck of the Dacca, in The Queenslander, 26 July 1890, p181. Wreck of the Dacca: Account of eyewitnesses, Brisbane Courier, 25 June 1890, p3.
THE IRISH SIG IN 2021 In 2021 the Irish Special Interest Group (Irish SIG) at Family History WA (FHWA) continues to meet online via Google Meet until the Covid-19 restrictions permit more people in our meeting room - currently the limit is 31. Next online meeting will be on 18 July, when we will explore how to get the most out of John Grenham’s website in our Irish family history search, and we hope to meet face to face on 17 October to celebrate forty years of the Irish SIG. In future meetings we plan to provide a forum for informal exchanges of members’ Irish research successes and challenges, while continuing to keep members informed and updated about useful resources for finding Irish ancestors.
and choose the ‘Events’ tab. A small payment may be required for some events.
New members and visitors are always welcome to our meetings - simply book your place using the online booking site TryBooking, details below. At this stage you can book for the July meeting. Immediately after each quarterly meeting, bookings for the next meeting will open. Those who have booked will be sent a link to the Google Meet shortly before the 2pm meeting.
ROBYN O’BRIEN, Convenor Irish Special Interest Group E irish.sig@fhwa.org.au
FHWA also hosts lots of other exciting online events - some for beginners, and others for experienced researchers, so check out the full suite of presentations, workshops and meetings. Nonmembers and new members are welcome to join in from home. See the link below to FHWA homepage 82 | THE IRISH SCENE
Join FAMILYHISTORYWA FACEBOOK GROUP – researching family worldwide, open to all
We invite you to visit FHWA’s extensive library and resource centre at 6/48 May Street Bayswater, but it is wise to phone ahead to check on the building’s current capacity restrictions which may vary with the ebb and flow of the pandemic. Opening hours are given on the FHWA homepage.
CHRISTINE TIMONEY
ON BEHALF OF THE IRISH SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP
MORE INFO Book a place at the next IRISH GROUP MEETING at TryBooking: .trybooking.com/BLPZM Book for FUTURE FHWA EVENTS at trybooking.com/eventlist/genealogy?embed=1 Go digging for resources at FamilyHistoryWA’s IRISH SIG WEBPAGE
Join in the chat or ask a question at the FAMILYHISTORYWA DISCUSSION FACEBOOK GROUP FamilyHistoryWA (FHWA) membership.wags.org.au T 9271 4311
Book Reviews
RIPE FIGS
BY YASMIN KHAN / BLOOMSBURY $45.00
Life in Northern Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s was, as I recall, sustained by ‘good plain cooking’, the basis of which was the famous Ulster fry and suet pudding – ‘good stuff that sticks to yer ribs’. I can’t remember too many spices or herbs in our larder apart from Saxa white pepper and the occasional bunch of parsley. As a newly arrived immigrant to Perth in 1976, I was agog at the range of aromatic plants and spices which adorned the burgeoning shelves of Coles and Charlie Carters. A cornucopia of new and exotic dishes was now available to enhance my food adventure. Since then I have been an active experimenter and sampler of diverse international culinary dishes, with the notable exception of those emanating from the Eastern Mediterranean. Yasmin Khan’s exquisite new publication is an ‘open sesame’ to cuisine from this region. The recipes feature the expected ingredients such as citrus, tahini, olive oil, yogurt, various herbs, spices and nuts, with the chapters focusing on meals such as breakfast, salads, soups, mains, deserts and
breads. Traveling through Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, Khan has assembled an array of diverse recipes from people she encountered at various locations on her journey. But this 300 page, sumptuously illustrated volume, is much more than a ‘cook-book’, as Khan, of Pakistani-Iranian heritage, also explores issues of migration, refugees and war. “It’s about the people I met, shared meals with and cooked alongside …. But most of all … it’s a book about the resilience of the human spirit”. – Reviewed by John Hagan
THE IMITATOR BY REBECCA STARFORD / ALLEN & UNWIN $29.99
It was while a pupil at boarding school that Evelyn Varley learned to fit in; to become one of ‘the girls’; not to challenge the status quo; to disappear into the background in order to survive. These were skills which would serve her well in later life when she was recruited in to espionage. While at school, Evelyn developed a close friendship with Sally Wesley, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, and her cousin Julia, an older brooding CONTINUED ON PAGE 84
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girl with a dark edge. Thanks to Sally’s influential father, Evelyn, on graduating from university in 1939, is recruited by MI5 where, the former misfit enthusiastically sets about trying to make a valuable contribution to Britain’s WWII counter intelligence planning. Her pragmatic spymaster, Bennett White, teaches her the intricacies of ‘the trade’ before assigning her the task of infiltrating a cabal of Nazi sympathizers who operate from a small London restaurant specialising in Russian cuisine. But nothing is ever as it seems, and Evelyn is gradually drawn deeper into a morass of duplicity and intrigue before she realizes that befriending people in order to betray them is no easy matter. Can she continue to trust her own instincts? Can she still trust Sally and Julia, who know some of her own secrets? This is a character study of a woman caught between two lives in a suspenseful thriller filled with spies, deception and double crossing. Starford explores Evelyn’s character, revealing her inner thoughts and how she finally deals with the predicament in which she becomes fatefully embroiled. Attention to detail throughout the whole narrative is impressive, even down to the bed fitted with Northern Ireland’s Moygashel sheets. Starford has produced an eloquent, well constructed, sublime novel full of enough twists and turns to keep the reader tearing through to learn of Evelyn’s eventual destiny. – Reviewed by John Hagan
KARACHI VICE BY SAMIRA SHACKLE / GRANTA $32.99
On her arrival in Karachi, investigative reporter Samira Shackle, receives two pieces of advice; “If a man on a motorbike stops by your car window and flashes a gun, don’t ask questions, just hand over your cash and phone”, and, “If you pass through a dangerous district, don’t stop – not even if someone crashes into you”. Salutary warnings indeed. As she settled in to her assignment, Shackle began her day perusing the ‘Shootings and raids’, ‘Mishaps and bodies found’ columns in Karachi’s English-language newspapers. Violence in Karachi, a teeming, sprawling megacity of some 20 million inhabitants, has deep and enduring roots, and it is through the eyes of five of its residents that Shackle explores the city’s complexity, its violence and politics. Karachi is a city where lavish wealth and abject poverty live side by side, and where the line between idealism and corruption is often difficult to recognise. 84 | THE IRISH SCENE
Safdar is a Pashtun ambulance driver who, despite his many years in the job, still struggles to process the trauma of retrieving corpses from blast sites, rescuing abandoned babies and rushing gang-war victims to hospital. Parveen is a teacher whose classroom is the street and whose seven to eight year old pupils are on the payrolls of local gangsters. She ‘can’t recall the good times in her neighbourhood’ and complains to Shackle about regularly having to clean the expended bullet casings from the step outside her home. Cartographer, Siraj’s job leads him in to danger when he begins to explore who is controlling Karachi’s water resources and who is providing strong-arm assistance. Crime reporter, Zille, is a shadowy figure whose motives are not always apparent, but who relishes his crime beat role. “When you are on a terrorist hit list”, he tells Shackle, “everybody knows that you’re a real journalist”. Jannat is a woman from a village near Karachi who describes its destruction and the ensuing misery for its inhabitants thanks to the illegal moves of a property developer. Through the accounts of these five individuals, Shackle sketches life of a violent, turbulent, troubled city with its rampant corruption and overt sectarian conflict. While there is much to enrage the reader, Shackle also uncovers moments of genuine courage, love and human decency amidst the seemingly unremitting Karachi gloom. – Reviewed by John Hagan
THE BEAUTY OF LIVING TWICE
BY SHARON STONE / ALLEN & UNWIN $29.99
In the mid-1990s, Sharon Stone was at the zenith of her acting career. She was the highest paid movie star on the planet; it’s impossible to overstate just how famous (or infamous) she was. Acclaimed for her notorious role in Basic Instinct, she also starred in Casino and The Muse, before her world came crashing down in 2001 when she suffered a massive. Movie roles eventually dry up and Stone is plunged into physical debilitation and financial ruin. An
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acrimonious divorce from husband, Phil Bronstein, and the death of her father compound her problems. Born to Irish –American, blue-collar, parents in rural Pennsylvania, Stone began her working career as a waitress, pool hall manager and part-time model before chancing her luck in Hollywood in the early 1980s. Minor breaks ensued, and she gleefully describes how Woody Allen plucked her from near obscurity for a part in Stardust Movies, but getting that big break in Basic Instinct (her eighteenth film) proved to be harder. At Stone’s behest, her agent burgled the casting director’s office to steal a copy of the script, while star actor, Michael Douglas, initially refused to screen test with her. The role was offered to twelve other actresses who all turned it down making Stone the mere thirteenth choice for the film. While she reminiscences on her Tinseltown experiences and relationships with other stars, it is perhaps not her movie career from which Stone derives most satisfaction, but her ‘second life’ following her neardeath encounter. She describes how embracing the Buddhist faith bought her tranquility, raising three sons fostered contentment, while her charitable work and efforts in pursuit of world peace have seemingly brought her more satisfying and lasting acclaim. In 2013, Stone received the Nobel Peace Summit Award which was presented to her by Betty Williams who, in tandem with Mairead Corrigan, had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for their efforts during the Northern Ireland conflict. The three forged an enduring friendship. This is a memoir of great gusto in which Stone delivers a torrent of self-reflective, and sometimes self-deprecating, anecdotes. She is consistently candid, often feisty and frequently tender. The narrative is a big-hearted tale of female strength and resilience; a book for the wounded that choose to speak up, make a stand and face down the problems that life dishes out. – Reviewed by John Hagan
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Irish Choir Perth
@irishchoir
Farewell to Old Friends
IN JUNE, THE IRISH CHOIR PERTH HAD REASONS TO CELEBRATE AND REASONS TO MOURN. We celebrated our 4th birthday and we said a very sad farewell to our dear friend and Choir founder Audree Grennan. Almost 4 years ago, Audree decided to set up an Irish Choir in Perth. Her vision was to create a community choir for those who simply love Irish music and love to sing. This simple idea took a monumental amount of work, drive, good humour and creativity to achieve. Anyone who knows Audree knows she has these qualities in spades. There has been no challenge that has defeated her – our Choir, like many, was disrupted by Covid, and yet at the end of 2020 we hosted two sell-out Christmas concerts with the largest choir ever, with a great new conductor, new music and online stream to hundreds of family and friends around the world. As importantly, she has founded a community of friends who support each, make each other laugh and provide that all important link to home. This success is driven by Audree. While there any many that now share the work load, it’s Audree’s leadership that has made all the difference. We will miss her spirit, her good humour, her beautiful voice in our choir – but we hope she is proud of what she has done for us all, the legacy she has created. 86 | THE IRISH SCENE
Audree Grennan at her Irish Choir Perth leaving party, at the Irish Club on 2 June 2021
Thank you Audree, from all of us at the Irish Choir Perth.
Looking forward, the Choir is preparing to perform at one of Perth’s favourite choral events, Freo Songfest 2021. Taking place over three days in July (16-18), this year’s event focuses on world music and will bring together an eclectic group of performers from across WA. For anyone who would like to come along, visit songfest.com.au for tickets and session times and follow our progress on our socials @irishchoir
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Australian Irish Dancing Association Inc.
A huge well done to all who took part in our Sweets of May Feis! WE HAD A FANTASTIC WEEKEND AND WERE VERY LUCKY TO HAVE OUR ADJUDICATOR CHARMAYNE DULLEY ADCRG WHO TRAVELLED OVER FROM VICTORIA.
88 | THE IRISH SCENE
AIDA WA ran its second wellness workshop last month! Sarah Bell from Nutrition Force specialises in running nutrition workshops with sporting groups around WA. Sarah is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian (APD) and a member of the Dietetics Association of Australia.
AIDA WA EXECUTIVE 2020 President: Caroline McCarthy TCRG Vice Presidents: Melissa Kennedy TCRG and Samantha McAleer TCRG Secretary: Caitriona Slane TCRG Treasurer: Martina O’Brien TCRG Registrar: Jenny O’Hare TCRG National Delegate: Siobhan Collis TCRG
SCHOOL CONTACTS: CELTIC ACADEMY East Victoria Park & Karragullen www.celticacademyperth.com Siobhan Collis TCRG 0403 211 941 LYONS IRISH DANCE Butler & Clarkson lyonsirishdancecompany@gmail.com Facebook: @LyonsIrishDance Roisin Lyons TCRG KAVANAGH STUDIO OF IRISH DANCE Maylands www.kavanaghirishdance.com.au Teresa Fenton TCRG 0412 155 318 Deirdre McGorry TCRG Melissa Kennedy TCRG Avril Grealish TCRG THE ACADEMY MID AMERICA & WESTERN AUSTRALIA Subiaco, Wangara & Pearsall Samantha McAleer TCRG Dhana Pitman TCRG Kalamunda Lara Upton ADCRG 0409 474 557 O’BRIEN ACADEMY Joondalup www.obrienacademy.com Rose O’Brien ADCRG 0437 002 355 Martina O’Brien TCRG 0423 932 866 O’HARE SCHOOL OF IRISH DANCING Doubleview, Wembley Downs & Craigie Jenny O’Hare TCRG 0422 273 596 SCOIL RINCE NA HEIREANN Rockingham irishdance@iinet.net.au Megan Cousins TCRG 0411 452 370 SCOIL RINCE NI BHAIRD Fremantle & Lynwood Tony Ward TCRG 0427 273 596 THREE CROWNS SCHOOL OF IRISH DANCE Wangara & Padbury www.threecrownsirishdancing.com Eleanor Rooney TCRG 0449 961 669
Stephen Dawson MLC Minister for Mental Health; Aboriginal Affairs; Industrial Relations 12th Floor, Dumas House 2 Havelock Street, WEST PERTH WA 6005 Email: Minister.Dawson@dpc.wa.gov.au Telephone: (08) 6552-5800
TRINITY STUDIO OF IRISH DANCING Morley, Midland, Bayswater & Singleton trinitystudiowa@gmail.com Eileen Ashley ADCRG 0413 511 595 Katherine Travers TCRG Nell Taylor TCRG WA ACADEMY OF IRISH DANCING Malaga Glenalee Bromilow ADCRG 0410 584 051 Sue Hayes TMRF 0412 040 719
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CARRAMAR
SHAMROCK ROVERS FC SPONSORED AND SUPPORTED BY INTEGRITY PROPERTY SOLUTIONS
CONTACTS: MARTY BURKE 0410 081 386 • MARI PARKINSON 0427 171 333
WA HAS LOST ONE OF IT’S FOOTBALL LEGENDS WITH THE SAD PASSING OF MYLES O’NEILL ON 4TH JUNE – HIS 61ST BIRTHDAY – AFTER A LONG BATTLE WITH CANCER. Myles was a life member of Shamrock Rovers Perth FC and then Carramar Shamrock Rovers FC. He played for Rovers at amateur level for many years and finished his playing career with the club at Vets level. He contributed to the committee of his beloved Hoops for many years. Those of us who had the pleasure of playing with him and serving with him on the committee knew his passion for the game. The stories about Myles are legendary, and everyone who played with him or met him along the way would have a tale to tell. He will be talked about for many years to come, and no doubt the stories will get better with the telling.
Rest in Peace our good friend.
All at Carramar Shamrock Rovers would like to thank Myles’ wife Lorraine, and the O’Neill family, for sharing this wonderful man with us over the many years he spent with our club. He will be sadly missed.
In news from Grandis Park, it’s great to see such a buzz around the place on match days. Our Mini-Roos have been taking on the very important role of Team Mascots at our Saturday home fixtures and enjoying the opportunity to walk out the First Team onto the main pitch, almost as much as they are enjoying their complimentary half time sausage sizzle in recognition of all their hard work. The cup rounds have kicked off for both Senior and Junior football. It was disappointing to see our State League go out in a closely contested match against Sorrento, and our Amateurs and 45s bow out after defeats to North Beach and Bayswater respectively. Our Metro Div 4 boys, whilst undefeated in the league, unfortunately also failed to progress in the cup after a defeat to a strong Hillary’s FC side. It is however good news for our Masters NDV1 team, who have progressed to the Masters Cup Quarter Finals where they will face the Prem team from Forrestfield United in front of a home crowd at Grandis Park. Our Metro Prem team, unbeaten so far this season across all fixtures, have also progressed to the Metropolitan Cup Quarter 90 | THE IRISH SCENE
Eden Samuel, Player of the Match
CARRAMAR SHAMROCK ROVERS
@CARRAMAR_SHAMROCK_ROVERS
As always, thank you to our major sponsors below, and also to Nicky Edwards for his continued support: PIPELINE TECHNICS MADMAN MOTORS INTEGRITY PROPERTY SOLUTIONS THE DUKE MUNTZ PARTNERS PEGASUS PLUMBING & GAS
Above left: The Mini-Roos in their special role as Team Mascots for the Saturday home fixtures. Above right: Zack Baker, Player of the Match Finals and will travel to Rickman Delawney Reserve for their match against Black Stars. Meanwhile in the Junior Cup, our U14s narrowly missed out after an agonising penalty shoot out in their game against Stirling Lions. There was better fortune for our U13s and U15s who have both progressed to Round 2. We wish all the teams still competing the very best of luck. Don’t worry, those not quite old enough to experience the excitement of the cup rounds haven’t missed out! Lots of our juniors have enjoyed recognition from their coaches for their dedication and hard work too. Girls’ football continues to go from strength to strength this season. We have doubled the number of junior teams this year and now have representation
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at Under 10s, 12s and two teams at 14s. All four teams will travel down south and represent the club in the Australind Girls Carnival on 10 July, where they will compete against teams from different regions across WA. Good luck girls!! As always, the committee welcome the support of our members. If you are keen to volunteer your time and help on match days, please contact Marty Burke or Mari Parkinson. Finally, be sure to follow us on social media to keep up to date with all the goings on at the club. You’ll find us on Facebook, Carramar Shamrock Rovers Football Club and Instagram, @carramar_shamrock_rovers.
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FR KELLY CUP The football preseason tournaments got underway in May. After an enjoyable day of football, Western Shamrocks women saw off Southern Districts in a competitive game that ended with the bare minimum separating the sides. Southern Districts then took out the cup with a convincing win over St Finbarrs in the men’s final. It was great to see all our football teams out again after a delayed to start to the football season. With the Fr Kelly Cup taking place, some clubs took the opportunity to ask where the name came from. Since the fifty year GAA WA anniversary celebrations are coming up later in the year, we thought we’d share the origins of the cup along with pictures of this year’s victorious squads. Fr Kelly was the inaugural GAA WA president who started Gaelic football here in the early seventies. For the first few years, an ad hoc system was in place where teams were simply picked on the day. In 1976, clubs were formalised and in 1977, Fr Kelly, inspired by an old cup of his own which can still be seen in 92 | THE IRISH SCENE
the trophy cabinet at Tom Bateman, donated the cup for the preseason competition. It’s fairly unique in the sense that it was named after a living person, which considerably bends a GAA rule!! Fr Kelly is still serving in Zambia and the same rule 4.9 interestingly goes on to say that a cup shall not be filled with any type of alcoholic beverage. The women footballers burst onto the Perth GAA scene in 2001 so the Pre-Season cup was needed to fully immerse them in the Fr Kelly Cup day. Over the years people have called both competitions the Fr Kelly cup but since Fr Kelly wasn’t involved in the women’s game it was decided to keep the cup open for another future deserving Gael. Congratulations again to Western Shamrocks women and Southern Districts men for carrying on this roll of honour in 2021. Well done to all players who took part and all who helped organise the day. A special mention must go to the three volunteers from each club who went down a few weeks in advance to line the pitch, paint the posts and ensure the grounds were ready. Tom Bateman manager, Sean O’Casey, as always, had everything ready to go so our gratitude goes to him also.
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FOOTBALL CLUBS GREENWOOD Mens Senior Football greenwoodgfc@hotmail.com
MORLEY GAELS Mens & Ladies Senior Football morleygaelsgfc@hotmail.com
SOUTHERN DISTRICTS Mens & Ladies Senior Football southerndistrictsgaa@gmail.com
ST. FINBARR’S Mens & Ladies Senior Football stfinbarrsgfc@outlook.com
WESTERN SHAMROCKS Mens & Ladies Senior Football westernshamrocks@hotmail.com
HURLING CLUBS ST. GABRIEL’S Mens & Ladies Senior Hurling & Camogie stgabrielsperth@gmail.com
WESTERN SWANS Mens & Ladies Senior Hurling & Camogie westernswansgaa@gmail.com
PERTH SHAMROCKS Mens Senior Hurling perthshamrocks@gmail.com
SARSFIELDS Mens Senior Hurling
sarshurlingperth@gmail.com
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HR
NICHOLS ON RD
The Fr Kelly tournament was not the only competition to launch a new trophy this year. An incredibly special cup was designed and made in Ireland to honour a WA hurling stalwart before being sent over for this year’s hurling championship. Dermot Kenny was heavily involved in bringing hurling to WA in 2005 and indeed he went on to present the state at the Australasian State Games in 2006 and 2008. His passion for the game was emulated by the successful state teams who followed him. Although he moved on to New York in 2009, he kept in touch and an eye on how WA hurling was going. His legacy is clear to see each Saturday at RA Cook Reserve and now his memory is honoured further with the launch of the Dermot Kenny Memorial trophy for the hurling championship. The new trophy was presented to the WA hurling subcommittee and team captains at An Sibin Irish bar last month. It will now be up to the captains and their team mates to battle it out to be the first team to lift this absolute beauty. Special mention must go to An Sibin for their involvement in bringing about this fitting tribute. As the hurlers enter the latter stages of their league, Sarsfields are once again the team to beat although a enthralling, recent battle with Western Swans will leave both teams on edge for a showdown in the championship. St Gabriels and Perth Shamrocks will be keen to cause an upset and may well do so. The hurling championship starts Saturday 19th June with finals day on the 10th July. Be sure to keep the weekends free for all the action at RA Cook Reserve. Remember refreshments and EFTPOS are all available at the grounds.
CLUB DETAILS
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HWY
SON HOL
We know from last year’s competition that league form doesn’t always win the cup!
H LEAC < TO
AY IGHW
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NIC
The camogie league is now well under way with the Western Swans women forging an uncompromising path. With championship set to start soon, it will be up to St Gabriels to have their say. The camogs will also be in action again on 19th June and 10th July so we are looking forward to a couple more battles.
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GAA GROUNDS
Tom Bateman Reserve Corner Bannister & Nicholson Rds (entrance off Wilfred Rd) Canning Vale
THE IRISH SCENE | 93
GAAWA
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DARKNESS INTO LIGHT With no official event taking place this year, over 250 WA GAA gaels came together to share a sunrise for Darkness into Light 2021. Club rivalries were forgotten for a morning as they walked along with the Sunrise Social Perth crew to raise money and awareness of suicide and mental health issues. The route started at Optus stadium, took in the Arbor walkway and finished off crossing the already iconic Matagarup bridge. All proceeds went to Pieta House and local charity, Sirens of Silence. Well done and sincerest thanks to all who got up early to take part and Perth’s Darkness into Light committee who helped us with organising, registrations and T-shirt pick ups.
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HANDBALL'S POPULARITY CONTINUES TO SURGE More and more children across are discovering and developing an interest in handball – or wallball – as this article by Oisin Cusack, published on GAA.ie on 18 June 2021 reveals. With 170 clubs and over 15,000 members, handball’s popularity has grown significantly in the last few decades. Martin Mulkerrins from the Maigh Cuilinn club in Galway, is one of the sport’s leading players and has witnessed this growth first-hand in his native county which now has 16 handball clubs, second only to Wexford with 17. “I can categorically say that the numbers in Galway have increased dramatically since I started playing, dramatically,” says Mulkerrins. “When I started playing handball in 2004 there was only really one club in Williamstown with juveniles, but now there are 11 or 12 clubs.” “The Cumann na mBunscol competitions have regularly 100plus in them, this would have been unheard of when I started. That’s just a massive growth since 2004 and new clubs are opening and registering all the time.” With the popularity of handball increasing, the One wall code, or Wallball as it has since been rebranded, offers opportunity for further development. The game started in Ireland as almost a hobby in the summer months for players to pass the time between the small alley and big alley seasons. Now, though, Wallball is the fastest growing code of handball, with numbers increasing substantially in the last five years. It now stands on its own two feet just like handball’s two other codes, 60x30 and 40x20. Darragh Daly, the National Handball Development Officer in Ireland, believes Wallball is the future of the sport. “I think every handball community appreciates that (Wallball) is the way forward,” he says. “In terms of opening up accessibility to new demographics and new areas of the country, wallball is key. In the past eight years, there have been 500 walls put up in schools all over the country. These have been all self-funded by the schools as well. We get weekly emails from schools saying they’ve put up a wall and are looking for dimensions for courts so it is clearly the way forward.” Wallball is also the fastest-growing code internationally by a considerable margin with 33 other countries playing the game worldwide. The game has grown in Europe and in America, particularly in New York which has an estimated 2300 courts, making it second only to basketball as far as street game popularity goes. A new World Wall Ball Association (WWBA) has been established with the aim of achieving Olympic status for the sport.
• The dedicated committee continue to work behind the scenes in preparation for our 2021 season at our new venue John XXIII College, Mooro Drive, Mount Claremont. • Look out for details of a family catch up on Sunday afternoon 29 July in a beautiful hills setting. • Come along to our Come and Try/ Registration Day on 29 August. KEEP UP TO DATE:
@GaelicGamesJuniorAcademyofWA Call/text: 0415 048 425 Email: infoggjunioracademy@gmail.com Website: ggjaofwa.teamapp.com SPONSORED BY
“In terms of internationally, for handball to ever even have a hope of Olympic recognition, handball associations need to agree on a code and I think everyone is coming together to play (Wallball),” says Daly. “We need other countries to have handball national governing bodies. In Ireland, we (GAA handball) are the governing body and in America, you have the USHA (United States Handball Association) but so many other countries haven’t got the same recognised bodies. “The Olympics isn’t on the radar for now but it’s a nice goal to have and hopefully we will get there someday.” THE IRISH SCENE | 95
With winter on our doorstep, it’s time to get cooking some hearty wholesome family meals. McLoughlin Butchers has all your favourite locally sourced quality meats. So why not pay us a visit, you’ll be delighted you did ! Products available at our Malaga address and selected IGA, Farmer Jacks and Coles
58 Westchester Rd, Malaga WA 6090 Phone: 08 9249 8039
Visit our website: McLoughlinButchers.com.au
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