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.

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.

“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.