Maria left Ireland aged fourteen. According to the Irish Famine Memorial’s orphan database, she left Portumna as a Roman Catholic orphan of James and Margaret Maher (both deceased), sailing on the Thomas Arbuthnot to Sydney in 1850. Continue reading
Filed under Commemoration …
Ireland’s Daughters: The Earl Grey Orphans Who Shaped Australia. How a Generation of Irish Girls Transformed Exile into Endurance and Survival into Legacy
Maria left Ireland aged fourteen. According to the Irish Famine Memorial’s orphan database, she left Portumna as a Roman Catholic orphan of James and Margaret Maher (both deceased), sailing on the Thomas Arbuthnot to Sydney in 1850. Continue reading
The Shanahans and the Kearns: Tipperary to Australia Part 1
No, it was not the gold discovery that brought me out. In Corrigeen, Barony of Kilmarney, where I lived, seventeen houses were burnt in one day by way of eviction. I at once made up my mind to be under Parker, our landlord, no longer, and I came out here. Continue reading
Eureka 170: a grandson remembers his grandmother
However, that story of liberation and democracy continues. Peter at the stockade and Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, was not the closing chapter. Continue reading
Irish Folklore inspires an Irish-Australian artist
Hawthorns are also associated with fertility, their musk-scented flowers blooming as harbingers of Spring. Their fruit ripens in time for Halloween, symbolizing death and rebirth. They stand as protectors, symbols of birth, death, and renewal, embodying a liminal space where exchanges occur between the human and spirit worlds. Continue reading
Anne Casey Sydney Irish Poet
The bilingual poem below was commissioned as part of the Red Room Poetry Fellowship 2022 Continue reading
What’s On – August to September, 2023
Lughnasa Bacon and Cabbage Night, Films to watch, Courses, conferences and seminars to attend, and a Battle of the Bands. Continue reading
What’s On – July – August, 2023
National Famine Commemoration, Lughnasa Bacon and Cabbage Night, Films to watch, FIFA Women’s World Cup Continue reading
Croí ár Náisiúin/Statement from the Heart
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’,
and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain
attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. Continue reading
The Lost Arch
by Mae Leonard I knew there was something not quite right the minute I rounded the bend of the road after Birdhill and was moving towards Annacotty on the last mile home. I was at the outskirts of Limerick on the main Dublin Road where the terrain is familiar to me and I knew there was … Continue reading
Tinteán 