Life was not easy for Jane and Bridget, two of at least fifty famine orphan girls who were gaoled in NSW from the 1850s to 1900. Continue reading
Filed under convicts …
From Armagh to Barrington: an Earl Grey orphan in Northern Tasmania.
Mary Ann McMaster came to Australia under the Earl Grey Scheme. Continue reading
The ‘Best Choir in the Anglosphere’
Catherine Fitzpatrick, a convict’s wife, conductor of the first choir of an infant colony. Continue reading
The Irish Exile
The Irish Exile and Freedom’s Advocate was a brief but potent manifestation in print in early colonial Australia of the fight for Irish freedom. Continue reading
Floating Prisons
The Surprise, moored at the Cove of Cork, and the Essex, at Kingstown in Dublin Bay (now Dun Laoghaire), were derelict ships which operated as holding prisons for convicts from 1823 until 1837. Continue reading
Is this a photograph of the young Ned Kelly?
The photograph was owned by Ellen Kelly, Ned’s mother and passed on to her family after her death in 1923. Continue reading
A Magnificent Man
O’Reilly never wavered nor deviated from his primary goal of a free Ireland. Continue reading
Death or Liberty – an Australian/Irish documentary
‘Death or liberty, and a ship to take us home’ was the catch cry of the largely Irish convicts ——- who staged the Castle Hill rebellion in NSW in 1804: Continue reading
POETRY – Outlaws by Tom Phillips
Homesickness was a wound but our dear children
in time helped us better relate to it all here, Continue reading
