The period from 1880 to 1907 appears to be the main foundation date for most of the churches named for St. Carthage in Australia ….. Continue reading
Filed under History …
What’s in a name? – Australia’s ‘Irishtowns’.
Only a small number of these ‘Irishtowns’ officially exist today, all of them small towns or localities in rural settings. Continue reading
Sebastian Barry’s Gentlemen
Credit has been slow in coming … for the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the RIC. Continue reading
Irish Famine Women – a challenge or three
Was there a ‘gendered’ difference in the colonial experience of the first generation of Famine migrants? Did the women adapt more readily? Were women more willingly acculturated? Were they more independent in their choice of marriage partners? Was the regrouping of their family more likely to be ‘transitional’ than that of Irish men? These are questions about women’s role in their family emigration strategy that can, and still need to be addressed.
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The Origins of the Irish
There’s good reason that most archaeologists wouldn’t touch the subject of Irish origins with a barge pole: the topic involves a very unfashionable cultural historical approach to the archaeological record of a period of Ireland’s existence which is clouded in obscurity and entails a moras of issues that most archaeologists spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Continue reading
Changing of the Guard at St. Brigid’s, Crossley; or, Transforming Divine Investment
A priest who, in a conflict, declares: ‘The Church is not a democracy. I am the power here’ is simply putting himself at odds with such people. Continue reading
The Cricketer, The Wife and the Cathedral Priest: a Sectarian Melodrama of Old Sydney
The Price of a Wife sets out to unravel the complex web of relationships, politics, skullduggery, paranoia, and the flawed and tragic human loves involved in the Coningham – O’Haran divorce trial. Continue reading
Ballyshanassy: Melbourne’s lost suburb
In its heyday, however, Ballyshanassy rivalled its northern neighbor, Box Hill, in importance and could have become the seat of local government. Continue reading
Rev. James Harold (1744 -1831): The Saggart Deportee
Fr Harold’s informal priestly work attracted the suspicions of the authorities not least among them Captain William Bligh of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame Continue reading
Dr. Nicholas O’Donnell: ‘A Towering Figure’
In Melbourne there is no figure that has done more for the collection, study and dissemination of uniquely Irish and Catholic texts. Continue reading