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
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What we are reading, attending at the moment
Melbourne Hosts successful two-day symposium on Irish Language. Next is a review of Australian novelist and diarist Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, much appreciated by those of us who are Garner fans. ‘Priests in the Family’ provides Enright’s intriguing family connection to James Joyce, followed by an ‘Introduction to Ulysses’ where she talks about her personal experience of starting to read that famous book at the age of fourteen, ‘mainlining language, getting high on words’ Continue reading
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
Newman College to host two leading Irish language scholars
In January 2026, Melbourne will host two outstanding scholars of Irish Studies, Louis de Paor and Brian Ó Conchubháir. Both are leading experts in the history of the Irish language and its contemporary use. Continue reading
Northern Ireland politicians launch international appeal to victims and survivors of mother and baby homes
Northern Ireland politicians have launched an international appeal asking victims and survivors of mother and baby institutions for their views on legislation to establish a public inquiry and financial redress scheme aimed at addressing historical injustices. Continue reading
What we are reading, hearing, attending, watching…
Go see the movie for the breathtaking landscape and the solid acting of Gabriel Byrne and the young stars Anne Skelly, Fionn O’Shea, and Ferdia Walshe Peelo, Continue reading
Samhain Stories in Flickers of Memory
Swinging on the front gate with my brother for mother to arrive home with the fruit we only saw once a year: coconuts and pomegranates. My brothers attacking the coconuts with a hammer and chisel. Me, the youngest, given the first taste of the milky juice. 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
MONTO: a search for the definite article
The wicked history of ‘Monto’ spreads itself accommodatingly from the 1860s up to the 1950s. ‘Monto’ was, at one time, so it is claimed, to be the largest redlight district in Europe. It is estimated that there were at times up to 1,600 prostitutes working there. Continue reading
What we are reading at the moment:
She used a blue biro pen and had numbered the pages on small, plain, lined notepaper…I was pleased to see, sometimes, the smudged ring of a teacup or saucer imprinted on the page. I ould see her in the kichen getting a cup of tea as she wrote to me on a Sunday night. Continue reading
Tinteán 