My first document

Dhá Theach (Two Homes)

A visual recording of Senior Members of the Irish Australian Support Association of Queensland

Foreword

It has been such a beautifully rewarding experience working on this project with Design students from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. We are delighted to have the opportunity to capture the valuable stories of members of our JALOS ( just a little older) Group. Documenting people’s life stories is key to the recognition, appreciation and care of our seniors. Throughout this project, some fascinating stories have arisen and it’s been a privilege to listen to the tales and travels of senior members of the Irish community in Brisbane. A recurring comment in each story is the heavy heat and humidity of Australia that struck people as they arrived off the plane. As someone who also cites this as their first memory of arriving in this country over a decade ago, it goes to show that some things never change! Even though we’ve named this project Dhá Theach meaning Two Homes as Gaeilge, what struck me the most about this project is that so many of our participants who have lived abroad for decades cited Ireland as their home. It shows that no matter how far away, or how long you’ve been gone that Ireland never leaves you. No country in Europe has been as affected by emigration over the last two centuries as Ireland.

Approximately ten million people have emigrated from the island Ireland since 1800, which is extraordinary given our current population is five million people.

John F. Kennedy on his presidential visit to Ireland in June 1963 said that, “Most countries send out oil or iron, steel or gold, or some other crop, but Ireland has had only one export and that is its people.” Emigration became an intrinsic part of Irish life before gaining independence, especially from the Famine onwards. It appears that emigration is built into the fabric of Irish peoplewe’re designed to leave.

One of most fascinating aspects of Irish emigration, is our ability to retain our culture and heritage no matter where we go in the world. Many of the participants in this project spoke about Irish dancing and Irish music as a connection to home. In Ireland’s rich tradition of music and song, emigration is one of the big themes. A large body of material exists, in both the English and Irish languages. These songs are sung far and wide around the world. Even with the current cohort of Irish expats in Brisbane, music plays a big role, with members of our community commenting on being ‘transported back to Ireland’ upon hearing specific Irish songs. Never did this ring truer than when the Australian international borders were closed and we were unable to return home. It appears that the Irish culture is strong enough to withstand great geographical distances – it flourishes abroad.

FOREWORD

Interestingly in Irish music when conveying the large melodies of emigration, a variety of themes are evoked - the beauty of the home, place, nostalgia, loss, the pain of departure and exile. These are all common challenges that the modern day emigrant experiences. However, our Seniors tended to speak about their new lives in Australia with respect and gratitude. Moving to Australia is seen as an opportunity and a better life.

A humbling outcome of this project was the appreciation of connection to Ireland through technology for the younger generations. Our participants spoke about potentially never seeing their families again after they moved to Australia. Facetime, Skype and social media have ensured that this will never happen us and given us a gratitude for being able to speak to our loved ones at home with ease.

We have kept the interviews with our six participants authentic. Irish people speak in what is known as Hiberno-English, or Irish English, and this is the form of the English language used in Ireland. Hiberno-English is subject to regional variation, especially between the North and South of Ireland. Hiberno-English’s grammatical structures and vocabulary are unique, with many influences deriving from Gaeilge. Many Irish words are used directly, for example you’ll notice our participants speaking out the ‘craic.’

We are grateful to every single person who contributed to this very meaningful project. A special honour and thank you to our participants, Cess and Carmel, Pat, Grace, Noel and Cabrina.

Your honesty and willingness to share your stories are very much appreciated. Thank you to our volunteers Mary, Jennifer, Siobhan and Keiran for capturing these important conversations. Thank you to the incredibly talented, creative students of the Queensland College of Art for choosing to work with our organisation and their teachers Rae and Jan for their advice and direction.

It’s the people that make IASAQ special; our members, our staff, our volunteers, the Board, and most importantly the people we assist and the community that supports us. It’s about coming together as individuals, working in collaboration and upholding the values that this organisation stands for. Those being respect, compassion and a belief that all people should be giving support when they’re at their most vulnerable.

We hope you enjoy reading this wonderful publication as much as we enjoyed working on it.

Is mise le meas,

Nicola Holly

Uachtarán/President Irish Australian Support Association of Queensland

Who We Are

Who we are

IRISH Australian Support Association of Queensland (Inc.) (IASAQ) was founded in 2007 to support Irish and Irish Australian families and individuals in time of need or distress.

We operate as a confidential referral and resource organisation.

We are one of four Irish support organisations in Australia and are funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland. Our mission is to provide appropriate and valued support to the Irish and Irish Australian community in Queensland.

We ensure that the Irish Diaspora:

» feel supported in times of isolation, vulnerability and crisis.

» people of all ages feel connected to their culture and heritage

Interviews

Cec & Carmel C

ECIL and Carmel Halpin aged 86 and 82, originally from Dublin and born to Dublin parents. We met when we worked together in the late 50’s and fell ‘head over heels, and never looked back’. We married 2 years later on 6 September, 1960, when we were in our early twenties. We arrived in Brisbane in June 1975, on the Queen’s Birthday weekend with our 4 children aged 14, 11, 7 and 2 and a half. We had a stop off in Darwin on the way and we will never forget the heat! Even the heat in Brisbane in June was too much for us. Carmel ‘With all the excitement and commotion of getting off the plane jet lagged with 4 kids, luggage, etc., I ended up leaving my purse with all our money and other documents in the trolley. Cec had to go back to the airport the following day to look for it. Luckily somebody had handed it in and I though ‘well this is an honest country, at least. I took it as a good omen for our new life. My sister, her husband, and their 4 children had come here 2 years previously and settled in Ipswich, so we moved there as well’. There were so many differences, which you couldn’t call problems, between Ireland and here at the beginning. The school year was different starting in January and ending in December. Also

the names for some everyday things confused our kids like the Oval instead of a Park and a Port being a Schoolbag. The toilet was not only outside but was called the ‘dunny’. One time we were asked to a party and we were asked to ‘bring a plate”, so we thought one plate wouldn’t be enough for six of us so we brought 6, but NO food - we didn’t know we had to put food on the plate as well! It took us many, many years to live that one down.

At the beginning, adjusting to living here was not all that easy. Carmel “Cec got a job pretty much straight away and worked long hours, the kids settled into school but I was left at home and found it quite lonely at times, as I missed my family and friends, and events.

I did make one or two friends, which helped, but I really found it difficult to settle”. So we decided to return to Dublin in 1978, as we still had our house there. Cecil “When we were at Sydney Airport we had the same fella at Customs that we had in 1975 when we arrived, and he remembered us. He asked us if we were going home for a holiday, so we said we were and he said that he had better give us a visa so we could return. At the time we thought there we wouldn’t need it, but didn’t say anything’.

After 3 years back in Dublin, we decided to go back to Australia in 1981, mainly for the sake of our kids, although at this stage, our eldest was old enough to make up his own mind and decided to stay in Dublin. We got involved with the Irish community from the beginning, which at the time centred around the GAA, at Bottomley Park, near the Gabba. At that stage, they (the GAA) had started a ‘buy-a-brick’

scheme as a fundraiser to help build their current home in Willawong. Cec ’I played Gaelic football. I was lucky enough to be selected to play in Perth 8 weeks after arriving back, even though I was nearly 10 years older that most of the players. There is a lovely photograph somewhere of the group, which we were all supposed to get copies of, but because of various events, this didn’t happen. For the next few years, Sundays were the highlight of the week for us all as a family. Only the men played football, and the kids ‘went wild’ playing with other Irish kids who understood their accents and Carmel met up with other Irish women’. Carmel ’We lived for our Sundays, going to Mass and then mixing with other Irish families and it played such a big part in our lives. We poured our hearts out to each other – we all helped each other and others in the Irish community here. To this day we still meet some of those people when we go to Willawong. By then, we were more settled and we built a house on a 1 acre block just outside of Ipswich. Kids were settling into school and it was a really lovely time, but busy. Around this time ourselves and 6 or 8 other couples, including my sister, started playing weekly card games in each others houses and it ballooned and became so popular that we ended having to hire a hall in North Ipswich. It got bigger and bigger so we then decided to run dances which included a meal, on a monthly basis. We regularly had 30 to 40 people but sometimes ended up having up to 100 people, mainly Irish but also many Australians through their Irish friends. Eventually we had music and a licensed bar. Very few of us drank, so we hired somebody to look after all that.

“... we like Australia, we are longer living here that we were in Ireland and we regard it as our home”.

It grew simply by word of mouth, we never advertised it. At first, a few women, 6 or 8 cooked all day Saturday – it was great fun, boiling big pots of potatoes, corned beef….., and at Christmas I would spends hours and hours making puddings, often staying up late at night to get them done. We charged $10 for a three course meal which mainly just covered our costs. We go to a stage where we were able to get caterers. This lasted for about 15 years. Sometimes we had small amounts money left over and after getting financial advice we opened a bank account.

Ireland rather than say go ‘home’ but we still call it ‘home’. We have always had a very good life here – we never struggled. Our happiest times were when we saw our children settled and do well in school and go on to have careers, then marry and have their own children. We have 7 grandchildren but we would have liked more but they wouldn’t oblige. We are now asking our grandchildren to make us great grand parents but they just tell us that we are great grandparents! However, they are doing well for themselves and are always ready to help us, so we feel very fortunate. We love telling them about Ireland and how everyone goes to Ireland ‘for the craic’. We string them along because the ‘craic’ we are thinking of is very different to what is in their minds. Another cultural difference.

Cabrina

CABRINA Miller I’m 74 and I was born in 1949 in Dublin in Ballyfermot. My mother was from Galway and my father was from Tipperary. I first came I left Ireland in 1966. I moved to London with my school friends, we both wanted to get away from our parents to have bit more freedom. After being in London for about six months later I met my husband at a dance in North London and that was it – we were married a year later. I started to get restless feet, and a friend was staying with us at the time who had papers to go to South Africa and he brought home the paperwork and all the information on New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Australia. Our friend had chosen South Africa but I said to my husband “what about New Zealand?” and he said “I’ve just built a house for you what do you want to go there for!” It was a time of great turmoil in England with the coal miners’ strike and the unions and of course the weather wasn’t great.

We decided to go somewhere warm and where there was work and the travel agent suggested Dunedin, which didn’t turn out to be warm at all! We had 6 wonderful years there, my children went to the local Catholic School and I was in choir at the church and

Catholic women’s league, we had great togethers with friends as it was the 1970s the entertainment wasn’t out cafe so as such, it was people bringing plates of food to houses and we have dances in people’s houses and great laughs, good music.

After six years I got restless again, I was fed up with the cold. My husband said well I’ll get work in Sydney first and check it out. Our third child was on the way by then. He went and worked there for six months and returned saying it wasn’t a great place to rear children so we had to rethink again. I asked my next door neighbour whose husband went over to Brisbane regularly on business and she said the weather was warm so we just picked up and went. We arrived in Australia in November 1980 and the first thing I thought when I got off the plane was there must be a fire outside with this sort of humidity. It hits you in the face and I had no idea what humidity was at all – it didn’t help that I was in the tweed suit either!

Our friend booked us into a motel in Kangaroo Point, we stayed there for a week and then she managed to get us a flat in Norman Park. It was under someone’s house but we made do. The cockroaches really got to me, I kept spraying them! The mosquitos also got to me. We didn’t know anybody there except for this one friend, and she lived the other side of Brisbane.

One day I thought I better for look for schools for my children. We were walking down the street and it was a woman coming towards us and I said “excuse me can you tell me if this is the way to catch the bus to school?” We got so got chatting and I’d only been in Brisbane

CABRINA

two weeks by then but I asked her if there was any chance she had a cot and she did, she actually had a few of them. weeks by then, I said I don’t suppose you have a cot? She said yes we do, we have several of them under the house and you can have them. She lived in Norman Park as well and from then on that started a friendship that lasted forty years. That Christmas we were at their house, they had a magnificent view over the Brisbane River and every year after that on Christmas Eve for years we spent it together. Her husband was English and she was from Sydney so none of us had family here and I think that’s what brought us together.

Then we moved to Redland and bought a house and that February I said to my husband that I wanted to go home for a holiday. Home meant England at the time as my mother and two sisters had moved there. I didn’t think that I could take the heat anymore. I had a wonderful time catching up with my family and caught up with friends and thought how am I going to go back to the heat. I arrived back in Australia seven months pregnant and when I got back it was May and of course the heat had gone so it was gorgeous. There was a warmth but no humidity. My husband had found a job by then and the children went to school in the Bay and we lived there for 28 years.

Well when we first moved into the house, every time I stepped outside these huge insects. I remember writing to my mother about them, telling her that there were huge jiminy crickets here and when they run into you they scratch you. There were also big stick insects and green frogs running around the place and oh my god, those

“For me, it’s about your relationships and connections with people – if the right people are with you then you can live anywhere”.

frilly lizards and blue tongue lizards! And then we had trees in the garden with two white cockatoos and parrots, which I didn’t actually mind those. The moment you woke up in the morning you had this enormous noise from the birds and I thought Christ to myself “Christ, I’m in a Zoo!” But after a while I became to appreciate those things. I never became used to the cockroaches though.

I also remember the trees being different, they didn’t look like trees from home at all. I remember writing to my mother and telling her that all the barks on the trees were peeling. My Australian friend who had a keen interest in nature used to tell me that the trees were beautiful, but I couldn’t see the beauty in them because they didn’t look like the green trees at home. She said that’s why people call it a bush, it’s not a forest. But I missed the forests.

I also couldn’t get used to the way the houses were built here. They didn’t look like houses from home, with their wooden walls and tin roofs. The inside of the houses had boarded walls and I said to my husband to put up wallpaper because I wanted it to look like home. He was forever doing renovations to fit in with the style we left in England. It did look like home for a while. But I suppose I couldn’t wallpaper everything. After a few years here, when I appreciated the Australian architecture, I asked him to pull it all down and he did. He put the house back to the way it was. For a long time I was trying to make the house look like England or Ireland.

I never had an education in Ireland. I was offered a scholarship to go to secondary school but they would only pay for the fees, not

the books or anything so I couldn’t afford to go. When I became restless again in Australia I thought that I had to do something. My daughter was going into Grade 8 and I noticed at the end of her prospectus that they were offering adult classes so I enrolled. I had attempted before, but this time I was determined. My husband was actually off work that year in 1983 because there was a recession. He said that he would stay home with our four children while I went back to school and he did. So that year when my daughter started Year 8, I started Year 11. That was an eye opener being in a classroom with Year 11 girls. I completed Year 11 and 12 and that afforded me the opportunity to go to the University of Queensland. I did an Arts Degree at UQ and it took me a while to get through it, with four children and running a home, often I’d be up to 1am studying. I then went on to do my Diploma of Education and I became a teacher. By that time my daughter had grown up in 1997, she was planning on doing a year in London, like most Australians. So I took time off and went to visit her and while we were there I said that I would take her to Ireland. I’d never really spoken about Ireland before and I hadn’t been in the country for 30 years. We hired a car and went all around Ireland and caught up with relatives that I hadn’t seen since I was a child. I wanted to show my daughter her ancestral home, that it was generations of Irish women that had lived there. We went to Tipperary and visited my father’s grave because I never saw him again after I moved.

Not really. The Church doors were locked up and I had never seen that before. The places hadn’t changed aside from the fact that the islands had gotten electricity. There was also a big motorway because Ireland had joined the European Union by then and it was a lot easier to drive around the Country. I think one of the things too, I remember when I went to New Zealand there was a lot of conversation about the Johnson & Johnson report about contraception. I remember being at a meeting with women who were talking about it, and saying that its wrong. And I said “I beg your pardon, this is the best thing that’s ever happened us!

I’d be very involved in the Church and I suddenly thought I don’t want to be Catholic anymore, and I didn’t. I thought I’d pick it up again and I didn’t, you can’t go backwards. That is something I thought was terrible about Ireland, that you couldn’t get contraception. Whereas in England you could and no one would ask you questions about it, or if you were married or anything. When I heard those women discuss how contraception was wrong, I just thought that was stupidity and ignorance and I couldn’t accept that. I think that weather was the one thing with me, I valued being warm!

The freedom of expression, and the freedom to do you want is important to me. That was one thing about England, they had a lot of freedom over there and were able to do what they want. I valued the fact that they did anything they wanted to – the choice. You didn’t have choice in Ireland. I also highly value education. Both my parents only went to primary school. Education opens

doors and broadens your horizon on life and I wanted that for my children, more than anything. All my children have had University educations and I’m proud of that.

I’ve had happy times wherever I’ve lived. My proudest achievement is achieving my degree. I’ve made lot of wonderful friends, and that’s one of the things that’s made me most happiest. For me, it’s about your relationships and connections with people – if the right people are with you then you can live anywhere.

Grace

MY name is Grace, I’m from Cork and I’m 91 years old, which is a pretty solid age! Well I was born there, and we all left as a family when I was 19 and moved to London for my dad’s work. Well of course I knew it very well. My father came from a large family, so I had quite a lot of aunts and cousins, around the different districts in Cork and we did have a summer place in Crosshaven and we went there every summer. My father lost his job and we all emigrated as a family to London, well I suppose it was Essex actually. That’s where I met my husband, he’s English. When I met him I couldn’t stand him. I met him through a friend, we were at, not really a party, more of a gathering. I felt he was a bit pushy so I wasn’t a bit interested – but he was. He was rather persistent so I finally ended up marrying him. We got married in the UK. We were married for over 10 years when we decided to travel. He came home from work one day saying he was offered a job in Australia and we decided to accept it. I actually worked as well back then, and I did up until I was pregnant when women weren’t allowed work after that.

We thought that we’d be in Sydney first, but his company wanted to open a branch in Melbourne, so we went there. We came to Australia in 1965 and we were in Victoria until 1971 and I had my baby there, born in 1967. We then decided to move to Brisbane. My husband came to Australia for a very specific job. The decimal currency was about to come in and the needed IT experts to help implement it. We only came for two years – and it’s been a very long two years!

He came home one day and asked would I like to go to Brisbane. He had been to a computer conference in Brisbane and everyone was walking around in shorts and it was sunny so that’s how we came to be in Queensland. My father had died in 1954 and my mother remained in London and she passed away in 1968 so she never saw my children, except for in photos that I sent her. We flew by plane over here and had a stopover in Darwin. We got off the plane and you felt like you could raise your hands and lift the humidity off you. There was no such thing as the beautiful airports we have now, just a shed. And I thought “What have we come into!”

We then flew from Darwin to Sydney, and someone from my husband’s company met us off the plane and took us to a guesthouse. We stayed there for about three to four weeks. Of course, I had nothing to do. This was in November by the way, so very warm. I didn’t know Sydney so I would just wander around. One day, I was walking around and noticed that the entire city had stopped. Everybody was congregating around this window and I didn’t know what was going on. Eventually I saw that they were watching horses

on a television and that they had stopped for the Melbourne Cup, but of course I didn’t know what that was back then. That was one of my first experiences of Australia.

They must have been because I would say 90% of the people we were introduced to in my husband’s company took great delight in telling me that they have Irish heritage, or their grandmother is Irish, and I thought to myself “surely be to God not everyone in Australia is Irish!” I hadn’t met a lot of Australians before and to my surprise, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I couldn’t understand their accents. We didn’t know any Irish people here, in fact we didn’t know many people at all. We had no family here, we were the first in our family to move to Australia, we really didn’t know a soul aside from the people in my husband’s company. Eventually we made friends, and met people. We managed fine. We moved into a little flat in St. Kilda Junction and made friends with the people there, none of them were Irish. We had many Australian friends and it took us quite a while to meet any Irish. I didn’t mind it because of course I had lived in the UK for so long so it wasn’t like going straight from Ireland to Australia.

No, I’ve actually never had one, I’ve always had a British one. When Mom and Dad were born while Britian were still in charge so we were entitled to British passports and then we became naturalised here. We didn’t become citizens for many years actually, and then we got our Australian passports. I was about 23 and we had been going out for a little while and I had a feeling that we would get married.

“I liked it here, and I found Brisbane to be even more friendly, it was easy to make friends”.

We were sitting in his car, and we had just been to our friends’ baby’s christening. And he goes to me “isn’t so and so’s baby lovely” and I said, yes it is. And then he said to me, “we could have one of those, what about we get married?” He had no ring, he wasn’t that organised. I had a feeling that we were going to get married. We went home then and told Mom and Dad and that was it. The year before my sister had gotten married and it was a big do and I thought I didn’t want that, so we had a fairly quite wedding. We got married in a registration office in Stratford in the UK. My sister had a big Church wedding, and we were non-Catholics so didn’t do that.

Darwin was my first memory as I previously mentioned. What I didn’t like, and I know it sounds funny, but I got a little bit fed up of waking up every morning and it was sunny and hot. I thought “is it always like this!” Actually, in those days I found that there was similarity between Ireland and Australia. The people were more friendly, and more inclined to listen to you. I liked it here, and I found Brisbane to be even more friendly, it was easy to make friends. My mom’s sister, my aunt, she was a lot older than my mom – 18 years older in fact. She had her ticket for the Titanic and they missed the boat. Her and her husband got held up, there was something wrong issuing the second ticket and they missed the boat. She did finally go to the States and her family ended up there. She may have survived it if she had gotten on the boat. My sister Jan jail reminded me of this when I was talking to her this morning. She said she remembered the picture dad had of Michael Collins. It was always on our sideboard

in the house in Cork and of course we took it to the UK with us. Unfortunately, we lost the picture when our house got flooded, which was an awful pity but yes they were good friends.

Of course in those days with the Civil War and the Black and Tans – there’s an awful lot of history there and it’s a pity that we didn’t take more notice of the people around us when they were alive. Dad spoke very highly of Michael Collins, he was a great man and Dad thought the world of him of course. My two sisters and one brother had already moved to Canada so there wasn’t any excuse. Roy was offered the job and he took it. Mom was sorry of course, and when we left she said “I’ll probably never see you again” and she turned out to be right. If I said I was going ‘home’ it would be to Cork. Cork is always home, even after all this time. I think family is very important and if you’re lucky enough to have a happy marriage. I think having lots of good, good friends. You can have lots of friends, but maybe only half a dozen very good friends. When you can go on holidays when friends, and remain friends with them, then they’re the good good friends.

NOEL James Sheeran, 29th of the twelve 1954, born in South County Dublin, near the Dun Laoghaire area. I was one of seven children, and named Noel as I was born around the festive season. My parents are actually both from Deans

Grange, just near Dublin. We never moved very far, we pretty much lived our whole lives in Dublin. We did moved to Sligo for about 18 months for my dad’s job but they couldn’t settle because of the family still being in Dublin so we moved back home. and I suspect my

I went to the local Christian Brothers School, St. Mary’s for Junior School and Oaklands College for senior school. I worked in the Hotel Monrose Dublin for all my school holidays. I worked in the office and was going to take on a training management course but the lure of the big city took me to London. And you know the prospects were not good at the time, and many people were doing the same thing, so I thought I’ll try my luck in London. So I moved to London aged 18 I think, in 1973. I had lived in a couple of places in the UK and the vast majority of the time was in Hertfordshire which is in North England. I worked in Central London, in the financial center and when I started in the UK I joined Barkley’s Bank and in fact they paid my

airfare and hotel for the first three months. They were desperate for you know reasonably bright people and I suppose it was reasonably bright, even though you know I didn’t go to university, but not everyone did in those days. I then moved into IT and spent 30 years in various roles from computer operating, which was a thing in those days, to database management, technical management and network management. I moved to Australia in 2003, so twenty years this year. I have divorced my first wife and had two teenage children in the UK. My partner at the time had been to Australia several times, she had been a visitor and bag packer and loved it, and persuaded me that this was a brilliant place to bring our two children. I was convinced that it was the right thing to do, so we sold everything and came to Australia on a 457 visa. We had to be completely self-sufficient and earn a certain amount of money before being able to apply for permanent residency. So we sold everything and came over here, and what an adventure! No no no, it wasn’t the first place we settled. We didn’t settle for about eight months after we arrived, we actually were on the road looking at businesses. Our primary focus for businesses was hospitality so we’re looking at motels and caravan parks. We looked at businesses from as far up as Cairns down to the Victorian NSW border. We ended up in a little place called Sandy Hollow in NSW in late 2003. We bought a caravan park and worked that business for around eight years. That business enabled us to get permanent residency and our citizenship as well. Around time we sold the business, my partner and I decided

to separate ways but we remained good friends to this day. We then took a caravan on the road and was wondering where to settle. We settled on Redlands largely because of the quality of the schools. In 2011, we took the kids out of school for a year to do traveling and we hit the road on the caravan. They had a great time and when they returned to school they both did very well and are now nearly finished university. When we left London there was snow on the ground there was tanks around the airport because it was a security and terrorist threat at the time. We got on that plane and after a horrendous flight because my daughter didn’t sleep at all, even though we have prepped her for it.

The first thing that hit us when we arrived in Sydney on February the 18th 2023 was the heat and humidity. People talk about the heat, but it’s more the humidity that’s the killer. We were met by a friend of my partners, and he had a big trailer. We had 18 suitcases, two pushchairs and two carseats! We stayed with those friends for a couple of days, just enough time for us to buy a ca for a fraction of what we would have paid for it in the Ireland and then we hit the road. The kids absolutely loved it. You think of kids couped up in a car for a long period of time, but they didn’t seem to mind. We would stop often in parks and McDonalds and they were young enjoy to enjoy it.

In terms of other memories of, more than anything else that struck me was the trees, they were just so different. We’re used to deciduous and all that green but over here they’re very different, any in a way they looked kind of sloppy. The other thing that struck me was the

“Coming to Australia was like a breath of fresh air, it was a chance at a new life. It’s been an adventure”.

beaches, any opportunity we had we would bring the kids to the beach – they are just pristine over here and there never appeared to be anyone on them.

Not really. The people were extremely welcoming, and we ended up settling in a small country town and straight away we were accepted. We threw ourselves into the local community. I joined the Rural Fire Service and stayed with them for years. We also both threw ourselves into the local school, which only had about 50 kids in it. I would actually volunteer a day each week teaching the children computing classes (once I got the relevant police clearances.) I would teach them Microsoft, and other applications and they were really responsive to it.

It was the first time I lived in a very small community and I really enjoyed it. If people saw you putting in the effort, and contributing to your community then they would be so supportive. We had a great group of friends, we actually joined a wine club and we’d catch up once a month and have the best wines. We would use the wine as a good conduit for social activities.

Family for sure! Leaving two kids in the UK was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Yes they were teenagers but it was still incredibly hard. It’s been so good to be so close to my younger kids and play a big part in their lives. I’ve recently become a grandparent and we play quite a big part in my grandson’s life and it means the world to me. Yes, I still have family and friends in Ireland. I’ve actually lost my two brothers and a sister over the year, actually two of them to suicide which was very very challenging and disturbing. My mother also

passed away in 2009, she had two major strokes. I’ve got a daughter who lives in France with their two children and I’m in constant contact with her and a son who lives in the UK. He’s actually been out to Australia andhas a visit planned this year. We’re actually going to France next year again, that’ll be our third visit to France and we’re looking forward to it.

I’m still very close to my three brothers and it sounds strange given the fact that I’m so far away geographically but I’m probably the conduit that gets us all together. Every time I’m home we get together. I suppose the wealth of the country strikes me when I go home, there appears to be more disposable income - it’s a very vibrant economy. There are such vibrant people. The people are very much the same though, even though after 50 years of living abroad the people are still the same. They’re very welcoming and have a great sense of humour. We’re blown away by the Irish sense of hospitality and humour. I’ve noticed that a lot of the pubs have changed, some for the better but some of them have gone backwards. Every time I go home I visit Mulligan’s Pub in Dublin and it hasn’t changed, the wit and banter of the bar staff is brilliant.

The only thing that has changed in that pub is instead of old tvs, they now have flatscreens for watching sport, mostly rugby. That’s one thing I adore about Ireland is our love for sport, the rugby, Gaelic football and hurling. To go into a pub and watch your team playing, or seeing the crowds in the stadiums is wonderful. I actually used to support Shamrock Rovers as a child and would follow them around

the country and go to all their games and it was great fun. I had a really good childhood in Ireland, it was probably tough by today’s standards, but it was a lovely one and that’s the key thing.

Not really I suppose. Although it does have a little bit of bigotry and racism and unfortunately that’s everywhere. I look back to Ireland and the UK and it’s there as well. I worked in the UK during the Troubles and I was actually working in the Canary Wharf when the bomb went off in February 1996. In fact, if I’ve left a few minutes earlier I would have been in that bomb attack. I was lucky enough to have a carpark and there was a bridge that went over it. If I had left a few minutes earlier I wouldn’t have survived on that bridge. There was a bit of anti-Irish sentiment in the UK and I was lucky enough not to be caught up on that.

They’ve all been happy. If you look at the three stages of my life –Ireland, the UK and Australia, they’ve all been very very happy. The thing I love about my childhood was the freedom, we went out and were sure to be home in time for supper. I had a great career in the UK and I’m grateful for that. I took a lot of pride in my work and probably didn’t take enough time away from it. Coming to Australia was like a breath of fresh air, it was a chance at a new life. It’s been an adventure.

Pat

Y name is Patricia Celine O’Connor, I was born on the 24th of February 1942, and I arrived in Australia on the 1st of June 1969, that’ll be 54 years here this year. Well, I had some here, but we had my husband and I had talked a little before when I first got married and didn’t have any children. By the time we had three children, I had other members of my family here. I had a sister who lived in Scotland, and they immigrated first, I’m not quite sure the year they arrived here, maybe 66 or 67. My mom, dad and younger sister came over in December 1967. Then my oldest brother, who also lived in Scotland and his wife and four children arrived over in 1968. They all came to Brisbane. My brother and his wife, myself and my family we stayed on migrant hostel that used to be at Wacol. No I came by plane, my sister came by boat and the rest of my family flew.

We actually had to go from the boat tonight before because the way the flights were, and then travel down to London. We went to a bed and breakfast but none of us had got any sleep on the boat and even though we paid for a full night’s accommodation, we which we were only there for about four hours just so the kids could get some sleep.

There was nobody but migrants on the plane - there were no other passengers. We flew into Perth and a lot of people got off there, then we flew into Sydney and more people got off there and then there was just us and we were put on a domestic flight up to Brisbane. Well being as it was the 1st of June, it was supposed to be wintertime and I was wearing summer clothes because it wasn’t winter time to us! I still feel the same way as I did then, that the sky was so bright, so blue and so clear. I think that’s because you spend so much time with the rain and the clouds and the winter days back home that I noticed it.

Was Brisbane different to like where you were from back home?

I actually sort of pictured in my head that everything would be very English because it was a Commonwealth country, but my impression of the shops, not not so much the houses but the shops was that it was very like America.

Arriving at that time of the year down to the ground, even though by Christmas we were melting. Even though we had family here I didn’t see them all the time because we only had one car. The migrant hostel was all the way out on Wacol and my brother lived in Gales out by Ipswich. We did used to go and see our parents a lot. They lived in Kangaroo Point and we would go visit them on Saturdays. I distinctly remember that our parents had a phone, and not many people had phones in those days and I remember that we used to phone a taxi on the Saturday night and I swear that the tax had cost about $2 or maybe $2.50 to go from Kangaroo Point to Wacol. Well, I’ve seen a lot of changes building wise. They used to be trams and Brisbane and

“Brisbane was like a big country town with a lot of old-style wooden houses, and I loved it like that”.

they went off they went off the day before we arrived! Brisbane was like a big country town with a lot of old-style wooden houses, and I loved it like that. Now when I see the old wooden pubs, I think that a lot of things used to be like that. The first thing I did was that I heard about Irish dancing that was being taught just up the road from where we were living, and my daughter wanted to learn Irish dancing. She was actually a qualified Scottish dancing teacher but I started off with her there and then we could go to competitions and I met other others there. I met a woman who was actually Australian but her husband was from Cork, and they used to have a little Irish social club called the ‘Harp and Shamrock.’ They used to have a big do on Saint Patrick’s night down in a place in New Farm. They had music and used to do céilí dancing. They also had monthly catch ups and an Irish dancing competition once a year. Most of the people that were involved in that club have sadly passed away now, or I’ve lost touch with them. I value my Irishness.

I tried to get a man to come here (to the IASAQ Centre) once. I met him in the City at a 50’s plus event and invited him along. He said that he had worked in England for years and that when he came to Australia that he wasn’t going to get involved in anything because he said it was tired of listening to the Paddies and they were always drinking. I’ll not tell you what I thought of that, but it wasn’t very nice. I walked away and left him standing. Some people think that when you come out here that you have to blend in the Australians if you want to live the Australian way of life. A lot of

people think that the Irish only drink, but you and I know that the Irish do a lot more than that. I think it’s sad when people leave Ireland and are done with it. It’s like saying that you don’t belong anywhere. I’m here 54 years and I still talk about going home. I mean my hometown, my home country. Yes yes, that’s where my ashes are going.

designed by Angela Nicolette Legawa