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.

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 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.