15th Annual Commemoration of the Irish Famine Memorial, Sydney

Last Sunday, I attended the 15th Annual Commemoration of opening of the Irish Famine Memorial at the Hyde Park Barracks.It was a fabulous event featuring Irish music by Coolfin Mac and  Brendan Walsh launched Orphan Girl with songs written by Irish song writer Brendan Graham and performed by Sarah Calderwood and the Australian Girls’ Choir. The lyrics gave me goosebumps. My Great Great Great Grandmother, Bridget Donovan, was one of these orphan girls and she was singing me those songs. It was quite heartbreaking.

Here I am with Irish song writer Brendan Graham.

I have to admit to feeling a little awkward when I first arrived. While I’d tossed up bringing the rest of the family or perhaps just our daughter, I’d decided to attend on my own this year and check things out. This meant, of course, that I didn’t know anybody. While this hasn’t stopped me in the past and I am quite adept at talking to strangers, I still felt a bit awkward. It reminded me of when I attended my first poetry reading and I was standing there clutching my notebook feeling like an awkward, nervous misfit and almost jumped out of my skin when someone asked me if I wanted to do a reading.

This awkwardness no doubt reflected the newness of my relationship with my Great Great Great Grandmother, Bridget Donovan. While other descendants of Irish Famine orphans were wearing name badges proudly displaying their connection, I was still processing my recent discovery and had come unprepared. At this point, the only information I had about Bridget was on the Famine Memorial website and her daughter, Charlotte Merritt’s birth certificate. While these details seemed to match up, there was a bit of a discrepancy with ages and at that stage I wasn’t entirely sure that these were the same Bridget Donovan. Therefore, I felt a bit cautious about thrusting myself into this club if I was only going to be evicted when fresh evidence came to light.

The other funny thing was that through my connection with Bridget, I had suddenly become “a Donovan”. This is when things started getting really interesting when one group of people started talking to me about Donovans they knew. The irony was that I don’t know any Donovans myself. It wasn’t a name I had really considered family before and I’d certainly never thought that I might be related to Jason Donovan of Neighbours fame. With all of this going on, it’s not surprising that I was feeling like a bit of a fake or pretender. Yet, my Great Great Great grandmother was Bridget Donovan and just because we don’t have the same surname, that doesn’t mean I don’t belong.

However, I had taken my camera along and offered to take photos. This helped but I was still feeling awkward. I am the official photographer at the kids’ school and after all these years, I am very much a part of the furniture. In this role I have photographed and interviewed players from the Sydney Swans, burns survivor Turia Pitt and also Australia’s Happiest Refugee, Ahn Do. This is quite an impressive CV for a parent volunteer at the local school.

The good thing about being “the photographer” is that it opens doors and gives me an excuse to meet people and most people are only to happy to have a bit of an ice breaker. This event was no exception. After all, most of us were wanting to meet people. I was wanting to meet other descendants of the Irish orphan girls, especially the girls who had traveled out on the John Knox with Bridget. I was also looking forward to meeting Dr Perry McIntyre, Chairman of the Great Irish Famine Commemoration Committee. It was a real bonus to meet so many Irish people and to become a part of this Irish Australian community and to chat at the festivities afterwards. Despite my Irish roots, I’ve never mingled with the Irish community before and absolutely loved it. I am desperate to go to Ireland and this was just a taster of what is yet to come. 

I came up with the idea of setting up this blog while I was there. Using social media as a way of connecting with my Irish roots. It has been very helpful because in just  a week, and I must admit that I have focused pretty steadily on Bridget’s journey in this time, Bridget has transformed from something of a distant ghost into an integral part of who I am, even if I still can’t see her face. I have been steadily documenting what I do know about Bridget so I can then contact others who can fill in the missing gaps. I really hope this approach works and I’m curious to see where it all ends up.

Many special thanks to Dr Perry McIntyre and the Great Irish Famine Commemoration Committee for organising the event and for their web site which has enabled me to open the door of Bridget’s world. In pursuing Bridget’s very worn and faded footsteps, I have now launched an unplanned  journey of my own. Only a week ago, I had overcome a swag of hurdles and was skiing in Perisher and now I’m chasing Bridget Donovan. You never know where you’re going to end up.

As John Lennon said: “Life is what happens to you while you‘re busy making other plans.” 

xx Rowena

PS I just stumbled across an interview with songwriter Brendan Graham from the Catholic Weekly from 2012 speaking about the keynote speech he was about to deliver at the 2012 commemoration ceremony:

“We’ll finish with a bit of hope, because the orphan girls story is mostly a good news story.

“There were very few good news stories at the time of the Great Famine in Ireland, so this was a possibility for these 4100 young women to have the chance of a new life, because there wasn’t much future of even living in the workhouses in Ireland at the time.

“The conditions were very dire, rampant with disease and everything, so if you went in you only came out in a coffin.

“The intentions of it were to populate the colony but also to reduce the dependency on the workhouses of all these young people who had no chance of getting any work and were a burden on the state.

“It was a good scheme, people settled here and got married, and their descendants will be there, which I think is quite moving.”

I’d also like to add that his song You Raise Me Up has particular relevance to me. I have fallen over so many times due to my muscle wasting auto-immune disease and I keep getting raised up again. Its been a real miracle!!

Sources:

The Catholic Weekly, 26 August, 2012

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=9&articleID=10600&class=Features&subclass=A%20conversation%20with

The Irish Famine Memorial, Hyde Park Barracks

So often we blink and we miss it…even something blatantly obvious or significant. 

Somehow, despite my long standing interest in my own Irish roots, I didn’t find out about the Irish Famine Memorial at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks until quite recently. That’s right…until I a Google search.This was the same  Google search which showed that my Great Great Great Grandmother, Bridget Donovan, was a Irish Famine orphan who had arrived in Sydney on board the John Knox on the 29th April, 1850. 

No doubt, I’ve walked past the Famine Memorial many times since its completion in 1999. Yet, I missed it. If you know me, that isn’t exactly surprising. With my head up in the clouds or my attention focused through a camera lens, I frequently miss even the blatantly obvious.

It’s a pity because this monument is so much more than a static reminder of the Famine. Rather, it has become something of a living, breathing focal point not just for people exploring their Irish roots like myself but also for the modern Australian-Irish community, especially at it’s annual commemorative event. You could say any excuse for a Guinness will do!

While you might be wondering why anyone would build a monument commemorating an Irish famine which took place over 150 years ago in modern Sydney, it is worth remembering that many, many Irish emigrated to Australia particularly during or soon after the famine. This means that the Irish Famine is, in a sense, part of Australia’s story as well. 

Moreover, the Irish Famine wrought such devastation that it must be remembered. We should never forget that an estimated 1 million people lost their lives and a further 1 million emigrated and what a loss of that magnitude meant for the Irish people…those who left and also those who stayed behind.

While I grew up as an Australian understanding that my Dad’s family had emigrated due to the potato famine, this was a simplistic view. The causes of the Irish Famine were much more complex than the potato blight itself and certainly our family didn’t emigrate until the tail end of the famine, or even a few years after the famine had “ended”. This is interesting food for thought and I can’t help thinking the Australian Gold rushes also attracted its share of struggling Irish searching for their pot of gold at what must have seemed like the end of a very long rainbow.

While I recommend visiting the Memorial in person, the Irish Famine Memorial’s website also provides helpful background information about the Irish Orphan Girls and the Irish Famine Memorial. It includes a searchable database you can find out if you, like me, can claim an Irish Orphan girl. There are over 4,000 up for grabs and the good news is that you don’t even have to feed them.You have a better chance than winning Lotto!

You can click here to access the web site: Mmhttp://www.irishfaminememorial.org/en/

About the Monument

Although I have visited the monument a couple of times, I have learned so much more about it since deciding to write this post.

Bridget Donovan wasn’t on the list… missing in action yet again!!

The Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852) is located at the Hyde Park Barracks, on Macquarie Street, Sydney, Australia. It was designed by Angela & Hossein Valamanesh (artists) & Paul Carter (soundscape). I must admit that I didn’t notice the soundscape on my visits and I missed much of the detail and symbolism in the monument itself. My attention at the time was focused on the list of names etched into the glass and finding out that Bridget Donovan, as usual, was missing…lost, silent. The artists had selected 400 names to represent the over 4,000 Irish orphan girls so you had to be lucky for your girl to be chosen. However, the artists had chosen the girls above and below Bridget on the shipping list and had left Bridget out. I swear it is like Bridget has activated some kind of privacy block from the grave. “Leave me alone”. She really doesn’t want to be found.

The Plaque

The web site provides a detailed explanation of the monument:

“On the internal side of the wall, the long table represents the institutional side of things. There is a plate, a spoon and a place to sit on a three legged stool. There are also a couple of books including a Bible, and a little sewing basket. In contrast, on the other side, is the continuation of the same table, but much smaller in scale. There sits the bowl which is hollow and actually cannot hold anything, representing lack of food and lack of possibilities. There is also the potato digging shovel, called a loy, leaning against the wall near a shelf containing some potatoes. The selection of 400 names, some of which fade, also indicates some of the girls who are lost to history and memory.”

Anyway, even if you can’t claim Irish blood, the Irish famine Memorial is certainly worth a visit and you can check out the Hyde Park Barracks Museum while you are there.

Bridget would have worn something like this simple dress…Hyde Park Barracks Museum.

Are you a descendent from one of these Irish Orphan girls? If so, I would love to hear your story and you are welcome to post a link to your Irish orphan girl in the comments below.

xx Rowena