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
Bridget Donovan's Journey 