Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
 
Ireland

The joys of plane travel impressed itself on me again, with delays getting a landing spot at Heathrow in London making us have to run to catch our connecting flight to Dublin. For some bizarre reason we had to walk for what seemed like a mile, then go through immigration again and walk for another mile to get the flight, being told all the time we had to run or we’d miss it. Of course, when we finally arrived at the right departure gate there was still a queue.

We arrived in Dublin about 10.30 at night (after midnight Turkey time) and then had a bus trip for an hour or so up to our first destination at Carrickmacross in County Monaghan, which pushes up into the six northern counties that are still governed by Britain.

The majority of my ancestors came from Ireland, and the heritage and experience of the Irish Catholic in Australian society from the start of the twentieth century shaped the upbringing of my parents and grandparents more than any other. One day it would be nice to have the time to wander through the country at a bit more of a leisurely pace, but there’s not much scope for that on this visit. When I add up all the different strands, I think I am eleven-sixteenths Irish, with the rest made up of bits of Greek, Swiss and English. All the various Irish strands came to Australia at various times during the nineteenth century, the biggest strand coming from County Tipperary, plus some from Kerry and Kildare.

One of the members of this delegation, Ursula Stephens, was born in County Wicklow in Ireland and migrated to Australia when she was a child, so her homecoming is being acknowledged everywhere we go. She is one of only two Irish born members of the federal Parliament in Australia (the other being Senator George Campbell who was born in Belfast).

We have also been regularly told that Australia has the highest proportion of people of Irish origin of any country in the world (outside of Ireland itself of course), and Australia’s thumping defeat of the Irish team in the first match of the current hybrid AFL/Gaelic football series is also referred to by most people we meet (which is a bit ironic, because I don’t think any of our delegation had even been aware that the game was being held, as we’d been in Turkey for the week leading up to it.)

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, October 25, 2005 Permalink
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