AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF IRISH STUDIES
ONLINE SERIES
This series publishes online open-access pieces that make a broad scholarly contribution to Irish Studies. We welcome conference papers, scholarly notes, creative works or pieces that are more suited to open access than AJIS.
This series also includes reprints from past issues of AJIS that are of interest to a broad Irish Studies audience, including research reports, bibliographies and obituaries.
We accept submissions that have not been published elsewhere and are up to 5,000 words in length (or equivalent). The Editors of AJIS will make the final decision on acceptance.
For submissions please email: ajiseds [at] gmail.com
For queries please contact one of the editors:
Philip Bull • Frances Devlin-Glass • Dianne Hall • Elizabeth Malcolm • Chris Murray
Abstract: The Irish were the largest group of settlers to colonise Australia after the English. Perhaps as many as 400,000 arrived between the 1790s and the 1920s, nearly three-quarters of whom were Catholics. At the peak of their numbers in 1891, some 227,000 Irish-born women and men were living in the six Australian colonies. A decade later, when the colonies joined together in a federation, the Catholic Irish and their Australian- born descendants comprised nearly 23 per cent of the total non-Indigenous population. Throughout most of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, however, there was one important difference between the Irish and all other immigrants, whether the latter had arrived from Britain, Europe, the United States or China. Amongst the Irish, women formed a majority or near majority at an early date, although women did not come to outnumber men in the Australian population as a whole until the 1980s.
Elizabeth Malcolm is an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne. She held the university’s Gerry Higgins Chair of Irish Studies between 2000 and 2012, having previously worked at universities in Ireland, England and Norway. Val Noone is a fellow in Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne. In 2013 the National University of Ireland awarded him the degree Doctor of Literature for his contribution to Irish Studies in Australia. Dianne Hall has published extensively on Irish and Irish Australian histories of gender, religion and violence. She currently is professor in the Institute of Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities, Victoria University, Melbourne.
Originally published Australasian Journal of Irish Studies volume 22, 2022, pp. 53-105.
2020:1 Noone, Malcolm: “Forgetting and remembering the Irish Famine Orphans: A critical survey”
Abstract: Why were the Irish Famine orphans forgotten for so long in Australia, even by their own descendants, when copious records and reports about them were preserved in numerous libraries and archives? Equally, why in recent decades have they suddenly been remembered again—not merely restored to family memory and to historical discourse, but hailed as founding mothers? The following pages cannot hope to provide complete answers to all these large and challenging questions, but they can at least begin the task of seeking answers. This article investigates the change in public awareness reflected in the Olive family story. It first surveys colonial and twentieth-century critics of the Famine orphan scheme; then highlights the influence of Trevor McClaughlin’s 1991 book; it reviews the responses of family historians, the role of memorials, and representations of the orphans in literature, song, folklore and electronic media; before finally offering some reflections on forgetting and remembering in the face of trauma.
Val Noone is a fellow in Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne. In 2013 the National University of Ireland awarded him the degree Doctor of Literature for his contribution to Irish Studies in Australia. Elizabeth Malcolm is an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne. She held the university’s Gerry Higgins Chair of Irish Studies between 2000 and 2012, having previously worked at universities in Ireland, England and Norway.
Originally published Australasian Journal of Irish Studies volume 20 2020, pp. 139-168.
2019: 1 Pauline Peel: “The Day We Celebrate” St Patrick’s Day, Warwick, Queensland 1872-1972
Abstract: Warwick, Queensland’s St Patrick’s Day celebration and its signature procession, endured as a prominent feature of the town’s calendar from 1872 to 1972. Drawing on personal memory, oral interviews, and a rich archive of 100 years of local newspaper reportage, the article considers the history and evolution of the celebrations. Opening with the author’s childhood memories of St Patrick’s Day in Warwick, the author explores the successful adaptation of the celebrations for multi generations of people of Irish Catholic heritage. The “Irish nationalist” period of the 1880s – 1921, and the post World War 2 anti-communist, strongly religious period are given as examples of this success. The important role of the local Parish Priests and the Hibernians is discussed. Particular reference is made to the narratives associated with St Patrick’s Day dinners, luncheons and processions.
Pauline Peel is an independent scholar with a particular interest in family and local history. Pauline’s Catholic Irish Australian roots go back to Warwick, Queensland in the 1860s. In 2018 she published The Family from Elagh Hill, a history of her paternal Irish Australian family. The book explores their origins in Co. Tyrone and their transition and life as farmers in the Warwick district. Pauline has a passion for local history and community. She has been a senior public servant in local and state government.
Abstract: This paper draws on the oral history of Mary O’Seighin (née Talty) whose grandparents migrated from County Clare in 1883. From bullock cart to railway work and the iconic engine Faugh-a-Ballagh, we trace the story of an Irish migrant family as they strive to build a better life for themselves and their children. We follow them across the Great Dividing Range into the fertile land of the Darling Downs, to Swan Creek, Killarney, Warwick and Toowoomba as they rise from life under canvas to land ownership, service in the Great War, enduring love of family and immersion in Irish culture in a community that was thoroughly Irish.
Pat Ryan migrated to Australia from Ireland as a young graduate some forty years ago and has developed an extensive knowledge of the Irish in Australia in this time. As an oral historian and longstanding member of Oral History Queensland Inc, she has published accounts of Irish migration to Australia, including the Warwick district. She was a long-time broadcaster and presenter on the Radio 4eb Irish Program. She is also an accomplished researcher, policy writer and community worker.
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