We arrived
in Ireland by boat which is the same way my great-great grandmother, Julia Anne
Scanlan left 180 years ago. Of course our
journeys have been different in every conceivable way but I like to think our footsteps
might have crossed somewhere in the Dublin Quays.
Julia Ann
and her sister Mary Jane were orphans who left Ireland to re-establish
themselves in a Australia just a few years shy of The Great Famine. Had they not done so I wouldn’t be writing
this and none of you would be reading it.
I fact a number of you, just like me, would simply not exist. I’m thinking specifically of Rae Roy, Anna
Cawthorne, Tanya Strasburg, Nancy Backhouse and Richard Cawthorne plus a few hundred
others.
Julia was already
a very brave young woman for taking the plunge into an unknown future on the
other side of the world but then she did what must have been unthinkable for a
Roman Catholic woman of her time, she not only married my Methodist great-great
grandfather, William Baker, but she also converted back in the day that earned you
an eternity in hell along with all the unbaptised babies.
But of course
there have been numerous revisions since Julia’s day. She’s apparently no longer is hell and her life
with William was a successful one. They
built a home and a farm and raised a family.
Their daughter Bertha, married my great-grandfather, John William
Cawthorne, a native of Lincolnshire who made the move to Australia some years
earlier and you can work the rest out from there.
Immigration
is our past and immigration is our future.
We took a shuttle
from the ferry to the nearby light rail stop where the Luas whisked us of through
town to the Ashling Hotel just across the River Liffey from Heuston Station
which was the departure point for our six-day rail tour of Ireland which began
early next morning.
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| The Luas heading back across Sean Heuston Bridge near of hotel |
I was reminded
of the two times during the early mid-60s when my mother and grandfather
abandoned me at Hornsby Station to be transported away to National Fitness Camp
quite against my will. The first was Myuna
Bay and as if that hadn’t been cruel enough then to Point Wollstonecraft, two
years later, it being possible to see one from the other across a shark
infected bay in Lake Macquarie. Both
places instilled in me a lifelong hatred of Brussels sprouts and organised fun.
“Look for
the company representative wearing the bright yellow jacket” read the “Day 1”
page of the orientation package we’d been given at the hotel and there he was
just as lively as one might possibly be in bright yellow. “Top of the morning to you gentlemen” he
chirped in Irish brogue and I immediately thought “My god, this is the Irish version
of Michael Portillo!” He was certainly dressed
for the part.
It was a
7.00am departure and we’d been up since just before 6.00am so I wasn’t yet in happy
camper mode but did sense there was tale worthy source material in some of the
other campers who were beginning to gather about and involve Seamus in their
happy snaps while he was attempting to give us all name tags, more paperwork to
add to our orientation packages and teach us a few basic words of Gaelic like please, thank you and shut the fuck
up Darrel and Corrine from Flint, Michigan!
Darrel and
Corrine were Irish-Americans and fiercely proud of both sides of their
hyphen. We hadn’t even made it to the
train before we learned that their ancestors had left Ireland about the same
time as Julia and Mary. In fact, I rather
think those ancestors might have been just as closely related as Julia and Mary
and had kept it pretty much that way right down through the generations but
more about our evangelical Republican voting MAGAs a little later on.
The train
rolled out of Heuston Street Station right on time with a chirpy commentary from
somebody unseen as we passed through the south-western suburbs of Dublin and on
to the lush green Curragh of Kildare.
Then it was Tipperary which may have been a long way from London when
the song was written but it isn’t really that far from Dublin on a train these
days
We alighted
at Cork and climbed aboard the bus for our trip to Blarney Castle where I
refused to climb 127 steps just to wait in line to kiss a filthy old stone so
we hit the gardens instead and lovely they were. It was also a chance to get away from Darrel
and Corrine who, having not yet worked out that we were gay agnostic socialists
that firmly believe Donald Trump to be the anti-Christ, had rather disturbingly
attached themselves to us. I can only imaging
it was the radiant charm I exude early in the morning much like the stench of
garlic and cigarettes from the pores of a cheap Parisian prostitute.
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| Blarney Castle & gardens |
After that
it was on to the Port of Cobh where I’m certain I heard Corrine speaking in
tongues. This, after all, was where
their family had departed Ireland for America like millions of others. I had to leave the Flintstones at this point because
having been so moved by the immigration story at Ellis Island in New York
nearly 20 years ago I really needed to experience the emigration story from
Ireland in relative silence.
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| Cork |
Yes, it
was here that I renamed Darrell and Corrine Fred
and Wilma, coming from Flint as
they did, and that came back to bite me one evening after a pint or three of Guinness
but never mind.
From there
it was back onto a train and off to our accommodation for the next two nights
in Killarney. Once settled we fair
sprinted out of the hotel and back a few blocks to a Thai restaurant we’d passed
on the way in from the station being quite sure Fred and Wilma would be searching
for a burger joint. We didn’t see then
again until breakfast next morning when I recommended Fred try the black
pudding. I assured him it was really just
a darker version of a McDonald’s sausage patty which saw him bolt for the
buffet. He told me that while it was indeed
a bit like a Sausage and Egg McMuffin without the encumbrance of the egg or
muffin it also tasted a like moose and went back for more. Yabba Dabba Do!
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| Killarney |
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