Building a new life

Ceremonial building trowels presented to Archbishop Spence, 1915-29. Archives and Records Services, Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide.

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Religion: Spence the Builder

Australian Catholics were used to opening their wallets to help their church. Over the decades they donated a sizeable sum towards the building of churches, presbyteries, church halls, catholic schools, convents and monasteries. Such buildings are dotted across Australia, from city centres to suburbs, country towns and smaller rural settlements, and constitute the most visible legacy of the Irish Catholic presence.

South Australia was always regarded as the least Irish and Catholic of the Australian colonies. Nevertheless, during the reign of Irishman Robert William Spence as Catholic archbishop of Adelaide (1915–34), his diocese experienced a veritable building boom. Spence officiated at the laying of foundation stones, and the opening of more than 85 major church buildings. The man who became known as 'Spence the Builder' was proud of this achievement because, as he saw it, thousands of ordinary Catholics had contributed to the expansion of their church. Spence had the many silver trowels he used on these occasions mounted onto shields for display at his official residence.

Chair used by Prime Minister Ben Chifley in church, 1940s. St Christopher's Cathedral, Canberra.

Religion: Chif's chair

The Catholic church has traditionally disapproved of marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. In 1908 the Pope announced the famous 'Ne Temere' decree, which ruled all marriages between Catholics and others invalid unless conducted by a Catholic priest.

This decree affected the relationship between Ben Chifley and Elizabeth McKenzie of Bathurst, New South Wales. Chifley was Irish Catholic on all sides of his family, and McKenzie was a Presbyterian with Scottish parents, who were definitely not in favour of her converting to Catholicism in order to marry Chifley. And so, in June 1914, they married in a Presbyterian church, Chifley taking the view that 'one of us has to take the knock. It had better be me'. The 'knock' for him meant that for having married outside his church he was barred from taking communion, and the church did not regard his marriage as legitimate, even though it was legal.

The Chifleys would simply have been another couple whose lives were complicated by a mixed marriage but for the fact that theirs were lived in the spotlight of public attention. Chifley was a leading Labor politician and, on Prime Minister John Curtin's death in 1945, he became prime minister of Australia. He never deserted his church. When in Canberra he often attended mass at St Christopher's Catholic Church, now St Christopher's Cathedral, where he sat in the back of the church on what is now preserved there as 'Chif's chair'. When Chifley died in 1951 he was given a Catholic funeral in Bathurst.

Read more about Ben Chifley on the National Museum's Prime Ministers of Australia website

Ben and Elizabeth Chifley, 1940s. Bathurst Historical Society, New South Wales.

Ben Chifley (1885–1951) and Elizabeth McKenzie were married in a Presbyterian Church in 1914. Chifley, who later became Australia's 16th prime minister, was Irish Catholic on all sides of his family. McKenzie was a Presbyterian with Scottish parents who were not in favour of her converting to Catholicism.

Chifley never deserted his church, despite its ruling that his marriage outside the church was invalid. In Canberra he often attended mass at St Christopher's Catholic Church, now a cathedral, where he sat at the back on what is now preserved there as 'Chif's chair'.

An orrery, or mechanical solar system model, used at Loreto College, Ballarat about 1900. Loreto Centre, Ballarat, Victoria.

Education: An orrery from Ireland

It is difficult now to catch that tone of condescension, superiority, and often outright racism with which the Irish, especially the Catholic Irish, were once confronted in the Australian colonies. Jokes and cartoons ridiculing supposed Irish stupidity, illiteracy and general racial inferiority were commonplace in magazines such as the Sydney and Melbourne editions of Punch. So it is hardly surprising that the Catholic Irish worked hard to give their children an education that would allow them to get on – and move up – in colonial society. For their daughters, those who were better off turned to the Irish nuns. By the 1880s and 1890s, quality teaching and facilities could be found in such schools as Loreto College, Mary's Mount, Ballarat, Victoria.

The founder of the college, and its first principal, was Irishwoman Mother Mary Gonzaga Barry of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, better known as the Loreto Sisters. She had a simple message for her pupils: 'Set before yourself something which will ennoble your life, your thoughts and your endeavours. Aim at something excellent'.

For her day, Mother Barry had an extremely advanced approach to girls' education; the Loreto curriculum encompassed, among much else, literature, mathematics, languages, music, painting, science and history. The school even possessed an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system, which they used to teach the basics of astronomy. This rare device – there were only three in Australia at the time – was sent out from Ireland by Mother Barry's brother.

Vincent Buckley at Yeats Tower, Gort, Ireland, 1973. Courtesy Penelope Buckley.

Literature: Searching for Ireland

Australian poet and academic Vincent Buckley was born in 1925 in a cottage behind his uncle's pub, in a region north of Melbourne much settled by the Irish in the mid-nineteenth century. He described his Condon, Scanlan and Buckley ancestors as being 'typical' and 'anonymous', their sense of being Irish having been lost in becoming Australian. This, Buckley believed, was contrary to popular belief that saw Catholics in Australia as having preserved a strong awareness of their Irish origins.

Perhaps it was this sense of disconnectedness with his Irish past that led Buckley into an ever-deepening search for that part of him that was 'Irish'. His frequent visits to the country naturally took him to sites such as the ancient tower in County Galway associated with William Butler Yeats, Ireland's most famous twentieth-century poet. Yeats also struggled with what it meant to be Irish, but Buckley seems to have become somewhat disillusioned with the Ireland of the 1970s. Interestingly, in one of his last published poems, he circles back pensively to his Australian birthplace, Romsey:

I see Romsey through a hole in the wind,
as I used to in late autumn, in the southern gales ...
I smell the printer's ink, and books,
and dust that flashes when the raindrops hit it as it takes the rain into itself.

1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery, Sydney. Photo: Lannon Harley.

In Waverley Cemetery, Sydney, is one of the greatest monuments to Irish national feeling in the world, the 1798 Memorial. It was built between 1898 and 1900 to commemorate the great rebellion of 1798 against British rule in Ireland. Hundreds of '1798' rebels were transported to Sydney.

The memorial is also a tomb. Beneath it lie the remains of Michael Dwyer and his wife, Mary. After the rebellion, Dwyer and his men successfully avoided capture in the mountains until they surrendered in 1803, on condition of being exiled to the United States. Instead, they were sent to Australia, but as political exiles, not convicts.