Love Letter to Sydney

You have to admire the British and their ability to see triumph in disaster. Their greatest Military memories are when they charged down a hill in Crimea to be slaughtered by Russian cannon (who had clearly been told to make light of the charging brigade) and when they scampered from the beach at Dunkirk like a flock of Wildebeest before an advancing lion. Not even the admission by the Germans that they had let them escape because Hitler still saw hope in a coalition with Britain against the Soviets could dent their national pride. Or when they invent sports and then turn out to be rubbish at them.

But they also have an uncanny ability to see disaster in triumph. They have built a multi-cultural population that has provided the best curry and sports people in the world. They created a Universal Health Service that mocks the public/greed bilocation plans in Ireland. They have a transport system that carries people across a metropolis like London in minutes. And yet if you ask British people what’s wrong with their country they’ll tell you transport, health and immigration.

So it’s little wonder that a people such as that would create a penal colony in one of the most beautiful places on earth. The French picked desolate rocks in the Caribbean for theirs while the Russians picked the coldest province in what was already the coldest country. The British meanwhile sailed half way round the world to Sydney, a natural vista with clear blue seas and rolling fertile hills. And said “Yeah, this looks like a good place for a prison.” So they dragged a few thousand paddies from famine infested villages in Ireland, smacked them on the wrists for stealing food from the landlords who had stolen their land and sent them here. To Sydney, where the sun shines for 10 months of the year, where the sea is abundant with fish, where animals queued up for slaughter as they knew no different, where even your jailor would allow you to abuse the native women. This was Britain’s idea of torture. To bring people to a place that 2 million tourists now visit each year.

Of course those early colonists did not have the Opera House and Harbour Bridge to gaze at as they stumbled off the prison ship in their shackles. Neither did they have the welcoming arms of pubs along the Rocks or Fish and Chips in Manly. But they had fresh air and food and a potential ticket to freedom in an untapped land.

Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney was where those unfortunate prisoners were first brought to be processed. Today it is a wonderful museum dedicated to the hard life endured by those men and women who are the ancestors of many current day Aussies (not that you’ll find too many Aussies willing to admit it). Within that museum you’ll also find an exhibit that symbolises the wicked humour of the Irish and particularly the Haughey Government. In 1988, Australia celebrated it’s bi-centenary. Many countries provided gifts to recognise the bond that Australia has to the countries that provided its immigrant populations. The Dutch probably gave a giant cheese. The Italians an Aussie shaped Pizza.

The Haughey government gave a database of all Irish people sent to Australian penal colonies, with details of their ship, birthplace, age and crime (usually menial). As a research tool it is invaluable and you can wile away an hour or so in Hyde Park Barracks looking up your ancestors. But I can’t help thinking of Charlie Haughey signing the card that went with it while giggling to himself. “Happy 200th birthday. Here’s a list of all the criminals we sent you.”

I’m glad that I’m living in Melbourne and not Sydney because Sydney is one of my favourite places to visit and I think living there would steal some of that magic. I’d start to associate the City with traffic problems and poor services. And I’d rather think of it as those first European visitors must have thought as they rounded Sydney Heads and entered the vast harbour within. That they had stumbled upon beauty, majesty and glorious nature.

As Captain Cook docked at what is now Circular Quay, I’m sure his first thoughts were “if we can only figure out a way of stealing the land from the locals, we’re laughing.” Then Richards stood up at the back and said “Can’t we use the plan we used in Ireland in 1641?”.


And the rest as they say, is History.