I think I've found a cure for anxiety. Try and gather a number of things to worry about and pretty soon you'll find that you are so confused you won't be able to concentrate on anything. You'll turn from an anxious person into a mumbling idiot which may not sound like an improvement but at least gets you a nice padded cell and you'll be given lots of colored balloons to play with.
I'm about ten minutes away from the balloons at the moment. The world just seems to have become an overwhelming place and it's hard to stay calm. The news is filled with economic horror stories that could be penned by Edgar Allen Poe. My homeland seems to be suffering this more than anyone else (although Iceland and Latvia might disagree) and lurches every day towards some unstoppable Armageddon. My employer is technically bankrupt and only stays alive because the American Government can't face the appalling vista of letting it die. And all the while, the skies around Melbourne are filled with the choking dust of a hundred bush-fires, which like some rough beast is slouching ever closer towards the City.
And which of these impending disasters is worrying me most? None of them in fact, I've spent all day wondering if Arsenal will qualify for next years Champion's League and if the Lasagne I cooked at the weekend will taste as good after three days in the fridge.
We live in times that will either kill us or leave us with great stories to tell our grandkids. I used to feel cheated that our generation was the most boring since Adam and Eve. My grandfathers fought in Ireland’s war of independence and were midwives to the birth of our nation. My father was a young teenager during World War II and despite living in the relative safety of a neutral country, he has many tales of errant German bombs falling on the nearby village and dry black bread for dinner.
Our generation knew little about real drama. Of course there have been wars, famine and natural disasters on our watch, but these were always in far flung places and we could ignore them as quickly as we could turn off a television. That has all changed now of course and we have a story which will scare and astonish future generations.
When I come to tell my grandchildren about Black 09, I’ll start with economics. That was the time when the 400 year old orthodoxy of Capitalism finally collapsed. In hindsight it seems so obvious that it would falter, seeing as how it was built on a seismic fault line. We split the world into consumers and producers. The consumers paid the producers for goods and then borrowed money back from the producers in order to buy more goods.
I call this older brother economics. When I was 10 years old, I had a fascination with train sets. My Mother’s cruel solution to this longing was to buy a train set for my older brother, who at 12 years old had no interest in such things as he was developing a keener affection for narcotics and pornography. He realised however, that he could extract my measly weekly pocket money for the offer of one hour’s train time. I hungrily agreed but found myself an hour later unsated in my desire to be Thomas the Tank Engine. My only solution was to borrow from my brother against the security of next week’s pocket money.
My brother fed my voracious appetite by adding new carriages and bridges and pretty soon I owed him so much that I would still be paying him back when I was 45. He realised that I was a bad debt and decided to give me a good beating in lieu of missed payments. The fact that he used Engine number one for this purpose was painful for me on a number of levels.
That’s what childhood is for, a chance to live out and learn from the failures that adults make, in the security of a kid’s game. Unfortunately, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher do not seem to have had older brothers.
While the world partied through the recent consumer driven boom, the Irish were up in one of the back bedrooms getting high on LCD while being sick over the guest’s coats. We Irish just can’t do anything at normal levels. Offer us a free bar at a wedding and the happy couple will be paying the bill off for 20 years. Start an Internet campaign to vote for the 20th Century’s most important person and the Irish will conspire to ensure that an obscure 3rd Division football player wins the poll.
So it is with economic booms. We couldn’t just do a normal one. We had to go out and get rip-roaring drunk and while the rest of the world now has a hangover, we Irish are in the emergency ward on an intravenous drip.
But if the world and my homeland wasn’t enough to worry about this week, I’m also faced with the dilemma of working for a company that is teetering on the edge of extinction. We’ve had more bail-outs than a lifeboat from the Titanic and the analogy of sinking ships is not out of place. We receive daily emails from the CEO in the States telling us not to panic. When you consider that he was the one that got us into this mess in the first place, it’s hard to trust his judgment. With the amount of debt the company is burdened with, it’s clear that he didn’t have an older brother either.
When faced with so many worries, we can either turn to the drink or learn that we should only concern ourselves with the things we can control. Everything else will happen anyway. As the writer Leo Buscaglia said “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy”.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Wednesday 18 February 2009
Fire and Dust
Epic is an overused word in this part of the world. Baz Luhrman wrote and directed “Australia”, a weepy big budget movie that could easily double as a Qantas advertisement. Baz uses the word ‘Epic” when flogging his film in reference mainly to the country after which the movie is called. He talks about its vast deserts, towering mountains and raging rivers (when not in drought). But you can’t help feeling that Baz is overusing the word in an attempt to have his own movie thought of in that vein.
However, “Epic” is the only word that can describe Australia this week. Queensland has just gone through three cyclones in a fortnight resulting in torrents of water, while down in South Australia, they baked through a week of 40c plus days with not a drop of water to be seen.
Here in Victoria, we’ve had our own record weather to deal with. God teased us with a week of hot days and steamy nights towards the end of January. The mercury stayed above 40 for four days in a row that drove the citizens of Melbourne to light headedness and caused thousands of them to sit in the murky waters of Port Phillip Bay at midnight in a desperate attempt to stay cool.
Melbourne houses are not built to manage hot weather, because seemingly these high temperatures are a relatively modern development. It is as though we are seeing global warming through a magnifying glass in this part of the world. So it was with some trepidation that the City braced itself for Saturday February 7th. The meteorologists warned that records would be broken. None of us realised how awfully accurate that statement would become.
On the day itself, temperatures reached a new official record for Melbourne of 46.6c, although in parts of the City it reached 49c. It’s hard to describe how hot that feels. I walked 100 meters from my air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned cinema and it was like a trek through Dante’s Inferno. The first thing you notice is a tingling on your lips as the moisture sizzles and evaporates. You don’t sweat because your body somehow recognises how futile that would be. You simply bake in an oppressive heat and scamper for whatever cover you can find.
We were lucky in that we found a movie that was both enjoyable and lengthy and were able to escape the heat of the afternoon in a pleasantly chilled cinema. The cool change had been forecast for late afternoon. This is a weather feature that seems unique to Victoria. The hot winds that swirl down from the Central Deserts bring scorching weather to South East Australia. They are met by cooler winds coming from Antarctica and eventually these cool winds push through. When this happens temperatures can fall by twenty degrees in twenty minutes. On one occasion I was chased up Bourke Street by a cool change on my way back from lunch and a very pleasant experience it was too.
Melbournians look forward to the cool change in the way six year olds look forward to Christmas. On hot days, the expected time of arrival of the change is the main subject of conversation at work, particularly at this time of year when there is no AFL football to talk about.
As we left the cinema on February 7th, the smiles on the faces of people in the foyer told us that the cool change had arrived. On this occasion, the temperature had only dropped by 10 degrees to a still extreme 36c, but to us it felt like we’d been dipped in ice cream and we lingered on our stroll back to the car.
So the City survived its hottest day since records began and we settled in on that Saturday evening to prepare the stories we would tell our workmates about how we got through the big heat. In country Victoria however, a tragedy was emerging that would make our stories of discomfort simply ridiculous.
Nature gives us the beauty that this world possesses and also the bounty to enjoy it. Many Australians choose to live in the bush, or forest as we Europeans call it. It gives them a feeling of peace and solitude and also an escape from the stifling heat of the City. To many it is the true Australia, the place where Koalas and Kangaroos live, people drive Utes with a large sheepdog in the back and all the pubs serve homemade pies.
On February 7th, Australia’s love affair with the bush died.
Its hard to imagine the horror those poor people felt on that day from hell. To be surrounded by fire roaring as loudly as a jet engine is too frightening to even contemplate. The stories of their struggles are starting to emerge with each new tale more horrific than the last.
Now that the dust is settling (both literally and figuratively), the search for explanations has begun. There seems to be a need to find a culprit, as though Mother Nature herself could not be so cruel to her off-spring. Stories of potential arsonists lead the evening news, although it’s clear that only a small proportion of fires were started this way. Faulty power cables are also talked about frantically as they appear to have caused the largest fire. This would point the blame at negligent people and give the community a focus upon which they can direct their anger.
Nobody wants to face the awful truth. Last Saturday was a spectacularly hot day and the wind that whipped down from the deserts reached speeds of 100kph. Add that to the tinder dry vegetation that ten years of drought have created and you have a powder keg just waiting to explode. A piece of broken glass or a lightening strike would have been enough to set it off. And the scary thing is that all these elements are likely to repeat themselves in this climate change condemned country.
The fact that people choose to live in areas at high risk of fire is the real issue that needs to be addressed. If people lived on the cusp of live volcanoes, we’d consider them mad. But people want to live in the middle of forests in an area that will burn regularly. It is the Australian way and a symbol of the freedom that people in this country so desperately crave. Three hundred people have paid the ultimate price for that freedom.
However, “Epic” is the only word that can describe Australia this week. Queensland has just gone through three cyclones in a fortnight resulting in torrents of water, while down in South Australia, they baked through a week of 40c plus days with not a drop of water to be seen.
Here in Victoria, we’ve had our own record weather to deal with. God teased us with a week of hot days and steamy nights towards the end of January. The mercury stayed above 40 for four days in a row that drove the citizens of Melbourne to light headedness and caused thousands of them to sit in the murky waters of Port Phillip Bay at midnight in a desperate attempt to stay cool.
Melbourne houses are not built to manage hot weather, because seemingly these high temperatures are a relatively modern development. It is as though we are seeing global warming through a magnifying glass in this part of the world. So it was with some trepidation that the City braced itself for Saturday February 7th. The meteorologists warned that records would be broken. None of us realised how awfully accurate that statement would become.
On the day itself, temperatures reached a new official record for Melbourne of 46.6c, although in parts of the City it reached 49c. It’s hard to describe how hot that feels. I walked 100 meters from my air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned cinema and it was like a trek through Dante’s Inferno. The first thing you notice is a tingling on your lips as the moisture sizzles and evaporates. You don’t sweat because your body somehow recognises how futile that would be. You simply bake in an oppressive heat and scamper for whatever cover you can find.
We were lucky in that we found a movie that was both enjoyable and lengthy and were able to escape the heat of the afternoon in a pleasantly chilled cinema. The cool change had been forecast for late afternoon. This is a weather feature that seems unique to Victoria. The hot winds that swirl down from the Central Deserts bring scorching weather to South East Australia. They are met by cooler winds coming from Antarctica and eventually these cool winds push through. When this happens temperatures can fall by twenty degrees in twenty minutes. On one occasion I was chased up Bourke Street by a cool change on my way back from lunch and a very pleasant experience it was too.
Melbournians look forward to the cool change in the way six year olds look forward to Christmas. On hot days, the expected time of arrival of the change is the main subject of conversation at work, particularly at this time of year when there is no AFL football to talk about.
As we left the cinema on February 7th, the smiles on the faces of people in the foyer told us that the cool change had arrived. On this occasion, the temperature had only dropped by 10 degrees to a still extreme 36c, but to us it felt like we’d been dipped in ice cream and we lingered on our stroll back to the car.
So the City survived its hottest day since records began and we settled in on that Saturday evening to prepare the stories we would tell our workmates about how we got through the big heat. In country Victoria however, a tragedy was emerging that would make our stories of discomfort simply ridiculous.
Nature gives us the beauty that this world possesses and also the bounty to enjoy it. Many Australians choose to live in the bush, or forest as we Europeans call it. It gives them a feeling of peace and solitude and also an escape from the stifling heat of the City. To many it is the true Australia, the place where Koalas and Kangaroos live, people drive Utes with a large sheepdog in the back and all the pubs serve homemade pies.
On February 7th, Australia’s love affair with the bush died.
Its hard to imagine the horror those poor people felt on that day from hell. To be surrounded by fire roaring as loudly as a jet engine is too frightening to even contemplate. The stories of their struggles are starting to emerge with each new tale more horrific than the last.
Now that the dust is settling (both literally and figuratively), the search for explanations has begun. There seems to be a need to find a culprit, as though Mother Nature herself could not be so cruel to her off-spring. Stories of potential arsonists lead the evening news, although it’s clear that only a small proportion of fires were started this way. Faulty power cables are also talked about frantically as they appear to have caused the largest fire. This would point the blame at negligent people and give the community a focus upon which they can direct their anger.
Nobody wants to face the awful truth. Last Saturday was a spectacularly hot day and the wind that whipped down from the deserts reached speeds of 100kph. Add that to the tinder dry vegetation that ten years of drought have created and you have a powder keg just waiting to explode. A piece of broken glass or a lightening strike would have been enough to set it off. And the scary thing is that all these elements are likely to repeat themselves in this climate change condemned country.
The fact that people choose to live in areas at high risk of fire is the real issue that needs to be addressed. If people lived on the cusp of live volcanoes, we’d consider them mad. But people want to live in the middle of forests in an area that will burn regularly. It is the Australian way and a symbol of the freedom that people in this country so desperately crave. Three hundred people have paid the ultimate price for that freedom.
Monday 16 February 2009
You've Got Mail
Nicole, if you’re reading this, the Sacred Heart mission has been on again looking for more money. I guess Scott was right. You give once to these bleeding heart charities and they’ll keep trying to suck more out of you. Mind you he can’t talk. He thought investing in all those American companies was child’s play and the only time they would write to him was to tell him that his latest dividend cheque was now nesting in his account. Little did he think that the global financial crisis would mean those companies would end up writing to him every month looking for more cash?
Capital raising is the latest buzzword among big companies as they desperately try to get out of this crisis. Luckily they have a database of greedy capitalists known as shareholders that they can write to. And that’s where most of Scott’s mail is coming from these days. Invest in these companies once and just like the charities, they’ll keep coming back to you for more.
You can learn a lot about somebody from their post. I should know, I’ve been getting a lot of it lately. The previous tenants in my apartment had clearly set up a one year redirection of their mail, because I got nothing for them for the first twelve months that I lived here. That all changed one day when the Post Office computer system reverted back to normal. Suddenly I started getting more mail for them than I was getting for myself. I don’t get much, it has to be said. I’ve gone down the green route and get most of my stuff by email and I’m paranoid about those little boxes on websites that ask you if you want to be kept up to date on the company’s promotional activities, upcoming offers and every other devise that evil marketing people can think of. I have a particular rule that I invoke which means that I refuse to use websites in the future that have this pre-ticked box and leave it up to the customer to un-tick if they don’t want to be bombarded with a mountain of junk mail. It does mean that I’ve missed out on Jetstar’s offer of $5 flights to Bali, but there is a price to be paid for Principle.
Nicole obviously failed to un-tick the appropriate boxes because she’s been inundated by mail from every dodgy promotion office this side of Las Vegas. The Smith family help disadvantaged Australian kids. They run most of their fund raising around Christmas and back in 2006 I guess husband Scott was upping his investment in Altria at around the same time as the TV was running ads with pictures of malnourished children. The price of capitalism and greed is paid by the conscience. As Scott was writing out cheques to his broker, Nicole was balancing the books by paying a little to the Smith Family. Little did she know that they would spend most of the money she gave them on promotional literature that would end up back in her mailbox, or mine as it is now.
And I think she made a mistake one day in the centre of Melbourne. Chuggers stand on every major intersection and pounce on anyone who looks vaguely middle class and whose heart sinks at the sight of poor children, animals or criminals locked up in foreign prisons. These charity muggers operate in teams and act like lions on the African plains as they track down and surround the weakest of the herd. Nicole was clearly that one day. But she should have realised that her first year’s direct debits to Amnesty International would have gone to the chugger’s employers and that most of her future payments would be spent by Amnesty printing literature to ask her for more money. While I’m at it, I should point out to Amnesty that Guantanamo Bay is about to be closed, so can they stop writing to Nicole about it. As someone said on TV today, it’s a sure sign of the recession when torturers are being laid of.
Apart from keeping the family conscience clear, it was also Nicole’s job to look after the cultural side. She obviously enjoyed that Matisse Picasso exhibition at the Arts Centre because she asked them to add her to their mailing list. From the post Scott gets, it’s clear that he is a philistine. Gym club memberships and company reports make up his in-box. I like to think of him being dragged along to the exhibition and then embarrassing Nicole by saying to the guide that he thought Picasso’s first name was Pablo.
I’ve been meaning to drop Nicole and Scott’s mail down to the letting agency, but the only time I can make it there is on Saturday mornings. But somehow their mail does seem important enough to get me out of bed on my morning of rest. I guess they had the good sense to write to all the major people like banks, taxman and family to tell them of their new address. I just get the junk. The charities and the companies that Scott invested in but would rather not think about now. The last ten years have seen an explosion in communication methods from email to text messages. Snail mail seems so old fashioned now. Left to ones who want to send you brochures and twenty Christmas cards, mouth painted by people with no arms and legs (charged to your credit card Nicole, unless you write back within 30 days!).
We move house and we throw out the junk when we do. But I think we forget that some junk just keeps coming at us. It’s hard to know how many boxes you ticked in the past asking to be added to mailing lists. It’s even harder to remember how many boxes you failed to tick asking not to be added to such lists. Somewhere in Ireland, the unfortunate person who bought my house before the property market crashed is faced with the additional dilemma of dealing with my unwanted post. If they are reading this, I can but apologise. And if Nicole is reading, can you contact all those charities and ask them to change your contact details? And dump Scott, the man invested in Phillip Morris who make cigarettes. He doesn’t deserve a lady who likes Matisse.
Capital raising is the latest buzzword among big companies as they desperately try to get out of this crisis. Luckily they have a database of greedy capitalists known as shareholders that they can write to. And that’s where most of Scott’s mail is coming from these days. Invest in these companies once and just like the charities, they’ll keep coming back to you for more.
You can learn a lot about somebody from their post. I should know, I’ve been getting a lot of it lately. The previous tenants in my apartment had clearly set up a one year redirection of their mail, because I got nothing for them for the first twelve months that I lived here. That all changed one day when the Post Office computer system reverted back to normal. Suddenly I started getting more mail for them than I was getting for myself. I don’t get much, it has to be said. I’ve gone down the green route and get most of my stuff by email and I’m paranoid about those little boxes on websites that ask you if you want to be kept up to date on the company’s promotional activities, upcoming offers and every other devise that evil marketing people can think of. I have a particular rule that I invoke which means that I refuse to use websites in the future that have this pre-ticked box and leave it up to the customer to un-tick if they don’t want to be bombarded with a mountain of junk mail. It does mean that I’ve missed out on Jetstar’s offer of $5 flights to Bali, but there is a price to be paid for Principle.
Nicole obviously failed to un-tick the appropriate boxes because she’s been inundated by mail from every dodgy promotion office this side of Las Vegas. The Smith family help disadvantaged Australian kids. They run most of their fund raising around Christmas and back in 2006 I guess husband Scott was upping his investment in Altria at around the same time as the TV was running ads with pictures of malnourished children. The price of capitalism and greed is paid by the conscience. As Scott was writing out cheques to his broker, Nicole was balancing the books by paying a little to the Smith Family. Little did she know that they would spend most of the money she gave them on promotional literature that would end up back in her mailbox, or mine as it is now.
And I think she made a mistake one day in the centre of Melbourne. Chuggers stand on every major intersection and pounce on anyone who looks vaguely middle class and whose heart sinks at the sight of poor children, animals or criminals locked up in foreign prisons. These charity muggers operate in teams and act like lions on the African plains as they track down and surround the weakest of the herd. Nicole was clearly that one day. But she should have realised that her first year’s direct debits to Amnesty International would have gone to the chugger’s employers and that most of her future payments would be spent by Amnesty printing literature to ask her for more money. While I’m at it, I should point out to Amnesty that Guantanamo Bay is about to be closed, so can they stop writing to Nicole about it. As someone said on TV today, it’s a sure sign of the recession when torturers are being laid of.
Apart from keeping the family conscience clear, it was also Nicole’s job to look after the cultural side. She obviously enjoyed that Matisse Picasso exhibition at the Arts Centre because she asked them to add her to their mailing list. From the post Scott gets, it’s clear that he is a philistine. Gym club memberships and company reports make up his in-box. I like to think of him being dragged along to the exhibition and then embarrassing Nicole by saying to the guide that he thought Picasso’s first name was Pablo.
I’ve been meaning to drop Nicole and Scott’s mail down to the letting agency, but the only time I can make it there is on Saturday mornings. But somehow their mail does seem important enough to get me out of bed on my morning of rest. I guess they had the good sense to write to all the major people like banks, taxman and family to tell them of their new address. I just get the junk. The charities and the companies that Scott invested in but would rather not think about now. The last ten years have seen an explosion in communication methods from email to text messages. Snail mail seems so old fashioned now. Left to ones who want to send you brochures and twenty Christmas cards, mouth painted by people with no arms and legs (charged to your credit card Nicole, unless you write back within 30 days!).
We move house and we throw out the junk when we do. But I think we forget that some junk just keeps coming at us. It’s hard to know how many boxes you ticked in the past asking to be added to mailing lists. It’s even harder to remember how many boxes you failed to tick asking not to be added to such lists. Somewhere in Ireland, the unfortunate person who bought my house before the property market crashed is faced with the additional dilemma of dealing with my unwanted post. If they are reading this, I can but apologise. And if Nicole is reading, can you contact all those charities and ask them to change your contact details? And dump Scott, the man invested in Phillip Morris who make cigarettes. He doesn’t deserve a lady who likes Matisse.
Wednesday 4 February 2009
The Wild Colonial Boy
Van Diemen's Land is a hell for a man
To live out his whole life in slavery
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law
Neither wind or rain cares for bravery
Sam Nolan wasn’t a rebel, except when it came to people telling him what to do. He grew up on the grimy streets of Dublin in the early 19th century and had committed many felonious acts before the law finally caught up with him. It was slippers that got him in the end. The Jewish shoemaker on Bachelor’s Walk went to the Synagogue every Friday and being a holy day, he naively assumed that he could leave his shop unlocked. Sam had less respect for religious protocol and helped himself to six pairs of fine silk finished slippers. What he intended doing with them was unclear as the sewer like dwelling in which he lived wasn’t exactly suited to fancy footwear.
Unfortunately for Sam, his escape coincided with the departure of two Policemen from Murray’s Tearooms next door and almost before his feet touched the ground he was heading towards Botany Bay and seven years at the mercy of her Majesty’s Government. While Australia seemed like the end of the world in those days, in figurative speech it wasn’t like that at all. For most transportees the trip over in the musty hull of an English sailing ship was the worst part of their punishment. Once arrived, they were allocated to a free settler to work on farms or in the businesses around Old Sydney town. They didn’t wear shackles and they didn’t sleep in prison cells. The banishment itself was seen as the punishment and for those who came to terms with this; Australia could be a bright new start.
Sam was one of the large minority however, who were recidivist criminals and would have started a row in a phone box. He quickly worked his way up the Imperial punishment system, getting 200 lashes for turning up drunk for work and a month on a chain gang for bashing his overseer for having the temerity to ask Sam to do some work. When he stole two sheep from his master and sold them to the local butcher, Sam had committed the most heinous crime in that colony that didn’t result in hanging. The punishment was considered to be the harshest available. Imprisonment in Port Arthur on the south east corner of Van Diemen’s Land.
His cell is still visible in the magnificently restored prison that sits 100km south of Hobart in modern day Tasmania. It’s an eerie place, haunted by ghosts of the poor creatures who were tortured there in a place that resembles Guantanamo Bay. Many of them were Irish and I was most drawn to their stories.
We Irish have a romantic view of transportation of course. In our mind the English who were banished to Botany Bay were Dickensian scallies caught dipping their criminal fingers into the pockets of passing Gentlemen, or indulging in unnatural but loving acts with the animals that roamed Albion’s hills and dales.
The Irish on the other hand were brave rebels, plucked from the bosoms of their family by a cruel coloniser. They were a gallant band of political prisoners punished for patriotic acts such as stealing Trevelyan’s corn or liberating Irish cows from the land of absentee English landlords. Our songs and ballads mythologise these convicts and nowhere are they described as criminals. “The Fields of Athenry” is probably Ireland’s most famous songs and is sung at sporting matches and whenever two Irish people meet each other in a pub while outside the country. The song’s hero, Michael, is sent to Botany Bay and we’re asked to see this as a family tragedy.
Likewise, the lads chained below decks in “Back Home in Derry” were all gallant rebels, with not a pickpocket among them. The truth of course is messier. Sam Nolan was just one of thousands of petty criminals sent from Ireland to Australia in the 19th Century. You can see details of their crimes and transportation in a database kindly supplied by the Irish Government in 1988 as part of the 200 year celebration of Australia’s settlement. While most countries made gifts to the Aussies along the lines of a set of steak knives or a nice book, we sent them a list of all the criminals we had off-loaded to their continent over the past two centuries.
There were some genuine political prisoners of course, such as William O’Brien and the rest of the Young Ireland brigade from 1848. When you get to Port Arthur however, you discover that these gallant rebels were housed in a comfortable cottage apart from the general prisoner population. It’s a crushing disappointment as we like to think of our heroes being abused by the cruel British captors. Not invited down to the Commandants House for Tea and Tiffin every Sunday afternoon.
The irony of Port Arthur is that it is the Irish common criminals who provide a sense of pride to the modern visitor. Their stoic faces stare out from pictures adorning the museum wall and the records tell of their fortitude in facing the lash. But their finest moment came in the 1840s. The fine church of St David had been built to provide religious instruction to the prisoners. Attendance was obligatory but the arrival of a papist hating Irish clergyman led to a revolt among the Irish convicts. They refused to attend church and insisted on the appointment of a Catholic priest and a separate service. Despite punishments that would make an Al-Qaeda suspect crack, they refused to budge and eventually the authorities gave in to their demands. And so Australia got its first Catholic prison chapel.
I like to think that Sam Nolan was one of those who fought for the right to speak to God in the way he saw fit. It seems to me that this is how they retained some dignity in this dehumanising place. It’s odd the things that make you proud to be Irish.
To live out his whole life in slavery
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law
Neither wind or rain cares for bravery
Sam Nolan wasn’t a rebel, except when it came to people telling him what to do. He grew up on the grimy streets of Dublin in the early 19th century and had committed many felonious acts before the law finally caught up with him. It was slippers that got him in the end. The Jewish shoemaker on Bachelor’s Walk went to the Synagogue every Friday and being a holy day, he naively assumed that he could leave his shop unlocked. Sam had less respect for religious protocol and helped himself to six pairs of fine silk finished slippers. What he intended doing with them was unclear as the sewer like dwelling in which he lived wasn’t exactly suited to fancy footwear.
Unfortunately for Sam, his escape coincided with the departure of two Policemen from Murray’s Tearooms next door and almost before his feet touched the ground he was heading towards Botany Bay and seven years at the mercy of her Majesty’s Government. While Australia seemed like the end of the world in those days, in figurative speech it wasn’t like that at all. For most transportees the trip over in the musty hull of an English sailing ship was the worst part of their punishment. Once arrived, they were allocated to a free settler to work on farms or in the businesses around Old Sydney town. They didn’t wear shackles and they didn’t sleep in prison cells. The banishment itself was seen as the punishment and for those who came to terms with this; Australia could be a bright new start.
Sam was one of the large minority however, who were recidivist criminals and would have started a row in a phone box. He quickly worked his way up the Imperial punishment system, getting 200 lashes for turning up drunk for work and a month on a chain gang for bashing his overseer for having the temerity to ask Sam to do some work. When he stole two sheep from his master and sold them to the local butcher, Sam had committed the most heinous crime in that colony that didn’t result in hanging. The punishment was considered to be the harshest available. Imprisonment in Port Arthur on the south east corner of Van Diemen’s Land.
His cell is still visible in the magnificently restored prison that sits 100km south of Hobart in modern day Tasmania. It’s an eerie place, haunted by ghosts of the poor creatures who were tortured there in a place that resembles Guantanamo Bay. Many of them were Irish and I was most drawn to their stories.
We Irish have a romantic view of transportation of course. In our mind the English who were banished to Botany Bay were Dickensian scallies caught dipping their criminal fingers into the pockets of passing Gentlemen, or indulging in unnatural but loving acts with the animals that roamed Albion’s hills and dales.
The Irish on the other hand were brave rebels, plucked from the bosoms of their family by a cruel coloniser. They were a gallant band of political prisoners punished for patriotic acts such as stealing Trevelyan’s corn or liberating Irish cows from the land of absentee English landlords. Our songs and ballads mythologise these convicts and nowhere are they described as criminals. “The Fields of Athenry” is probably Ireland’s most famous songs and is sung at sporting matches and whenever two Irish people meet each other in a pub while outside the country. The song’s hero, Michael, is sent to Botany Bay and we’re asked to see this as a family tragedy.
Likewise, the lads chained below decks in “Back Home in Derry” were all gallant rebels, with not a pickpocket among them. The truth of course is messier. Sam Nolan was just one of thousands of petty criminals sent from Ireland to Australia in the 19th Century. You can see details of their crimes and transportation in a database kindly supplied by the Irish Government in 1988 as part of the 200 year celebration of Australia’s settlement. While most countries made gifts to the Aussies along the lines of a set of steak knives or a nice book, we sent them a list of all the criminals we had off-loaded to their continent over the past two centuries.
There were some genuine political prisoners of course, such as William O’Brien and the rest of the Young Ireland brigade from 1848. When you get to Port Arthur however, you discover that these gallant rebels were housed in a comfortable cottage apart from the general prisoner population. It’s a crushing disappointment as we like to think of our heroes being abused by the cruel British captors. Not invited down to the Commandants House for Tea and Tiffin every Sunday afternoon.
The irony of Port Arthur is that it is the Irish common criminals who provide a sense of pride to the modern visitor. Their stoic faces stare out from pictures adorning the museum wall and the records tell of their fortitude in facing the lash. But their finest moment came in the 1840s. The fine church of St David had been built to provide religious instruction to the prisoners. Attendance was obligatory but the arrival of a papist hating Irish clergyman led to a revolt among the Irish convicts. They refused to attend church and insisted on the appointment of a Catholic priest and a separate service. Despite punishments that would make an Al-Qaeda suspect crack, they refused to budge and eventually the authorities gave in to their demands. And so Australia got its first Catholic prison chapel.
I like to think that Sam Nolan was one of those who fought for the right to speak to God in the way he saw fit. It seems to me that this is how they retained some dignity in this dehumanising place. It’s odd the things that make you proud to be Irish.
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