Last year's St Patrick's Day Parade in Sydney saw 100,000 line the streets but this year rain spoiled the fun.

There was major disappointment for Sydney’s Irish community on St Patrick’s Day weekend after bad weather forced the cancellation of the Parade and Family Day on March 20.

Organisers made the decision to call off Australia’s largest single Irish event at 7am on Sunday morning following a night of heavy rain, just hours before the festivities were due to begin. President of Sydney’s St Patrick’s Day Parade and Family Day Committee (SSPD) Gerard Ryan says they had no choice but to cancel.

“By 6am on Sunday morning the rain was horizontal and cars were skidding on the roads,” explained Mr Ryan.

“Safety was our priority. It’s a call no one ever wants to make but had to be made at the time.”

The parade was due to start at midday, with a six-hour festivities programme in Hyde Park planned from 12.30pm. However wet weather meant the Family Day area of the park was waterlogged, and the City of Sydney advised against the use of electrical equipment.

Mr Ryan said it was a huge blow for all involved.

“It was extremely disappointing given the amount of work done leading up to it, but you can’t change the course of nature, and I think our limitations were shown. We can deal with the human factor but not with mother nature.”

He also said rescheduling the event was not feasible.

“It takes 12 months to get to this stage. We are locked into the City of Sydney calendar for the celebration.”

Planning for this year’s SSPD got off to a rocky start, after the committee was left with a budget deficit of up to $20,000 despite a record turnout last year. However all was on track for the cancelled event last weekend, with crowds of up to 100,000 again expected.

“It probably would have been our biggest [event] so far,”  lamented Mr Ryan.

“Because of the feedback we were getting, and people coming to town just for the event. It’s sad for them that they missed out, but it was unavoidable.”

The parade itself was set to feature 60 floats and marching groups from all sectors of the Irish community, and a string of bands were booked to entertain throughout the day.

Fortunately, organisers had previously taken out wet weather insurance and are confident all outstanding costs will be covered.

“We’re going to spend the next week assessing the out-of-pocket-costs and the established costs like fencing, bar infrastructure and cleaning,” Mr Ryan said.

“We have already been in touch with the insurance assessor to see where we stand and there are already steps in place to complete the scenario and go from there. It will take about a week for everything to be co-related.”

In spite of the weather, the annual citizenship ceremony, where a number of Irish-born Australian residents became Australian citizens, went ahead at the University of Sydney.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the drawing board for the SSPD committee who will now be looking ahead to 2012.

“We will wait until the annual general meeting and take it from there,” said Mr Ryan.

By Claire McGreal

Revellers gather ahead of the start of the St Patrick's Day Parade in Sydney where record numbers were again believed to have been on hand.

Sydney St Patrick’s Day Parade president Ger Ryan has hailed the success of this year’s event at Hyde Park on March 21, where a record crowd is once again believed to have been on hand to enjoy the festivities.

Just 24 hours after the event concluded, Mr Ryan heaped glowing praise on the committee of volunteers that made the event come together so successfully on the day.

“It went brilliantly well, we’re over the moon to be honest. Everything went exactly to plan and the weather was great for us.

“It’s hard to say this early exactly how many people were there, but from what I could tell we were pretty close to capacity all day long.

“There was a little bit of trouble towards the end there where some guy got up on stage, and he was duly arrested by the police.

“But apart from that it really couldn’t have gone better for us,” Mr Ryan explained.

“I thought all the entertainment was fantastic – and Eleanor McEvoy was particulalrly good I felt – while the citizenship tent was also a big success. We had 29 people become Australian citizens on the day which was wonderful.

“I’d say there were at least 100,000 people at the parade itself, the streets were completely full from George St to Elizabeth St.

“We’re still waiting for all the figures to come back but from what we can tell it went absolutely brilliantly.”

Elsewhere, in Brisbane, an estimated 10,000 revellers flocked to the city centre to watch the annual St Patrick’s Day Parade on March 12.

Over 50 floats took part in this year’s parade which ended at Parliament House on George St with a free Irish festival.

Large attendances were also reported at Irish events in Adelaide and Melbourne.

by Aaron Dunne

Last year's St Patrick's Day Parade in Sydney saw a record attendance of over 100,000 line the streets of the city.

SYDNEY St Patrick’s Day Parade president Gerard Ryan has sounded an urgent plea to the Irish community for 
funding amid fears the future of the event itself might be in jeopardy.

The St Patrick’s Day committee began last year with a $32,000 surplus, but despite record income last year from the Hyde Park Family Day, the final budget finished up $8,000 in arrears – a total loss of $40,000.

The cost of running the event now exceeds $250,000, and its chief organiser has revealed that only $20,000 has been raised for the 2010 parade, now just weeks away.

While Ryan believes this year’s festivities will go ahead, he fears for the future viability of the event unless fundraising turns around in a serious way in the coming weeks.

“The debt won’t even come into play, the event just won’t happen in the future if we keep going like this,” he said.

“We somehow manage to scrape through every year, but at the moment I just don’t see the community getting behind the event to the point where I can see it continuing to happen in the future.

“We’ve got about $20,000 in the bank so far, so basically we’ve got eight weeks to raise $230,000. This is where it’s at.”

Ryan puts last year’s loss down to additional expenses that had not existed before.
He says costs will come down this year, but $250,000 will still be needed to make sure the event happens. He is also very concerned that future committees are not handed an unworkable debt.

He encouraged everyone in the Irish community to get behind the committee’s fundraising efforts, saying there is still time to save the parade, and its future.

“The best way people can support us is by donating online at the website (www.stpatricksday.org.au) or by attending some of the big fundraising events we have lined up,” he said.

“Just by being there at those events and coming along and supporting us on the night is really a massive help.

“One of the big things for us this year will be the St Patrick’s Day Races on March 13 at Randwick.

“We’ve secured that for Guineas Day, and the AJC have been tremendously supportive of us. That will be a huge day for us. It’s all about the community getting together to fight for this.

“We’re expecting record numbers of people this year, even more than we had last year, so hopefully it will all be alright in the end.”

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the first St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Sydney so Mr Ryan and his hard-working committee are very focused on delivering a knockout event for the community on March 21.

by Aaron Dunne

Sharon Shannon plays the Spiegeltent in Sydney this weekend before jetting into Perth for the Arts Festival.

With her tremendously successful new album, Saints And Scoundrels, still riding high in the Irish charts, trad legend Sharon Shannon brings her unique sound to Perth this week as she winds up her Aussie tour.

Sharon just finished a three-date stand at the Sydney Festival and will now jett across to WA to play the Perth International Arts Festival on February 7.

A final show that will feature songs from her hit new album.

As so often in the past, the Clare superstar has solicited the services of a veritable who’s who of Irish musicians on this latest work, and she says she can’t wait to share some of her new material with audiences Down Under.

“The new album is going great since it came out in Ireland about six months ago. It’s half instrumental and half songs, and a lot of songs were actually written especially for the album.

“Imelda May is guesting on it, and she’s just amazing. She’s a sort of rockabilly 50s-style singer from Dublin. She won a Meteor award last year, and though she’s been on the go for years she’s only really been discovered lately so it was great to have her involved. She’s just become huge lately in Ireland.

“Shane McGowan is on it too, and we also have a Galway band called The Cartoon Thieves who are really fantastic. They’re a bluesy band, with fantastic harmonies. They’re also great instrumentalists.

“They did a Shane McGowan song called Mama Lou on the album which became a bit of a hit over here in Ireland. It’s the first track on the album, and it’s still getting a lot of airplay.

“Imelda also wrote a song called Go Tell The Devil I Don’t Want To Go To Hell, which really fitted in well with the Saints And Scoundrels theme, while The Waterboys even came back to feature on it.

“We got the same line-up back together that I originally toured with all those years ago, and they did a beautiful song on the album called Saints And Angels.

“We had [crooner] Jerry Fish [from the Mudbug Club] on it too and he wrote a song especially for it, so we’re really delighted with it.”

Sharon Shannon plays the Perth International Arts Festival on February 7 at Beck’s Music Box. Check festival websites for tickets and bookings.

by Aaron Dunne