Irish Famine Memorial custodian Tom Power shows Irish president Mary McAleese around the Sydney monument during her state visit in 2003.

Long way to Tipperary for man of faith, conviction and passion

TOM POWER, the custodian of Sydney’s beautiful Monument to the Great Irish Famine, has packed more into his almost 80 years than most people could fit into two or three lifetimes. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I grew up on a farm in Powerstown, Co Tipperary and I was the 10th of 12 children,” he told the Irish Echo.

“My father worked from morning until night and I never remember him having a holiday.

“He might go off for a day to see a football match or something like that, but I never remember him taking off for a week or even two or three days. I’d say the man never slept outside his own house.

“We weren’t desperately poor, we had plenty to eat, that’s for sure. But we didn’t have a great deal of money. During the ’30s England wouldn’t buy any cattle or wheat from us because de Valera refused to pay the annual premium to England that was the price of our freedom.

De Valera said ‘we’re not going to pay it anymore’, so the British said ‘if you don’t pay it, well then we won’t buy any of your goods’.

“That caused a lot of strife, heartbreak and want in Ireland,” said Tom.
Like many children, Tom was not conscious of the struggles his parents went through.

“We had a very happy childhood and we weren’t aware of all the problems Ireland had at that time with the economic war [with Britain].

“I only learned in later years that my father was practically penniless during the ’30s. They were tough times.

“It was only when the Second World War came along that Irish produce could be sold in England again. You could say the war in a certain sense saved us,” he said.

Tom entered an Augustinian seminary when he was 13. Aged 19 he went to Rome for six years to do a degree in philosophy and theology.

“But during postgraduate studies he contracted tuberculosis and was sent home.

“When I came back in June 1956 I had some time at home, seeing the folks, and then came out here [to Australia] in November 1956.

“The idea was I was going to Nigeria to do missionary work. But they decided Nigeria wasn’t a great place for a man who had a breakdown with TB, so that’s how I arrived in Australia,” he said.

“My mother prayed that I wouldn’t be sent to Australia, but you take a vow of obedience and you go where you’re sent. I said I’d be home in 10 years, but actually I got home in nine.”

Tom taught in St Augustine’s College on Sydney’s Northern Beaches during those nine years.

After St Augustine’s he became a chaplain at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane.

“It was during that time that I became quite uneasy about my situation [as a priest]. In 1970 I asked for and got a leave of absence for three years.

“At the end of that time I was supposed to report in to my superiors and tell them what I had in mind. I had decided that life inside the priesthood wasn’t for me … and finally the dispensation came through in 1973 and I was free then to do whatever I wanted to do,” he said.

But what do you do as a 43-year-old ex-priest?

“Initially I went into the post office and became a sorter at the Redfern mail exchange and then I became more or less a lackey at the Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club. I took up glasses and went around keeping things tidy.

“I tramped around Sydney looking for a job and ended up asking about the public service. They told me I should look up the Department of Corrective Services, that my qualifications in counselling would come in very handy with the people who were released on parole.

“The Department interviewed me and after a couple of months they called me in and said ‘you’ve got a job’.

“It was a great relief to me because money was so short that I’d walk from Bondi into the city most days because I couldn’t afford the bus fare,” he said.

Tom stayed with the parole division until 1975 and then switched to prisoner education.

“I saw that some prisoners were coming out after years in jail and still didn’t know how to read or write, which was a great disadvantage to them. Being in education myself previously I got in touch with the Commissioner of Corrective Services and we had a discussion.

“Together with a couple of others we set up programmes in prison so that prisoners were able to read and write when they got out,” he said.

Tom later worked on the Serious Offenders Review Board, during which time he crossed paths with all the life sentence prisoners in the sate. “I met them twice a year, the high profile prisoners, the ones who had already served 20 or 30 years in the prison system,” he said.

A more important crossing of paths came many years earlier. “I met Trish, the woman of my life in 1974. She’s a Tasmanian, but not a Tasmanian Devil,” laughs Tom. “We were married in 1976 and I was 47 years of age when I became a dad.” Tom and Trish’s children, Robert and John, are now aged 32 and 31.

For most Irish people in Australia Tom is best known as one of the main driving forces behind the erection of the Great Famine Memorial at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.

“Mary Robinson was out here in 1995 and she made an appeal that the Irish people of Sydney should do something significant to commemorate the Great Irish Famine,” he said.

Tom, Mayoman Martin Coleman and many others got to work.

“We had a meeting of all the county associations and decided to build this memorial. It was four hard years of fundraising and it was a lot of work with dinners, dances and raffles.

“On the day it opened in 1999 there were around 4,000 people there. St Mary’s Cathedral was packed to the door and there were just about as many people again at Hyde Park Barracks, waiting for the official opening.

“It was an ecumenical service. We had representation there from the Presbyterian Church and the Church of England, which was only right. A lot of the orphans had been Presbyterian and other religions,” he said.

“It’s ironic that all these girls who had to leave Ireland because their parents were dead, and probably died of starvation, are memorialised on a monument built over the very kitchen that fed them 150 years ago.

“That was all by chance. It was divine inspiration in a way. It was a marvellous thing to discover.”

Tom is modest about his many accomplishments.

“The fact that I was able to influence the lives of prisoners in some ways, that’s an achievement.  I’m very grateful to the Department of Corrective Services, they were very kind to me. I think I did make a good contribution there.

“The monument has been my baby since I retired 15 years ago and I’m still at it today, and that’s an achievement. Maybe someone will come along and take over the reins, because I’m in my 80th year now, so I won’t be able to keep doing it forever.”

Irish President Mary McAleese will visit Gallipoli on March 24.

IRISH President Mary McAleese is to visit the World War I battlefield of Gallipoli in Turkey on March 24 to remember the 3,000 Irish soldiers who died there.

Mrs McAleese will dedicate a foundation stone of a proposed memorial to Irish casualties at a cemetery in the Suvla Bay area, where the 10th Irish Division were part of an invasion force in August 1915.

Last September, Mrs McAleese attended a ceremony in Killarney, Co Kerry to commemorate local men who served and died in the First World War.

Mrs McAleese said that when Ireland was “undivided” and a British colony, at one time 40 per cent of all those serving in the British forces were Irish.

“Time allows us to look differently at things,” she said.

The Echo understands that a relative of the President was one of those who lost their lives at Gallipoli.

The President’s trip has been welcomed by Sydney author Jeff Kildea, whose book Anzacs And Ireland prominently covers the Gallipoli campaign.

“I see this as part of an ongoing process of growing recognition of the role of the Irish in the First World War,” he said.

“In Ireland the Gallipoli campaign is largely unknown, and yet Irish troops played a very significant part in it.

“She’s going to commemorate a memorial to the 10th Irish Division, which landed in Gallipoli in August 1915 and served alongside the Australians at Lone Pine. Overall, the Irish lost more than New Zealand at Gallipoli throughout the course of 1915.

“The Irish landed on the first day. The 29th Division landed on April 25. The 10th Division landed in August as part of the big offensive.

Over 3,000 Irish were killed at Gallipoli,” said Mr Kildea, who is a practicing barrister and teaches Irish Studies at the University of NSW.

“There has been an awakening in recent years in Ireland about the involvement of Irish soldiers in the First World War. It had long been suppressed because it didn’t fit the nationalist narrative.

“In recent years people have been able to come to terms with the fact that a lot of Irishmen fought in that war, even though it was often regarded as England’s war.

“For many nationalists it was seen to be a way of trying to assure home rule, [showing that] the Irish could be trusted to do their bit. But the war went on too long and [Home Rule Party leader John] Redmond lost control and the Sinn Féin group gained control and the war became very unpopular,” said Mr Kildea.

“Those who fought in the war, when they came home, were often treated pretty badly. It has taken a few generations before people have been able to reconcile the two narratives and getting a situation where the people of Ireland are starting to commemorate [those who died in World War I].

“Now you even get Sinn Féin officials saying ‘my grandfather was there’. Alex Maskey, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Belfast,” he said.

“More and more there has been reconciliation and the President has been very much in the forefront of that. She is part of that movement that is trying to put away the bitterness of the past and commemorate Irish soldiers.

“Over 200,000 Irishmen fought in the First World War and 50,000 were killed.”

by Pádraig Collins

Former auxiliary bishop of Sydney David Cremin (left) enjoys a ride on a Harley Davidson at his recent 80th birthday party celebrations.

Clocked at 80, the leader of the flock

Former auxiliary bishop of Sydney, David Cremin, Australia’s much-loved Limerick-born cleric, celebrated his 80th birthday with a huge party in Sydney recently and a dream ride on a Harley Davidson as more than 400 people (including 21 of his relatives) attended the celebration at Hurstville.

The Irish Ambassador to Australia, Máirtín Ó Fainín, made a speech on behalf of the Irish people, and Irish Consul General Patrick Scullion spoke on behalf of the Irish community in Sydney .

Mr Scullion also read out notes from three former Irish ambassadors, while Mike Bailey, the former ABC weatherman and Labor party candidate for North Sydney, was the MC on the day.

Mr Bailey worked closely with the celebration organising committee of Sandra Coogan, Steve and Brenda Carey, Michael and Helen Smullen and Ann McKeon.

Ms Coogan said: “It was a wonderful day, a tribute to a wonderful man.”

Bishop Cremin had two wishes come through on the day when he got a ride on a Harley Davidson motorbike and was later presented with a gift of two business class tickets to New Zealand and vouchers for accommodation and a trip to Milford Sound.

His work with Aborigines and migrant communities has justifiably been lauded, with the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, saying Bishop Cremin “has acted as a shining beacon to all who seek justice and, in that most Australian of terms, a fair go”.

Originally from Castlemahon, Co Limerick, he moved to Australia in 1955 after being educated by the Jesuits in Limerick and ordained at All Hallows College in Dublin.

Eighteen years later he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, a position he retired from in February 2005.

In an extensive interview just before his birthday, Bishop Cremin told the Irish Echo about how he came to live in Australia.

“My eldest brother Michael married Nora Feeney from Co Mayo. They made a commitment that Michael would go out [to Sydney] and look the scene over and send for Nora. Nora came out and they got married here, so I had a home away from home when I arrived. They had two children by the time I arrived in 1955.”

Bishop Cremin found Australia something of a culture shock when he first arrived.

“In many ways it was [a culture shock]. In some ways it was a great adventure going to a new country.

“The church in Australia was very much an Irish church. The priests were very much Irish emigrants and the bishops would have been very much Irish.

“My first appointment was Broadway. In those days it was the Irish gathering place.

“There was a great dance in St Benedict’s Church in Broadway and that’s where they would congregate every Sunday night.

“So that was again was a little bit of home. Having my brother and his wife and the children, a couple more were born after I came, was a great break for me. There were many friends out here too, priests who had studied with me and before me.”

He initially resisted his appointment as bishop. “I was ordained a bishop on the 19th of January 1974 and I was appointed at the end of 1973.

“It was a shock initially and I reacted against it because I had the feeling that there were so many terrific Australian priests who should be preferred before me and I thought there would be a reaction from the Australian clergy, having an Irishman appointed over them.

“So I wrote fairly strongly to Rome over that. Letters kept coming back saying ‘Oh, it’s all kind of an act of humility’. Eventually, after the third letter, I think, they said ‘It is the will of the Holy Father’. It was a great honour.”

Bishop Cremin did a lot of work with immigrant communities in Sydney. “For many years I was the director of Catholic immigration and I would have been travelling with many migrants.

“We had something like 40 priests who were chaplains to non-English speaking groups. I took charge of them.

“As well as the Irish émigrés there would have been the Europeans, the South Americans and, latterly, the south east Asians, like the Filipinos, the Vietnamese and the Koreans.

“I spent a lot of my time in recent times with migrants and helping refugees until I retired officially, because 75 is the official retirement for bishops.

“It doesn’t seem to apply to the Pope incidentally, he gets away with it, it doesn’t apply to him!” he joked.

He says though the young Irish coming to Australia may appear to be less devout in their Catholicism, it balances out as they get older.

“I think that’s universal. We find it here; we find that teenagers of very devout parents kind of give it away for a while. They seem to come back when they get married and have babies.

“I’ve seen that here, and in my going back to Ireland every couple of years they say the same, especially in the cities,” he said.

“I say Mass every Christmas with Fr Tom Devereux for the backpackers, the young Irish in Sydney. And they swarm into St Patrick’s Church, Bondi and come dressed in their county jerseys. One year a girl put a mobile phone in front of me and said ‘Will you speak to mammy and tell her I was a good girl and went to Mass on Christmas morning?’

“So that would be a fair estimate of the situation I think.

“They’re out here on holidays and probably church wouldn’t be their biggest priority, but at Christmas they roll up in style. I find that here, when the young Irish people settle down and get married, the old church seems to be important.

“Like the Italians, they nearly always get married in the church and have their kids baptised in the church and so on,” said Bishop Cremin.

Welcoming the announcement that Mary MacKillop would become Australia’s first saint, Bishop Cremin said: “She was a battler; she was a real battler.  She went through tough times. She always reminds me of Nelson Mandela.

“She went through all that with no recrimination or bitterness or revenge of any kind. She had total peace and forgiveness inside of her.”

by Pádraig Collins