1930–

Community activist

When Tom Power left his home village of Powerstown in Co Tipperary to set sail for Australia back in 1956, he could hardly have known the lasting impact he and his new friends would have on the cultural heritage of his new home.

Back in 1995, during her state visit to Australia, President Mary Robinson suggested that some memorial be erected in remembrance of the Great Famine, which had driven so many people to Australia in the 19th century.

A committee was formed to do just that, with Tom as chairman, and in 1999 they had succeeded in creating a permanent memorial in the form of the beautiful Great Famine Memorial at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.

“It all started in 1995 and we got to work from there. 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,” Tom reflects now.

“Hopefully it’s something that will be there forever. The response has been fantastic from people all over Australia and beyond which is great. It’s a marvellous thing.”

An anniversary celebration will be held at Hyde Park Barracks on August 30 to mark 10 years since Governor General William Deane officially unveiled the memorial.

1854 – 1937

Printer, Politician

Prendergast was born in Adelaide in 1854 to Irish parents who had migrated the previous year. He grew up in Stawell, Victoria and was apprenticed to a printer after leaving school. He became a member of the Typographical Association and represented this union at the Melbourne Trades Hall. Prendergast was also a member of the United Irish League and the Celtic Club.

He was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a Labor member for North Melbourne in 1894. At the same time he was also president of the Eight-Hours Committee which agitated for a standard eight-hour working day.

In parliament Prendergast was outspoken on land reform and the need for free secondary education. In 1924, with Prendergast as leader, Labor emerged for the first time as the largest party in Victoria, but were still six seats short of a majority. But to his great surprise, with Country Party support, he found himself premier and treasurer at the age of 70 – the oldest anyone has ever been when taking the office for the first time.

His wife, Mary, whom he married in a Free Church of England service in 1876, predeceased him, but a son and daughter survived him.

1819 – 1881

Archbishop of Queensland

Born in Rathbane, Co Kildare, Quinn made many enemies over the course of his lifetime but his influence over the development of Queensland was immense.

He took up the post of Archbishop in 1859 and landed in Brisbane in 1861 where he found an enormous diocese plagued with financial debt and low on personnel.

He made rapid progress in the establishment of the Catholic education system, but in alliance with the Anglican Bishop Tufnell he sought to divert the tendency towards secularism in education.

In 1862 Quinn founded the Queensland Immigration Society which brought out 10 ships with about 6,000 Irish migrants. The ‘Hibernian flood’ immediately aroused sectarian hostility, however, fanned by an unguarded remark of the bishop that the colony might yet be called ‘Quinn’s land’.

He had angered many religous orders with his almost monarchic style – including Mary MacKillop who withdrew her Order of St Joseph from the state.

But overall Quinn’s piety, zeal and energy was never in doubt.

He fell ill on the way to Hobart and died at Brisbane in August of 1881.

1957 –

Politician

Kevin Rudd continues to be one of Australia’s most popular politicians although no longer in the top spot.

While he has never visited Ireland, Mr Rudd’s Hibernian background emerged as recently as March last year when he spoke at the Queensland Irish Association’s St Patrick’s Eve Dinner.

In his speech he revealed that his maternal grandmother Hannah Cashin was the daughter or Irish parents, both coming from Ballingarry in Co Tipperary, a parish with impeccable Australian connections.

The village – which is about 15kms north east of Cashel, was at the very epicentre of the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848.
Many of the rebel leaders, including William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Patrick O’Donohue, Kevin Izod O’Doherty and John Mitchel were subsequently transported to Tasmania.

“I stand proud of my Mum’s Irish heritage,” Mr Rudd remarked at the QIA dinner. “

Australia, he went on to say, is a country “enriched by his Irish heritage and proud of it”.

1872 – 1940

Politician

Savage was born on in March, 1872 at Tatong in Victoria, the youngest of eight children to Irish parents Richard and Johanna.

As a young man Savage held various labouring jobs in NSW but emigrated to New Zealand in 1907 to became a trade union organizer.

He played a part in forming the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916 and three years later became the party’s national secretary.

He went on to succeeded Henry Holland as leader on the latter’s death in 1933.

Savage led Labour to its first general election victory in 1935 and soon began to tackle the economic depression with the introduction of a minimum wage, by restoring wage cuts and expanding social welfare.

Savage was rewarded by an even greater victory in the 1938 election and his work helped set the social agenda in New Zelanad right up until the 1970s.

He died in Wellington on March 27, 1940, while still in office.

1954 –
Politician

Dr Ursula Stephens was elected to the Australian Senate for NSW in 2001 and re-elected in 2007.

Born in Wicklow, she emigrated to Australia with her family when she was seven years old. She has four adult children and two grandsons.
She joined the Labor Party in 1975 following the sacking of the Whitlam government. She holds a PhD in Public Administration and a Bachelor of Education.

After the election of the Rudd government in 2007, she was appointed Parliamentary Secretary Assisting The Prime Minister On Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector where she has won praise for her work. In this role she is driving an ambitious change agenda related to the Government’s social inclusion framework and third sector reform. Her vision, she says, is for a “strong Australian democracy where everyone has the chance and choice to be actively engaged in their communities”.

She also sits on the national executive of the Australian Labor Party and is a former President of the NSW division.

No Irish-born woman has been more successful in Australian political life.

1885 – 1966
Naval Officer, Actor

Henry ‘Harry’ Stoker was born in Dublin in 1895, and his actions as the commander of an Australian Navy submarine changed the course of World War I. At just 18, Stoker joined the fledgling submarine service, and by the age of 20, had secured his first command.

By 1914 he had become an experienced submariner, but upon hearing of an opportunity to potentially play professional polo in Sydney he opted to transfer to the Royal Australian Navy. After a brief time in Sydney, his submarine – the AE2 – was called to Europe to take part in the Gallipoli campaign.

Stoker and his crew were captured during their mission and spent three-and-a-half years in a Turkish prison camp.

After his release, Stoker left the armed forces to pursue an acting career which saw him star in the West End and Broadway, alongside the likes of John Mills and Lawrence Olivier. He also appeared  in a number of feature films including The Man Who Knew Too Much.

A first cousin of Dracula author Bram, Henry also went on to help plan the D-Day landings, play tennis at Wimbledon, and four years before his death at the age of 81, become Irish Croquet champion.

1966-
Footballer

Dubliner Jim Stynes moved to Australia in 1984, making his senior AFL debut in 1987 with the Melbourne Demons Football Club.
Having given up a promising Gaelic football career to come to Australia (he was a star player with Dublin club side Ballyboden St Enda’s and won an All-Ireland medal with the Dublin minors in 1984), Stynes went on to break all sorts of records over the course of a glittering career.

He holds the record for the most successive Best and Fairest Awards at the Demons (three in a row), but his career-defining moment arrived in 1991 when he became the first overseas player to win the prestigious Brownlow Medal (for Best and Fairest in the AFL).
His legacy as a trailblazer for Irish players in the AFL lives on, and his record for the most consecutive games played in the league (244) is unlikely ever to be broken.

Jim also became renowned for his philanthropic work after his retirement from football – particularly with the Reach Foundation which he co-founded in the mid-1990s.

Last year he became the chairman of his beloved Melbourne Demons Football Club before being forced to stand down due to ill health last month.

He is married to Sam and they have a daughter, Matisse, and a son, Tiernan.

1790 – 1864
Catholic priest

Born in Cork and educated in Carlow, Therry was ordained in 1815 and did parochial work in Dublin and Cork before moving to Sydney in May of 1820.

His interest in Australia had been aroused by the transportation of Irish convicts, and though respectful of the British authority in Sydney, Therry was impatient of anything impinging on what he considered his rights to minister as a Catholic priest.

From the first days of his chaplaincy, the building of a church in Sydney was one of Therry’s main preoccupations.

Having assured the assistance, or at least tolerance, of the leading colonists, on October 29, 1821 Governor Macquarie laid the foundation stone of what would become St Mary’s Cathedral on a site near the Hyde Park Barracks.

Therry was proud of his friendship and contacts with non-Catholics and his funeral, on May 25, 1864, was widely attended.
His remains are in the crypt of St Mary’s, where the Lady Chapel was erected in his memory.

A primary school in Balmain – where he spent his final days – bears his name.

1839 – 1903 (John)
1850 – 1895 (James)
Brewers

John Toohey was born in Limerick in 1839 to father Matthew and mother Honora, and moved to Melbourne in 1841 with his family where his brother James was born in 1850.

After moving to Sydney, the brothers began brewing beer in the Darling Brewery on Harbour Street and by the 1880s the brothers’ beer – Toohey’s and Tooth’s – had become widely popular.

James campaigned for the Legislative Assembly seat of South Sydney in 1885 which he won and held until 1893. He died at Pisa, Italy, in September, 1895 and was buried in Rookwood cemetery, Sydney.

John, meanwhile, was a leading Catholic layman, benefactor to numerous Catholic charitable institutions and a financial supporter of the Irish nationalist movement.

A leader in the Home Rule movement, he was prominent in the erection of the monument over the grave of Michael Dwyer in Waverley cemetery in 1898.

In 1902 the brewery became a public company, Toohey’s Ltd, with John as chairman, before he died suddenly in Chicago in May, 1903.
He too was buried at Rookwood cemetery.