How an Irish prison break ended with the walls of a Sydney shopping centre

“What are you having for lunch today, Zara?” My two-year-old granddaughter beams. “Sushi!” she declares, getting stuck into her raw-fish equivalent of a babycino: slices of cucumber encased in rice and rolled in seaweed.

The Castle Towers shopping centre in Sydney’s western suburbs is always a busy place – think Dundrum on a Saturday afternoon just before Christmas. But as you wander around its shops, restaurants and cinemas, or sit munching your lunch, your eye may be snagged by the writing on the wall.

All around the atrium of the building runs a decorative inscription, the first sentence of which reads: “The Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804, a key event in Australia’s Convict history, saw about 200 mostly Irish convicts from Castle Hill Government Farm unsuccessfully attempt to escape from the Colony.”

There was no sushi in those days. One of the biggest problems faced by the early inhabitants of New South Wales was starvation, so government farms were established in outlying areas, including Castle Hill, an area of gentle slopes and fertile meadows 30km west of Sydney Town.

Uprising

In 1800 a Kerryman named

Philip Cunningham

arrived on a ship crammed with United Irishmen who had been sentenced to transportation for their role in the 1798 rebellion and its aftermath. A qualified stonemason, he was put in charge of the building works at the Castle Hill farm. Realising that there were few soldiers stationed there, he began to plan an uprising.

On the evening of Sunday March 4th, 1804, as darkness fell on Castle Hill, Cunningham and his band of rebels lit fires and raided nearby houses, searching for weapons.

By midnight the alarm had been given in Sydney, and a Maj George Johnston was despatched to sort out the trouble. He offered to bring a priest to negotiate, but Cunningham repeated his demands: “Death or liberty, and a ship to take us home.”

The ensuing encounter was brief and brutal. Some of the rebels were killed; many scattered, only to be gathered up and severely flogged. Cunningham was hanged along with eight others, their bodies left in chains for several weeks as a mark of infamy.

Debate

Where, exactly, all this took place has been a source of much debate. Even now some people still refer to the Castle Hill rebellion as “the battle of Vinegar Hill” – which, of course, is a different hill altogether. This part of Sydney is not known as “the Hills district” for nothing.

Following a commission of inquiry in 1982 a memorial was placed in a nearby cemetery, Castlebrook Memorial Park, while Castle Hill Heritage Park offers a walking track with a timeline and interpretative signage.

But that long, long inscription, silently snaking its way around the interior of a bustling cosmopolitan shopping centre, telling a story from a savage past, has to be one of the eeriest Irish connections anywhere in the world.