My grandad’s main hobbies are listening to the Dubliners and complaining about still being alive. Every time I have rung him for the last decade (which is not enough), I ask how he’s been. “Still bloody here,” he says in his thick inner city Dublin accent, that sounds like he’s stepped out of the bookies on Meath Street, instead of living in Australia for half a century.
When I lived in Ireland, our conversations were routine. He would tell me what Irish trad bands he’d been listening to on YouTube. I would tell him what had and hadn’t changed about his beloved Liberties. He would map out the streets in his brain. “The Four Corners there on the right.” I’d tell him how much the houses were now. What I paid in rent. He’d laugh at me. Then when it came time to say goodbye, he would tell me to come home soon because “your poor aul Granda doesn’t have long left”.
It worked. I went home to Sydney every year except for the two I was locked out during Covid, sometimes twice. Always making sure I visited him. And always with the requested bottle of Tullamore Dew. “Sure I might not see the end of this one, you could be drinking it at my wake.” It would want to be a big bloody bottle because he’s still alive. Thank God.
He’s currently allowed one whiskey a night in the respite home he’s gone to temporarily to give his loving partner a small break. “It’s the only way we got him to go,” mum half laughs, half cries. She’s tired in the way people of her generation are. Sandwiched between caring for children, grandchildren and ageing parents. She’s worried about him being lonely. The staff seem kind and professional, “but he needs a bit of banter... a bit of craic”.
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He is the only Irish person there. My grandparents used to be active in the Sydney-Irish community. They went to Irish dances. Irish concerts. They had singsongs in the house. These provided emotional lifelines for people adrift in a new country with strange people. Financial ones too.
When a new estate came up for sale, my grandfather didn’t have a full deposit to buy the family home. But he had a phone book. He went through it and found a solicitor with the most Irish-sounding name. He explained he didn’t have the total amount, but he’d have it soon, so would the solicitor mind signing this bit of paper. This complete stranger agreed. “I knew he would, he was Irish,” grandad shrugged.
As time passed, it seems my grandparents’ connections to the diaspora dropped off. As people moved on or died, new neighbours came and the focus turned to family. Despite warning me not to date Irish men for the guts of 30 years, grandad seemed delighted to meet my boyfriend. He got to slag someone off for being a culchie for hours. He hasn’t been able to do that in so long. I highly recommend it as an enriching activity for the elderly.
The two of them fell into an easy banter about “boggers”, “jackeens” and the GAA. Terms most people there didn’t understand. I realised that was the first Irish accent he might have heard in years.
My grandmother, a northsider from the Five Lamps (a mixed marriage), is nicknamed ‘Nanna-cup-of-tea’ because that’s what she said as soon as came into the house. As Australians, that was weird
It must be isolating – even at a table surrounded by family members. The children of immigrants I think will always be a small bit foreign to them. They grow up in different schools, with different structures and attitudes. A strange country has shaped them. My mother’s childhood was radically different from mine. In the same way, I will feel clueless looking at my hypothetical Irish-raised children talking about Holy Communions and bouncy castles.
My grandmother, a northsider from the Five Lamps (a mixed marriage), is nicknamed “Nanna-cup-of-tea” because that’s what she said as soon as anyone came into the house. To Australians, that was weird. A granny that drank tea and had a compulsive need to chat to everyone – neighbours, people at the bus stop, the lady at the till. In Ireland, that is normal, preferable. There’s an unmatched joy to being able to go down the street and say “hiya” to at least seven people you vaguely know.
[ As an Irish person in Australia there is one question I’m always askedOpens in new window ]
Every week, since the 1960s, she speaks on the phone to her sister. Physically a world away, they are extremely close. Auntie Pat knows my grandmother in a way we never can and from a world no longer there. Two girls working in their mother’s Moore Street stall. Now there is talk of being too old to see each other “one last time”. We all benefited from our grandparents’ decision to emigrate, but they’re the ones who paid the greatest price.
