A MAJOR exhibition on the Irish influence on Australian life since the arrival of the first fleet in 1788 opened yesterday in Canberra.
Not Just Ned: A true history of the Irish in Australia features 456 objects from Australian and international collections, from the complete set of armour worn by outlaw bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang to a backpack belonging to a recent arrival. It includes sections on the Irish contribution to education, religion, medicine, sport, law, politics and culture.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald, addressing about 600 people at the launch, including business leaders and members of Australia’s Labor government, talked up the value of investing in Ireland.
"There is a tremendous amount of good will towards Ireland in Australia," she told The Irish Times. "The business community greatly appreciates the fact that the new Cabinet sent someone here ... I am identifying opportunities for our exports and for tourism. The Olympics are on in London next year and we want to make sure any Australians going to London also consider going to Ireland.
Ms Fitzgerald said she would be “encouraging smaller Irish companies to investigate the Australian market, given the strength of the economy and the Australian dollar”.
Irish-Australian author Tom Keneally, who launched Not Just Ned, said the exhibition was “superb”.
Curator Richard Reid, from Co Antrim, spent more than two years putting the exhibition together. “This is the first ethnic exhibition the museum has done devoted to European settlement in Australia ... It’s a mammoth exhibition.
“The Irish have been central to the whole development of European culture in Australia from day one, from the first fleet in 1788.
“There were Irish convicts and soldiers and administrators on that fleet. Then of course the convicts started coming from Ireland in 1791,” said Mr Reid.
About half a million Irish went to Australia between 1788 and 1921, with 12 per cent of them making the journey in the hold of a convict ship. A quote in the exhibition from a contemporary Scottish traveller says the Scottish were transported for a great crime, the English for a little one and the Irish “morally speaking, for no crime at all”.
Among the Irish convicts were 9,200 women. An Anglican cleric, Rev Samuel Marsden, said at the time he saw three evils in the colony of New South Wales: alcohol, Catholicism and Irish female convicts.
Historian Siobhán McHugh is one of those whose work features in the exhibition. Ms McHugh wrote a history of the Snowy Mountains Scheme – a hydro-electric construction lasting from 1949 to 1974.
“The Irish were the fourth biggest nationality on the Snowy and Richard wanted a bit of that in there, because that was a huge time, the ’50s, for Irish emigration,” she said.
In Sydney, prime minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott attended the Lansdowne Club’s annual St Patrick’s Day Irish business lunch.Parades to celebrate the day will be held in Sydney, Melbourne and other Australian cities over the weekend.