Events

2004 Susan Ryan Oration

In 2004 Susan Ryan AO gave a memorable oration. Here is an edited version of her speech which expertly tied the orphan girls and the monument to Sydney's cultural landscape.

"This 5th celebration of Sydney's memorial to the Irish famine is an inspiring and moving occasion"

The purpose of any great memorial is twofold: to link us again to those we commemorate, and to lift up our spirits by contemplation of the good that has come out of tragedy and loss.

This famine memorial serves its purpose brilliantly. Its design by artists Hossein and Angela Valamanesh from Iran, with the soundscape by Paul Carter, is powerful in its simplicity. The old sandstone wall, dissected by a plain table, empty at one end, a simple bowl at the other, with a few modest objects on a small shelf, conveys more about hunger and poverty than vastly more elaborate structures could do"

Listed on the memorial, faintly on a subtle glass panel, are the names of 400 of the thousands of girls who did not die of the famine but were orphaned by it. As the famine grew worse these girls were turned out of the workhouses of starving Ireland, transported here to Sydney, and consigned to these barracks. The barracks were put to this new use from 1848 on, after their function as a compound for convicts ended .The orphan girls lived and worked right here. Today, over 150 years later, their names speak directly to us.

Names are at the core of our being, our identity. In the end, when our lives are over, all that is left of most of us is our names. And those often disappear quickly enough. The names of the orphan girls were memorialised when five years ago they became part of this structure. By being named again in this work of art, these girls, or their memories have been revived and given longevity. It may be that some of the girls left other information, other memories behind them. Some of you here today are direct descendants of those girls and know more of them than their names. But for most of the girls, their names are all we have.

And so on.

These are just some of the names, chosen at random. But as you listen to them you recognise that they are our names too, the names of many women here today, myself included. If we added to the panel the names of all the Irish Australian women here present, the list would flow naturally. Whether or not we share their DNA, we belong to them and they to us.

This deep connection helps us to think of how they felt. Their lives in Ireland had been terrible. The young girls, many not even in their teens had already known hunger and loss, and had been consigned to the harshness and squalor of workhouses. The authorities in Ireland wanted to get rid of them. Because the colony suffered from a shortage of women, the authorities here in Sydney agreed to take them"

While most of the girls were put into domestic service, they eventually married. They married Irishmen, but they also married Englishmen and other settlers. In this way, through the formation of families by the orphan girls, the Irish culture, the Irish personality spread widely throughout this colony as it did in Victoria and to a lesser but still marked extent in the later colonies.

I would like to make the personal observation that these girls must have been of strong and lively character, and great optimists. How else could they have survived the terrible famine, the loss of their parents, the desperate conditions of the workhouses in which they were incarcerated, the long dangerous sea voyage to Australia, the cultural shock of colonial Sydney, confinement in these barracks, and no doubt, a fair amount of discrimination, and bad behaviour by some of the colony's males.

Only the strongest girls, girls who were determined despite everything to find some happiness and fun, could have got through all that. I like to think of the girls having some fun, perhaps hooking up with some fiddlers and pipers and having a bit of a dance over there in Hyde Park before going back to scrubbing floors and washing dishes. After attending Mass of course"

The memorial is also notable for its unique contribution to the cultural landscape of this seminal part of Sydney. The area where we are gathered today, the Hyde Park Barracks once a jail for convicts, not only links us with the birth of our city, but indeed the beginnings of our Australian nation. The several memorials surrounding us all mark that history, but each in its own way, and each evokes a different aspect of our story.

The simple design and human scale of the famine memorial stands in evocative contrast to other nearby memorials. If we look around, first we see from here, just a stone's throw from the girls, our fine cathedral. There is an important relationship between the two structures, different as they are.

St Mary's Cathedral, now fully spired, is both an icon of our built culture, and a memorial to those Irish men and women, and their priests, who determined on the huge and bold task. The cathedral became both a massive symbol, and a centre for the practice of the faith they had brought, despite centuries of cruel repression, to the strange new land. After St Mary's was opened in 1900, some of the orphan girls, by then perhaps grandmothers, would have attended mass there.

A little further along from the Cathedral, in Hyde Park, stands a giant statue of a male figure in eighteenth century dress. It is Captain James Cook, the English navigator. He explored and documented the barely known southern continent prior to the British Government's claiming the land and in 1788 establishing its first colony on this continent.

This expropriation was carried out, as we know only too well, in complete disregard of the existing owners, the indigenous tribes of Sydney. It is worthwhile I suggest considering the connection between the granite giant Cook dominating the skyline of the park, and the faint and modest appearance on the delicate transparent wall of the names of the Irish orphan girls. Who contributed most, I wonder, to our thriving 21st century society?

Further along again, at the other end of Hyde Park stands a tall, handsome memorial built in Bathurst granite in the solid, dignified style of its time. This is the ANZAC memorial, a reminder of another massive human tragedy, one that deprived Australia of so much potential. In the First World War the young nation of Australia lost, perhaps not one quarter of its population but a hugely disproportionate number of its rising generation. Since its opening in 1934 the prominent ANZAC memorial has been a fitting and very visible tribute to the generations felled in that terrible war.

The famine memorial, in contrast, almost hidden from the busy passer by, reminds us gently of those Australians we gained from the tragedy of the Irish famine, the 4000 orphan girls along with many other Irish women and men. It is a great commemoration of those who were lost, and of those who survived.

It also speaks powerfully to us today. Because of its openness, almost since that first colony, to people from various troubled parts of the world, Australia has become a vibrant, successful multicultural democracy.

Whether they were convicts, adventurers, free settlers, assisted migrants, official refugees or asylum seekers without papers, newcomers to this land found a home, freedom and opportunity.

Our willingness to welcome desperate human beings fleeing wars, poverty, starvation, or oppression of their human rights has made us what we are today.

We Australians of the 21st century must continue this proud and humane tradition. No short term or narrow political objective should be allowed to undermine this fundamental strength of our nation.

As we recall the names of those girls who escaped the Great famine over 150 years ago to become Australians, we should also renew our determination to continue to provide opportunity and asylum to those who are seeking it from us today.

In this way, the beautiful memorial to the Irish famine will retain its meaning and power for decades, even centuries to come.

The spirit of the orphan girls deserves no less.

Susan Ryan AO 29 August 2004.