New Zealand Books

Irish Women in Colonial Australia is a historical anthology of nine essays covering Irish women's migration to Australia from the days of the penal colony to the late 19th century. Edited by Trevor McClaughlin, a senior lecturer in history at Macquarie University in Sydney, the book claims to be the only one published to date (1998) devoted exclusively to the experiences of Irish women migrants to Australia. The essays are presented to the reader in an inexact chronological order, thereby providing useful context for these independently produced works. All nine contributions are written from research of public records in Australia and Ireland and to a lesser degree, from input of family historians. The 229-page book includes brief profiles of each contributor, an introduction explaining his/her research method, a list of figures and tables, a section of notes supporting each essay and an index.

The essays in Irish Women in Colonial Australia begin by exploring the plight of Irish women convicts sentenced to "transportation" to Australia's penal colonies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The story of Ellen Curly, one of 17 Irish women murderers sent to Van Diemen's Land - the original name for Tasmania, so called by the British in honor of Anthony van Diemen, a governor-general of the Dutch East India Company - describes the destiny awaiting most of these women. Curly was a 21-year-old married laundress living in County Cork in the 1850s when she became pregnant in an extramarital liaison with soldier Amos Brooks. Author Richard Davis in "Irish Murderesses as Colonists" says Curly delivered a baby girl, then was arrested and confessed to murder after burying her alive.

Curly's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life. She arrived at Van Diemen's Land aboard the Martin Luther on Sept. 1, 1852. Instead of a dreadful existence in a cell behind bars, the partially literate Curly found herself assigned to work for a local doctor. A year later, colonial authorities deemed her divorced by distance, permitting her to marry William Harris, a prisoner from Bristol who had been transported for a stabbing. Ellen was granted her release in 1856 and received a conditional pardon in 1863. She and William had several children and apparently lived peaceful, productive lives until he died in 1900; Ellen died in 1913. They leave many descendents in modern day Tasmania.

This pattern of new beginnings rather than stark endings for convicts sent to the penal colonies of Australia was more often the rule than the exception. It seems confinement on the ship during the long ocean journey to Australia was considered adequate jail time for them. It's true some were convicted of new crimes in Australia, but common outcomes featured prisoners' placements as servants or menial workers who were later released and occasionally pardoned to live respectable lives, usually in poverty. Portia Robinson in her essay, "An Irish-Australian Identity," admits these criminal Irish women were considered the refuse of Irish society. But in Australia, most overcame their poor education and lack of occupational and social skills to lead honest, industrious lives. Ironically, their sentence to Australia's penal colonies permitted many of them to create for themselves lives that were impossible for women of their class to achieve in Ireland.

Robin Haines in her essay, "Bound for Colonial Australia" echoes Robinson's comments on successful Irish women convict emigrants as she tells us about free immigrant Irish women in Australia. Haines uses New South Wales shipping records and parliamentary papers to show how large these groups of free Irish women immigrants to Australia were. Among all government-assisted arrivals in Australia from the U.K. between 1848 and 1860, 63 percent arriving in New South Wales, 51 percent arriving in Victoria and 59 percent arriving in South Australia were single women. A one colony, one year focus reveals 2,440 or 77 percent of 3,151 government-assisted arrivals in Victoria in 1859 were female. Many were remarkably successful in terms of their material, economic and emotional lives.

Haines refers to the work of David Fitzgerald, editor of Oceans of Consolation and a contributor to this anthology as the author of "Reading the Letters of Emigrant Irish Women" to give readers a sense of what life was like for these free Irish women immigrants from their points of view. Haines cites letters written in the early 1880s by Biddy Burke in Brisbane to her family in County Galway in which Biddy wrote (sic), "I am sorrow that I hadent come 5 years before I did come I would have a lot of money now...I am sending you three pounds for to drink my health and once more." Lamenting the separation from her parents, Biddy nonetheless closed the door on her return to Ireland: "But I don't supose I could live there now."

Haines admits the psychic, physical and socio-economic costs of emigration for many Irish women emigrants were far greater than the compensations. However, she refers to colonial records that testify to the resilience shown by many who fought for their rights, won divorces from dead-end marriages, sought and received licenses for businesses on their own account. She shows how courageous Irish women emigrants to Australia - certainly not all, but many fell in this category - traded the dramatic costs of migration for adventure, excitement and a life free of starvation, misery and lack of opportunity. In other words, many Irish women found hope in Australia.

Richard Reid interprets census data to discuss the demographic scope of Irish women immigrants to Australia in his essay, "Irish Female Assisted Immigration." Reid reports that 31,018 women were among the 62,943 persons of Irish birth in New South Wales' total population of 503,981 residents in 1871. The majority of these Irish arrived between 1848 and 1870 as government-assisted immigrants. Reid enlivens his subject by drilling into the profiles of the emigrants who arrived in Sydney aboard the good ship Caroline in October, 1854. Of the 258 immigrants on board, 254 were Irish and 188 were female. Eighty-six of the women - 47 percent - were from two counties in Ireland: Claire and Tipperary. Reid says nearly a third of all Irish arriving in Sydney between 1848 and 1870 hailed from there. My great grandparents were two of them.

Mary Rynn, my great grandmother, arrived in Sydney in 1869 at age 17 from Ennis in County Clare. She joined her sister, Margaret, who had arrived two years earlier. The Rynn sisters shared an identical reason for leaving Ireland. Their parents had arranged a marriage for Margaret to a local lad in whom she had not the slightest interest, no doubt upsetting her parents by choosing to emigrate rather than tie the knot. Obviously enamored of the young man, the parents tried the same match again with Mary, but with the same result. Not only did Mary say no, she said her goodbyes, traveled to Cork and boarded a ship for Australia with her brother, John, to join Margaret in Sydney.

The Rynn sisters found work together as domestics in a Catholic parish rectory until 1882 when Mary wed my great grandfather, Philip Patrick Hassett. The same age as Mary, both born in 1852, Philip Patrick had emigrated from his family's farm outside Nenagh in County Tipperary about the same time Mary Rynn left Ennis. He chose Australia after a friend who had recently returned from America told him in no uncertain terms to avoid the United States and head for Australia. Mary and Phil Hassett raised five children with Margaret's help; she was one of many Irish women immigrants to Australia who never married. Great grandfather Philip Patrick died in 1910; Auntie Maggie Rynn died in 1932; and my great grandmother Mary Hassett died in 1935.

Reid focuses on Caroline passenger 19-year-old Dora MacDonagh from Limerick to turn his essay from a dry statistical analysis into an interesting story. Dora was fully literate, able both to read and write; one-third of her female shipmates were illiterate. She signed an indenture binding her to seek employment in New South Wales and repay within two years the £13 the colony paid for her ticket of passage. Seventy-three percent of the women on the Caroline sailed to Australia under the provisions of the Assisted Immigration Act. Dora was a Catholic, as were 79 percent of the other 187 women immigrants on the ship. She listed her occupation as milliner, a maker of hats. She married Patrick McMahon from County Clare at St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney on Sept 26, 1857. Dora and Patrick had nine children together before Dora died on Feb. 24, 1908, two years before Patrick. Reid says qualitative research now under way should give clearer pictures of these lives that began in poor, dark Irish rooms and cabins and lived out their days under the bright Australian sun.

Three essays in the book delve deeper in a geographic sense into stories of Irish immigrant women in the colonies of South Australia, Queensland and Victoria. "Irish Women in Colonial South Australia" by Eric Richards and Ann Herraman reveals demand for labor of all sorts was required in and around Adelaide and how the Colonial Secretary reported back to London, domestics "cannot be introduced too plentifully." In "Resistance, Respectability and Ruin," Libby Connors and Bernadette Turner tell us about 4,000-plus Irish Famine orphan girls sent from the workhouses of Ireland to Queensland between 1848 and 1850. One marvels at stories like Mary Moriarity's who arrived in Australia from an Irish workhouse in 1850 at the age of 16. She married ex-convict and illiterate Samuel Brassington two years later and by 1870, the two owned several businesses and had become one of the largest landowners Queensland. Pauline Rule writes of "Irish Women's Experiences in Colonial Victoria" but admits her task was difficult due to limited immigration and demographic data. However, her portraits of Irish women from letters and newspaper articles suggest the majority of Irish women immigrants to Victoria survived reasonably well, echoing other contributors when she says they made their own welcome through courage and jauntiness.

Editor McClaughlin contributes "Casualties of Colonisation" in which he analyses records of Australian women immigrants in prisons and mental asylums. He says Irish women were consistently over-represented among offenders, lunatics and paupers in Australia, but reports this was no different from the situation in Britain, Canada and the United States. Further, he says focusing on Irish female immigrant casualties produces only a limited view of Irish women's settlement in Australia. No doubt the majority of Irish women emigrants to colonial Australia made good choices.

Irish Women in Colonial Australia is a valuable contribution to the study of Irish migration and Australian history as well as one of the better historical anthologies on the shelf. Whether by luck, a following wind or the skill of an astute editor, its contributors create a strong chain of valuable information. In fact, there is no weak link. The major reason is they all depend on well-researched data and deliver clearly expressed interpretation. Editor McClaughlin is to be commended and his contributors thanked; their work is good.

This is a well-conceived and interesting book that provides the research to support Snouck Hurgronje's assertion (in "Mekka") that the Jawah -- pilgrims from the Malay world -- *were* forming a new archipelagic identity in the Middle East. Laffan counters Benedict Anderson's claim in "Imagined Communities" that the pre-national religious pilgrimages didn't set folks on new journeys but merely returned them to their old lives with elevated status. He charts the creation of a new identity that was politicized but not nationalist in the conventional sense.

Now if only I could afford to own the thing...

Overall I found Islands of the Dawn to be a good introduction to some of the mainstream (and lesser known) Alternative Spiritualities in New Zealand.

There is a great deal of information on Spiritualism, Theosophy and a whole chapter dedicated to The Golden Dawn. If you are interested in any of these three 'paths' - especially with respect to New Zealand - then as far as overviews go, you will not be disappointed. There is plenty more in this book though for people interested in reading about alternative spiritualities in New Zealand. Other groups and paths mentioned include Order of the Table Round, Builders of the Adytum, Anthroposophy, the Culdean Trust, Beeville, the OTO, and various Eastern Spiritualities.

The author has done a great job of presenting background information on various groups and philosophies to give context to the New Zealand branches. This makes the book a good starting point for New Zealander's who want to learn more about alternative religious and esoteric groups without any prior background knowledge.

Those interested in paganism, wicca or satanism are the only paths likely to be disappointed with this book as there is little written on them. Perhaps neo-pagan groups had hardly surfaced at this stage in time, and were harder to find. However, around the time of the authors travels in New Zealand and prior to the published date of the book there was the magazine "Magic Pentacle" being published listing various pagan groups, and at least 2 groups identifying themselves as Satanists were around (Order of the Left Hand Path, and Order of the Sword of Damocles). However some information on these groups may be available in a thesis written by a student at Victoria University who interviewed former members of the OLHP. I don't know if the thesis is publicly available however.

Australia's Jean Devanny was an author, political activist and women's liberationist. Biographer Carole Ferrier's Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary is a detailed, engaging, and informative political and literary biography providing the reader with a complete account of her life, times, and accomplishments. Devanny arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1929 from New Zealand. Here first novel, "The Butcher Shop" having been banned in politically turbulent New Zealand at the time. In the 1930s she joined the Communist Party and rapidly gained fame as a redoubtable public speaker. She clashed periodically with the party line under Stalin, and her open marriage and rumored love affairs led to a great many complications for her personal and professional life. Interested in issues of race, gender and sexuality, as well as class, Devanny was decades ahead of her time in her thinking on these questions. An outstanding work, Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary is an impressive and clearly recommended biography which draws upon primary sources, oral history material from people who knew Devanny, as well as unpublished archives and manuscripts.

WHO INVENTED THE MARINE JET? Controversy has raged for years over this question.A New Zealand sheep farmer, Bill Hamilton, has been said to be its inventor, but he himself never made such a claim. He said "I do not claim to have invented marine jet propulsion." was his response to a critic in 1962. The honour probably belongs to a gentleman named Archimedes. This book outlines the development from the 1950's thru to the 1200HP racing boats used today in the sport of JETSPRINT.

A must have.

The story of the Catalpa Rescue has been written about before. Over the years most books and articles on the famous rescue of the six Fenian military prisoners from Fremantle prison in Australia were pulp fiction style stories with the omissions and errors usually found in this genre. This includes the recent Peter Stevens' book "The Voyage of the Catalpa" and, the book Stevens got much of his information from, William Laubenstein's "Emerald Whaler," both of which ought to be called historical novels. Only one book until the Fennell-King publication, Sean O'Luing's out of print but excellent work, "Fremantle Mission," was actually written by an expert Fenian researcher. O'Luing drew heavily on the sources that Fennell-King have made available to us in their publication. The Fennells, who have spent many years researching the Catalpa rescue, have provided us a complete legible copy of the articles titled "The Story Of The Catalpa Rescue" from John Devoy's 1904 Irish-American nationalist newspaper, "The Gaelic American" along with significant excerpts from the minutes of a United Brotherhood (Clan na Gael) convention held in September 1877 in Cleveland (from the Catholic University of America archives) wherein a mutiny charge against Thomas Brennan, a Clan member who was part of the rescue team, was investigated.
John Devoy, editor of the Gaelic American, was the man who planned, raised the funds, and executed the mission. John Devoy had at his disposal his diary and his collection of Clan na Gael documents to refresh his memory as he writes. Many interesting episodes that are nowhere else in print come to light as Devoy describes his part in the planning and financing of the voyage. Heretofore only available on microfilm reels, the Fennells make these prime sources available to the ordinary reader. Devoy's articles include the report of the man chosen to lead the rescue mission, John Breslin. This report made to the Clan na Gael membership recounts his management of the actual rescue at Fremantle and John King's personal report of his part in the mission. King was an ex prisoner and Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB) man from Australia who boarded the Catalpa along with the rescued men for the voyage back to the United States. The footnotes given by the Fennells bring us up to date on the latest Catalpa Expedition research. As an Irish-American history researcher who has struggled through these micofilms, I find this book indispensable, as it will be for anyone interested in the Fenians, the Clan Na Gael or Irish American history.
Michael Ruddy, Union City, TN author of "Irish Army in America" (Civil War Times April 2003).

This book adds significantly to the understanding of Katherine Mansfield and her New Zealand stories. I enjoyed it very much.

Mansfield's work has never been out of print, but it's amazing to think that it's hard, at times, to find. Norton, obviously with an eye to the academic market, recently published this fine anthology. Vincent O'Sullivan has chosen carefully, and his footnotes and other editorial material is simply top shelf. The critical material is well chosen--that alone would be worth the price of admission. If you've read some KM, this is a good source for expanding your background; if you're new to her work, you're in good hands. If you're an astute collector of her first editions, here's a copy that you can feel free to underline, highlight, and just enjoy.

If you're new to Katherine Mansfield, this is a good book to start with. Smith opens some doors for the novice or scholar. You might want to buy Vincent O'Sullivan's recent anthology published by Norton to use as your reading copy of KM's works. It's easy to find Antony Alper's excellent full length biography. It's essential reading too. If you are serious about your reading, Alpers also edited her works (Oxford U Press), and it's worth tracking down a copy -- not just for the logical arrangement of the text, but for his excellent notes.

Paul Ham has managed to bring alive a time and place that we are now over half a century removed from.
He tells the tale Of the Kokoda Track campaign from the first day the Japanese ships appeared off the northern beaches of Papua New Guinea and the troops came ashore, through to their utter destruction many hard months later at the hands of the Australian and US troops.
He tells the story from the view of the soldier in the field, on both sides, to the perspectives of the highest offices of command and the egos at large there.
This was the first great reversal on land of the rampaging Japanese army. That a group of ragtag part time soldiers was able to slow them says something of the troops, and also of the terrain and conditions these troops were asked to fight in.
I asked for this book for a Christmas present and just stated the title thinking I would get the Peter FitzSimons book. I was a little disappointed when I found I had received this book instead. But I have to say by the time I had finished this book, the mistake was most welcome. I have not yet read the Peter FitzSimons book but I would have to say it would be hard pressed to top this book.
This is an outstanding read. There's not a wasted word or a dull sentence in the whole book. I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in the campaigns of World War 2.