My Paternal Heritage

I have been watching an anniversary special of "Riverdance". Oh, how that music touches my soul. I have Irish heritage but never knew it until I was in my 30s. I had always been attracted to Ireland and all things Irish.

I can remember the first time I came across Irish dancing. I was about seven or eight years of age and I had a little friend home to play after school. She used to learn dancing and would teach me the steps she had learnt. I loved it and desperately wanted to take lessons, but my parents said no. I didn't understand why I couldn't have dancing lessons, it was just no and that was it. Of course, when I was an adult I realised we didn't have the money for things like that...my father was a gambler and it took my mother every ounce of her ingenuity to keep food on the table.

As I grew older, I was attracted to anything Irish (even Irish jokes!) and yearned to visit that country. I collected Belleek, the fragile porcelain that was made in County Fermanough. I read as much as I could and in doing so, became closer to my roots without realising it.

One day, my father's cousin, who had a keen interest in genealogy told me what he'd discovered about my father's side of the family. My surname, which I had hated at school because of all the uncomplimentary rhymes kids made about it, was actually an old Irish name. In fact there was a river that bore my maiden name. One of our ancestors was a boat builder in Dublin and built a ship named the Hawk which was sailed to New Zealand and landed north of Auckland. The place where he landed grew prosperous from boat building and was actually named after him until later on when it reverted to its Maori name. Also, because of this article I found some relatives in the small country town I was living in at the time.

In the 1970s there was an item in the national paper about some people who had renovated a ship called the Hawk and sailed her back to Dublin, her original home. In the article it mentioned my forebear...I was very proud to be associated with this small piece of New Zealand history.

I love the St Patrick's Day parade and I have an amusing story about that. I took my middle grand-daughter, Gabrielle, to the St Patrick's Day parade about five years ago. We were watching the floats and marching bands and I got talking to this lady standing next to me, who was visiting Australia from Ireland. She had the most beautiful accent. Anyway, she asked me if I was Irish and I explained, yes, but from a long way back.

"Oh, where do your people come from?" was the next question.

"Dublin," I answered.

"And have you been home?"

"No," I replied, "but I-" and was interrupted with,

"Oh, Jaysus! You haven't been home!" Then she turned to Gabrielle and said,

"Get your mam and family to get some money together and send your nan home to Dublin!"

I nearly choked and poor Gabbie just looked totally confused. It actually tickled me and gave me a lift for the rest of the day. This lovely Irish lady was obviously so proud of her country and just took it for granted that descendants would naturally want to go "home".

Of course, one of my dreams is to one day visit Ireland and find out the rest of my heritage, which may be difficult. My uncle came to a halt because records after a certain time didn't seem to exist. But during the Black and Tan uprising, when a lot of the records were held in the local Church, there was a lot of burning and records of births, deaths and marriages were destroyed.

My uncle managed to research back to Dublin in the late 1800s, but unfortunately died before he could find out any more. So, one day, I shall get to Ireland and continue his research into our Irish family tree.

I have got a little way though without leaving Australia. There is an Irish shop in the city which has a huge book with all the old Irish names in it. One day, during one of my visits to this store, I looked up my name and found we actually had a coat of arms, so I bought a keyring with this coat of arms and I have my car and house keys on it. It's a proud reminder of my heritage and the fact that my surname is a very respected name in Ireland.