Past Talks
Since its foundation in 1955 the Society’s principal activity has been the presentation of talks by members or invited guests on topics relating to Ireland and Irish heritage in Australia. In that time several hundred talks have been given. From 1974 many of those talks were audio recorded and we hold copies of those recordings from 1974 to 2008 and from 2014 to 2017, numbering in all 198 talks of variable quality. Since 2020, when during Covid we began to livestream our meetings via Zoom, the talks given to the Society have been video recorded, accumulating at the rate of about seven per year. In addition, we hold copies of manuscripts of some 56 talks, some dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. Access to these recordings is available to members and to researchers upon application to the Honorary Secretary. A list of recorded talks held by the Society is available here.
Summaries of talks and events back to 2011 can be viewed below.
2018 TALKS
February
After the Annual General Meeting Ciara Smart gave a talk entitled ‘Excused only through the Exigencies of Narrative’ about Irish-Aboriginal relations in colonial Australia.
March
The Aisling St Patrick’s Day Dinner was held on 23 March 2017 at Parliament House, Sydney. The guest speaker was acclaimed Irish novelist and short-story writer Evelyn Conlon.
April
Rod Smith spoke about his book Guinness Down Under, which tells the story of how the grandsons of Arthur Guinness, the famous brewer of Dublin, took the family business to Australia and New Zealand.
May
Kathleen Gilbert gave a talk entitled ‘An Irish-Australian Catholic Country Childhood’ in which she described growing up in the fifties and sixties on a sheep and wheat farm on the Murray River. Her talk was warmly received.
June
Dr Jeff Kildea, Adjunct Professor in Irish Studies at UNSW, gave a talk entitled ‘What price loyalty?: Australian Catholics in the First World War’ in which he examined the ways in which Australian Catholics of Irish descent reconciled their loyalties to Rome, Ireland and the British Empire.
July
At the mid-year lunch Susan Ryan AO, recently retired Age and Disability Discrimination Commissioner and a former federal Minister for Education, spoke about the massive cultural changes in education, especially in schools, that we have seen over this generation, particularly the changes following the disappearance of the Irish teaching orders.
August
Paul Lynch MP, member for Liverpool in the NSW parliament, gave an interesting talk entitled ‘West Britons Down Under: Colonial Politics and Being Irish?’ in which he discussed the ‘Irishness’ of three NSW colonial politicians: James Martin, William Bede Dalley and Patrick Jennings.
September
John Gooley, barrister, author and lecturer, with an interest in Anglo-Irish relations gave a talk on Winston Churchill and Ireland.
October
Professor Jonathan Wooding gave a talk entitled ‘On the trail of early Irish monks in Iceland: a report on recent fieldwork’ in which he discussed his research of an Irish monastic settlement in Iceland c. 800 AD.
November
Professor Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Director of the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies gave a talk entitled “Poets and Princes” about the powerful poetic class in the courts of the Irish kings who by composing poems of praise or satire could win the king’s favour or bring about his downfall.