AS IRELAND’S WOMEN’S National Football Team are participating in the Fifa Women’s World Cup 2023, the opportunity was taken to also choose an Australian site for the international venue for the annual National Famine Commemoration Day. 

The event was organised by the Great Irish Famine Commemoration Committee which was formed in Sydney in 1995 following remarks by then-president Mary Robinson.

Without mincing her words, Robinson implored the Irish community in the country to better remember the Irish famine to keep a spotlight on modern hunger. 

A memorial, including the names of thousands of so-called Orphan Girls who came to Australia as part of the Earl Grey scheme between 1848 and 1850, was built at the Hyde Park Barracks in the city in 1999. Each year, it is the site of a memorial to ‘keep the history alive’. 

The Earl Grey Scheme was devised by Grey – the then-Secretary of State for the Colonies – to relieve overcrowding in the Irish workhouses. 

The vast majority of the 4,114 who travelled by ship to Australia between 1848 and 1850 as part of the programme had lost at least one parent and were living in workhouses across the island. 

Minister for State Thomas Byrne was in attendance for the commemoration today, along with the Consulate General in Sydney and the Irish Ambassador in Australia Tim Mawe. 

“This commemoration marks the 175th anniversary of the start of the Early Grey scheme but it also coincides with a day of commemoration for the new generation of determined and aspiring Irish women making their mark on the world stage,” he said. 

“We saw that last night for our team here in Sydney… Irish women making a massive impact all across the world. So remembering the suffering, the tragedy, the death and the loss, let us also remember that throughout our history… Irish people have gone around the world with the best of intentions, with the best of determination to make things different and to make things brighter.”

Byrne thanked the committee for the work on the beautiful monument and for keeping the memory of the Orphan Girls alive. 

Chair of the committee, Damien Ennis – who has lived in Australia for 15 years – told The Journal he got involved when the previous iteration of the committee sought out younger members. 

He believes with the digitisation of records, more and more younger people want to find out about their ancestry, rather than waiting until retirement which has previously been typical of amateur historians. 

Margaret Hurley is one of the 4,114 names on the glass walls of the monument and her great-great-great-granddaughter Liz took a moment today to point it out ahead of the ceremony. 

The engraved trunk she brought onto the ship with her from Ireland, aged 17, is displayed at the adjoining Hyde Park Barracks Museum. 

Liz says it is important to her and her family to remember Margaret, particularly as they cannot trace their lineage further back than her. 

“We know everyone on my grandfather’s side,” she says, “but Margaret was my grandmother’s grandmother, so it stops there.”

A doctor now in Sydney, she still visits her cousins in Ireland often, underlying the everpresent links between the countries, despite the vast distance between them. 

You can find the database of Orphan Girls here.