After the arrival of my O’Toole ancestors in South Australia in 1840, there was a gap of six years before my next ancestors arrived. The gap was due to the fact that assisted emigration ceased for several years when the colony came close to bankruptcy. The economic fortunes of South Australia began to improve with the discovery of major copper deposits at Kapunda in 1842. Mines were opened at Kapunda in 1844 and at Burra in 1846. In 1845 assisted immigration resumed. In 1846 approximately 150 ships arrived in Adelaide. The population of the colony at the census in February 1846 was 22,390.
My great great grandparents Michael Kelly and Winifred Diviny and their six children arrived in Adelaide on Saturday 24 October 1846 on the ship Hooghly. The Hooghly sailed from Plymouth on 3 July. The Kelly family probably left Ireland from the port of Cobh, the harbour near Cork and sailed over to Plymouth to join the ship. Over 2.5 million Irish emigrants departed from Cobh (renamed Queenstown in 1849 following a visit from Queen Victoria. It was changed back to Cobh in 1921). It was the single most important port of emigration in Ireland.
October is a lovely time of year in Adelaide. I hope it was a beautiful spring day when they arrived, about to begin a new life in a land of opportunity, far away from the catastrophe of the Great Famine taking place in Ireland.
The Hooghly was described in an advertisement at the time as a ‘fine fast-sailing full-poop ship’ of 466 tons. It carried 240 passengers. The official passenger list from this ship has been lost so it is unknown how many of the passengers were Irish or English. The passenger list published in The Register newspaper is the principal source of information about the ship. Some of the immigrants were from Cornwall, brought out by the English Mining Company to work as labourers on the copper mine at Kapunda.
The ship Hooghly, approx. 1840.
This picture is from the Ship Collection, State Library of South Australia. No known copyright restrictions.
Four ships arrived on the same day and according to The Register (28 October 1846), there was much excitement in Adelaide on the day the ships arrived. “Only once before has the colony been greeted by the arrival of four English ships in a day; but it was a memorable occurrence…..the prospective arrivals will be but as drops in the bucket compared with the almost unlimited demand for labour in town and county.”
What the family did immediately after their arrival is unknown, but land records show they settled in the Adelaide Hills. Michael Kelly bought land in the Hundred of Kanmantoo, County of Sturt. The area where he farmed is close to the township of Nairne, not far from Mount Barker.
Winifred had five more children, one of whom was my great grandmother, Margaret Helena Kelly, who was born in 1853. Winifred died in 1858 at the age of 42. My great grandmother was five years old when her mother died. Michael married again. He and his second wife, Margaret Cronon, had four children.
Michael Kelly was a hard working farmer and died at the age of 62 in 1874 after a lingering illness. He made a lengthy Will a few months before he died and left an estate of £900.
Michael, Winifred and some of their children are buried in the Mount Barker Catholic Cemetery in a picturesque and peaceful setting.
My O’Toole ancestors were from County Wicklow, “The Garden of Ireland.” They arrived in Adelaide on 7 July 1840 on a small ship named the William Nichol. It was carrying Scottish and Irish immigrants from Greenock and Dublin. The William Nichol was built in Greenock in 1834. In 1842 it was condemned at Mauritius after being dismasted in a hurricane and running upon a reef.
The O’Tooles were the first of all my ancestors to arrive in South Australia. They travelled as a family: my 3X great grandparents, John O’Toole and Catherine O’Brien who were aged 57 and 50, my 2X great grandparents John Thomas O’Toole and his wife Ellen Murphy, plus their daughter Mary and sons Dennis and James.
Under the assisted emigration scheme, labouring classes received free passage if they were aged 15 to 30 years of age and had two references. Preference was given to married applicants. John Thomas Toole (the name as written in their official documents), aged 23 and Dennis Toole aged 25 received approval for an assisted passage on 27 January 1840. It is possible that the rest of the family paid their own way. It is unlikely that John O’Toole and Catherine O’Brien would have received an assisted passage as they would have been considered too old.
It is remarkable that they were successful in their application because at that time the distribution of emigration agents in the British Isles gave less opportunity to the Irish than anyone else. In the first five years of the colony’s existence the Irish made up less than 7 per cent of immigrants.
The O’Tooles are unusual in another respect, as very few Irish immigrants to South Australia came from County Wicklow. Most came from the northern counties of Cavan and Monaghan, and the southern counties of Clare and Tipperary.
It is hard to imagine the scene which must have greeted them on their arrival. Adelaide had been settled just four years previously and the white population was only 14,600 people. It is not known how many Aborigines were living in South Australia before the arrival of Europeans. Estimates of the pre-contact indigenous population vary between 10,000 and 15,000.
The Kaurna people lived in the area around Adelaide. During the first few years of settlement race relations were amicable. The colony started out with high ideals of safeguarding the Aborigines’ interests and 20 per cent of the proceeds of land sales was to be used for their benefit. This scheme was never implemented. But I must get back to the story of the O’Tooles.
“View on the Port Creek” from a watercolour by Colonel William Light. The original is in the S.A. Art Gallery. Date of original: 1838 Photographer : Colin Ballantyne. Photograph courtesy of the State Library of South Australia
After arrival in Adelaide the emigrants were allowed to stay for only a short time in the Emigration Depot before they were required to leave and start fending for themselves. The Emigration Depot, established in 1838, was located in the West Parklands opposite what is now Hindley Street.
My 2X great grandmother Ellen gave birth to a daughter in the Emigration Depot on 26 July, just a few weeks after their arrival. Ellen and her mother-in-law Catherine O’Toole received relief assistance for ten days. They had to leave the Emigration Depot when Ellen’s baby was a few days old. The baby, named Catherine, died a few days later, on 3 August. It was a sad beginning to their lives in South Australia.
Their early years in the colony must have been a struggle for survival, for the colony itself fell on hard times, became bankrupt, and all assisted immigration was stopped between 1841 and 1845. The British Government had very inadequate knowledge of conditions in the colony. The third Governor, George Grey was ordered to carry out a stern policy of retrenchment. He continued with zeal the austerity measures begun by Governor George Gawler. He suspended work on Adelaide’s public buildings and greatly reduced all government expenditure, including the scale of relief for the unemployed and destitute. People who had been engaged on government contracts lost all means of livelihood.
The Board of Commissioners informed Grey that all who held no contract with the Board might conveniently be left to starve. Lord Stanley, Secretary of the State for the Colonies, ordered Grey to ship the unemployed to other colonies and to throw the destitute on their own resources or their relations.
The new policy engendered deep distress and discontent. Grey defied orders by drawing bills on the British Treasury for £25,000 for poor relief. The British authorities condemned these expenditures, censured the Governor and abolished his discretionary power.
It is most likely that the O’Toole’s got work as agricultural labourers. They lived in Morphett Vale, now one of Adelaide’s southern suburbs. Times must have been difficult. In April 1846, my 3X great grandfather John O’Toole and his sons, James and John, and one other were charged with stealing timber from the parklands in North Adelaide. The case was reported in The Register on 20 April. I can’t help but feel sympathetic towards my ancestors.
Colonel William Light statue overlooking city of Adelaide
Photograph taken by Michael Coghlan, 12 January 2011 (Flickr Creative Commons)
The parklands between the city and North Adelaide are well manicured today, but in 1846 I imagine they were untamed Australian bush. North Adelaide now is one of the most prestigious suburbs of Adelaide. There is a statue of Colonel William Light on a hill in the Parklands overlooking the City.
More O’Tooles from County Wicklow arrived in South Australia over the next few decades. My guess is these people were related to John O’Toole in some way and came to South Australia in a pattern of chain migration for which the Irish were famous.
In 1844 my 2X great grandmother Ellen gave birth to another daughter, also named Catherine. This baby was my great grandmother, and the first of my ancestors to be born in Australia. Ellen gave birth to more children: Mary, Margaret, James, Thomas and Denis. Sadly, the youngest two died in infancy.
All of the O’Tooles who arrived in 1840 became owners of their own land, something they could never have dreamed of back in Ireland.
In September 2016 my husband and I had a holiday in South Australia, visiting the places where my ancestors had once lived. We found the burial place of John and Ellen O’Toole in the Whyte Yarcowie cemetery.
My mother Mary Dempsey grew up on a farm a few miles from Whyte Yarcowie. One hundred years ago Whyte Yarcowie was a thriving small community. Now it is a ghost town. Even the small cemetery was difficult to find.
It was a cold day which made the cemetery seem even more bleak and desolate. As I stood at the graveside of John Thomas O’Toole and Ellen O’Toole, I wondered about their lives, particularly my 2X great grandmother. Ellen lived into the next century and died on 1 July 1901 aged 89 years. I thought of her giving birth to her first baby in the Emigration Depot. Who were her parents? Where was she born and grew up? When and where did she marry John Thomas O’Toole? Once she was a young woman with hopes and dreams. I knew I had to try to find out more about her.
Whyte Yarcowie Cemetery, South Australia. The farm where my mother grew up is a few miles over these hills in the distance.
In January 1972 I set off to see the world, leaving South Australia behind forever (although I didn’t know that at the time). Ireland was my first stop. I knew nothing about my ancestors, apart from my mother’s family, the Dempseys who were from County Cavan. Perhaps there was something in my blood which drew me back to Ireland.
It wasn’t a simple matter to get there. In those far-off days international air travel was still relatively expensive. The cheapest way to get to London from Adelaide was a domestic flight to Perth, then 6 days of sheer tedium on a Russian passenger ship, the Khabarovsk to Singapore and finally a charter flight to London. After recovering at a Youth Hostel in Holland Park, I took the four hour train journey to Holyhead in Wales, from where I caught a ferry across the Irish Sea to Dublin.
Dublin was cold, dark and wet, a stark contrast to the heat and brilliant sunshine I’d left behind in Adelaide. It was not just the weather which was grim. This was a time when the Troubles in Northern Ireland dominated the news. A few weeks after my arrival, on 30 January 1972, the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland occurred. British soldiers shot dead 28 unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest march. The massacre was followed by huge protests throughout Ireland, and on 2 February the British Embassy was burnt down in Merrion Square. This was my introduction to Dublin.
I spent about three months in Dublin and found it an enchanting city. I had read quite of lot of Irish literature by this time. It was thrilling to walk the streets of the city and visit places which had figured in the books I’d read: the Martello Tower at Sandycove which features in the first chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Cliff Walk at Howth Head, to walk across the cobblestone courtyard of Trinity College and visit the Library (and yes, to see The Book of Kells), to attend a play at The Abbey Theatre. I took the bus to Dún Laoghaire Harbour and walked along the pier. Dún Laoghaire used to be called Kingstown. I wonder if any of my ancestors may have departed Ireland from this port?
Somehow Ireland didn’t feel like a foreign country. Several times strangers stopped me in the streets of Dublin to ask for directions. I was thrilled that they mistook me for a local. I realised then that I “fitted in,” that I looked Irish.
After three months I left Dublin for England. I went on to Canada, married and raised a family. I continued to travel the world for the next 40 years, returning to Ireland a couple of times, but never in search of my ancestors. Now I am ready to begin my ancestral search in earnest, to find those lost voices from the past before it is too late. I am on this quest because I want to know who these people were, but also in the hope that there may be other descendants who find this story interesting.
My Irish Ancestors in South Australia 