Fossicking on the beach, despite the sandflies, is a pleasant pastime. In stormy weather, this is a wild coastline. In clear and sunny weather, the sunsets are glorious and the view inland of the alpine mountain range is magnificent.
Let us take an imaginery journey with our ancestor, Laurence Sullivan. Firstly a three month ordeal by boat from Ireland to Victoria, Australia. Henry Brett’s White Wings, gives vivid insights into not only the conditions aboard these ships but also the dangers inherent in such long sea voyages in stormy weather, particularly if the ship’s surgeon or sea captain was fond of the bottle.
In past accounts of this family’s New Zealand beginning, the emphasis has always been on Laurence Sullivan. As we will discover later, his wife-to-be, Margaret Vaughan, made a similar voyage from Ireland to Australia, about the same time, but it is doubtful they knew each other in Ireland although the counties of Limerick and County Clare abut each other on the west coast of Ireland. It is known that Laurence’s brother, Michael, also emigrated to Australia in the 1860s, so they probably travelled together and as their cousin, Mick Carroll, also ended up at Gillespie’s, it is more than likely that he also travelled with them. Who knows? Michael Sullivan visited his brother at Gillespie’s in March, 1887, but the Australian Sullivan connection seems to have been lost.
It is timely here to remember that in September, 1845, when blight was first noticed in the potato crop in Ireland, both Laurence Sullivan and Margaret Vaughan would have been in their teens. Potatoes were the main and often the only diet for many families, supplemented by a little buttermilk. Between 1846 and 1851 when it was estimated the population of Ireland was eight million, over one million died as a result of this five year long famine, with another one million fleeing to other countries. In the decades following more would leave.
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