Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/52

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38
THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

Minister of Victoria, the Hon. Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, Baronet, of Drumcondra, Ennis, Clare. In February, 1880, at a time of great political excitement, he was defeated by a narrow majority, but was subsequently returned by the agricultural constituency of West Bourke, which contains a strong body of well-to-do Irish farmers. Mr. John Curtain, a Limerick man, represented the North Melbourne electorate in parliament for a series of years. Mr. Thomas Fogarty has several times occupied the mayoral chair, and Dr. Lloyd, another Limerick representative, is one of the best-known and popular men in Melbourne. For a lengthy period, since 1865, he has been the chairman of the North Melbourne bench of magistrates. In law and medicine he is equally recognised as an authority of repute. South of the city proper, between the river and the bay, are the two flourishing suburbs of Emerald Hill and Sandridge, each of which has a considerable Irish element. The former was so named by one of its earliest Hibernian inhabitants, who was charmed with its beautiful verdant aspect, bringing up fond recollections of a "green isle" far away. Once it was temporarily known by the prosaic name of Canvas Town, which had at least the one merit of appropriateness, for, at the first great rush to the goldfields, the whole surface of the green hill was covered with tents, the temporary homes of thousands of intending diggers, who could find no accommodation or sleeping space whatever in the crowded city on the other side of the river. But all vestiges of that exciting time have long since vanished. Emerald Hill, or South Melbourne, as it is now officially called, forms a compact, substantial, well-built city of 25,000 inhabitants, of whom one-fourth may be set down as Irish-Australians. They are under the spiritual jurisdiction of, the Very Rev. Dean O'Driscoll, who has had charge of the