IRELAND - Cobh and Dublin July 7-8

            Cobh (think Cove but with a ‘b’) is the port for Cork in the South of Ireland. The travel lecturer told us never to trust the weather. It could be fine in the morning and storm by after noon – and the vice versa. But we had a beautiful day with warm sunshine (24-25 degrees) and blue skies. Some storm clouds rolled in in the early afternoon and looked threatening, but the locals we were sitting talking to assured us ‘it will not rain today. No. Not today’.  It was a beautiful Irish summer day.  And they told us there are not so many of these.

            The travel lecturer had told us it would be a big day. When the Council (or whoever) of Cobh learned that the Sea Princess was carrying mostly Australian and New Zealand passengers on its Round the World trip, they declared July 7 “Australia Day” in Cobh.

            When we tied up the Sea Princess at the Wharf there were strings of Australian flags everywhere. When we went on shore (again on my electric scooter) there were Australian flags strung across the main street and in every shop window. Stalls along the street and in the park were decked with rows of small Australian flags, and some businesses had large Australian flags outside as banners. There were kangaroos and koalas in some windows. Small and medium Australian flags were for sale on the footpaths, and lots of small kids were hanging onto them. A great effort had been made. It was a Sunday, and even places like Solicitors’ windows were decorated even though the shops were closed.

            Of course, there were strings of Irish flags of orange and green, with the white in between, hanging as well, but there was no doubt we were welcome. The friendly atmosphere  contradicted any who might have thought that only our tourist money was welcome. Music flooded out from Kellys’ Pub across the road where Bruce managed to have his pint of Guinness later.

            In the park next to the ship there was a market with local stalls offering food. Joe’s sausage in a roll for 2 Euros was popular, and we had coffee and homemade farm style biscuits from another. A van on the street outside the park had ‘all day breakfast’ of bacon and egg rolls, and supermarkets were open with ‘Special Offers’.

            We bought a hand-made doll for a baby less than one year (no buttons or ‘hair’ to chew off) from Dolores from West Cork for grand daughter Keisha’s little Zoe. In the middle of the park was a rotunda with a local band of three young fellows belting out songs to the delight of teenagers sitting around the rotunda, and lots of locals and visitors also sitting in the shade there.

            We sat there with our coffee and handmade farmstyle biscuits and chatted to the people sitting near us – two local ladies. After a while the band changed to another group of young people, and in the afternoon the military band of Ireland arrived and played stirring music for an hour.

            While Bruce stayed to chat to the locals and wait to hear the band, I took in the Cobh Heritage Centre beside the wharf where there was an excellent display of ‘The Queenstown Story”. Cobh was rechristened Queenstown after the visit of Queen Victoria in the late 1800s, but later retook its original Cobh name.

This Heritage Centre was built in the old disused railway station where emigrants arrived to take the ships which took them – by the millions – away to new lands.

            There were hand carts of battered emmigrants’ luggage, figures in clothes of the day in scenes displaying the below decks quarters of migrant families in the sailing ships. There were scraps of comments from migrants’ diaries flashing up on the walls, and the sounds of violent storms in the half light.

            Of course all of this meant a lot to me as my great grand parents – Michael and Norah Moran – and their two small children departed from this very place in 1848 during the Years of the Great Famine. They were dirt poor potato farmers from County Clare and signed up with one of the advertising drives to bring labourers and farmers to Australia. I have a great place in my heart for these people as I spent a month in County Clare in 2003 tracing their lifestyle and footsteps in the hope of writing a book about their lives. It is perhaps half written and I hope that one day I will go back to finish it.

            Michael and Norah went from here to England and took ship from there to Sydney, taking five months on an old coal transport sailing boat. Norah had another child in steerage on the way. This one survived and grew up in Maitland, NSW, whereas Norah’s first two babies in Ireland died in the difficult days of potato failures.

            We came back to the ship for a 4.30 concert by the dancers of The Attridge Academy of Irish Dance in the Princess Theatre which was packed for their performance. Five junior girls and six senior dancers (that is, high school) including one boy put on a skillful exhibition of Irish dancing for about 45 minutes.

            Then it was time for passengers to get ready for ‘Sail Away’ on one of the decks overlooking the wharf, unless you were lucky enough to have a Port Side balcony cabin. Ours is Starboard. We lined up two or three deep at the rails on Decks 7 and 12 to look down on a crowded wharf. Many of the locals were there – some in period costume from the Heritage Centre – families with children still waving their flags, men and women and a few dogs on leads.

            The local band was playing. Not the Military Band. A group of less professional locals. They serenaded us with jigs, dances and even ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down’. Several hundred voices on the decks joined in singing the words. Someone shouted “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!” and the decks answered: “OI! OI! OI!”  The ship’s big fog horn eventually sounded its deep throated farewell and we moved out from the wharf to the band playing ‘Anchors Away’.

            There could not have been a greater contrast to the farewell Michael and Norah had when they left Ireland forever. Their ship waited for the tide. Maybe it was a chill 2 or 3 am when they cast off on February winter day. I guess the wharf was empty. No family waving goodbye or band to serenade them on their lonely farewell. I thought all these thoughts and found myself with a sense of sympathy and sadness for them. 

And for the millions of Irish Emmigrants – free or convict - who set sail from this port of Cobh in the 1800s to early 1900s.  Most of them never came home again to The Green Isle.

*  *  *  *

DUBLIN was very different day.

            We sailed in very slowly a bit later than usual as we had to wait till the tide was right, and the Liffey banks were lined with docks, cranes and cargo boats. There were piles of containers on wharves. Somehow I had never thought of Dublin as such a big port. I don’t know why as it is the capital of a modern nation with all the imports and exports that go with it.

            Shortly after we docked and passengers were cleared for landing, we were met by a young man called Tom – our escort from the Viator day Bruce had booked on the internet in Sydney. Off we set in a comfortable Mercedes car. This time we were the only ones so this was a private tour.

            We started in the city proper and drove along the North side of the Liffey, and around the South side.  Tom pointed out all the significant buildings, and also the empty ones marked for redevelopment. The collapse of the economy a few years ago meant that none of this had been completed – or sometimes begun. Sites that had been bought for astronomical millions of Euros, had been resold for peanuts, or just stood there untouched. All a bit sad.

            We saw the well kept Georgian parts of the city, and the not so salubrious.

We saw the General Post Office building where they say there are still bullet marks on the walls from the 1917 Uprising, where the rebels made their last stand.

            Then he took us to great park that Dublin boasts. Huge areas with people out for a Sunday picnic on the grass, or just lying there to sunbake. There were lots of men strolling around this area shirtless in the sun. One part was fenced off in preparation for a ‘Big Day Out’ style festival with crowds and bands the next week. 

            It turned out Tom had lived in Melbourne and had brought back an Australian partner to Dublin, so we had a lot to compare.

            There were two highlights of the day. The first was St Patrick’s Cathedral supposedly built on the spot where St Patrick made his first Irish Converts in the Fifth Century. The Cathedral building was commenced in 1190, and though it has been renovated there were small sections of the very old original stone walls where the stones were fretted and the mortar worn away.

            I was fascinated that there was an entrance fee of €6.50 each person into a Catholic Church in Ireland. I had presumed that if it was ‘St Patrick’s’ it was Catholic. AH! How I was wrong. It is Protestant. Anglican. Like so many things in Ireland that were Catholic it had been appropriated by the English conquerors and turned to Anglican. It was a magnificent Cathedral: lovely Gothic arches, beautiful stained glass windows each telling a story in installments, tombs in the walls with figures of knights or kings on top. In one of the transepts the banners of past military Irish Regiments from wars long gone hung moldering on the walls.

            At the West end of the nave there was an alcove where Jonathon Swift of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ fame is buried. He was Dean of St Patrick’s from 1713 to 1745 so he was not only a writer.

            The Church was a busy place. Tourists everywhere. Volunteers offered commentary. Someone was busy cleaning the brass of the lectern. Others manned the Entrance Desk to sell tickets, or the counter of the shop at the back selling Irish items. A notice told us that this Church received no money in Government support, and depended on entrance fees and donations for its upkeep. That made sense of the €6.50 entrance fee and the shop.  So I helped out by buying a few items!

The other highlight of the day was the two hours we spent in Grafton Street Mall. Tom dropped us off after 2pm and we set out to find lunch. We couldn’t find the Irish Coffee Shop he recommended but eventually had a toasted sandwich in Marks and Spencers – just because it was there and it was time. Nothing Irish about that.

We wandered along the street and stopped to listen to the singers and other music makers. A group of three young African men were taking it in turns to  do rap dancing performances to recorded music for a big crowd.

There was a big Centre at the top of Grafton Street called something ‘Green’, and we went into that mainly to get out of the hot day.  The ship had told us to expect 18° but it must have been in the top 20°s and sunny all day. We found a place to get a new battery for my watch that had stopped and sat to watch all the people. When we went back to other end of Grafton St we just went people watching. There  were the throngs of people and lots of  buses until it was time to meet up with Tom and the Mercedes again.

When he took us back to the ship we agreed we had had a very enjoyable day exploring Dublin, and we set out for Scotland without the benefit of an Irish band to see us off.