Shattering the Sunny Dream: The Dark Reality of the Irish Diaspora in Australian Fiction and Cinema

For more than a century, James Joyce's Ulysses has occupied a near-sacred place in the literary canon. Yet its immense reputation raises an important question: has Joyce's masterpiece expanded the possibilities of fiction, or has its towering influence encouraged critics to prize complexity over connection, innovation over…

Empire, Convicts and First Encounters in Australia's North

By Tim Flynn

My interest in Fort Dundas began not in an archive but on the Tiwi Islands themselves.

Having worked on the islands, I came to appreciate their distinct character. Although only a short distance from the Northern Territory mainland, the Tiwi Islands…

Irish history is filled with soldiers, revolutionaries, politicians and adventurers. Occasionally, however, a figure emerges who refuses to fit neatly into any single category. Arthur Lynch was one such man. Engineer, scientist, physician, journalist, soldier, author and Member of Parliament, he lived a life of such…

One of the largest Irish communities outside Ireland was built in the industrial towns and cities of Northern England. For many families, the economic transformations of the 1980s were not an abstract debate about markets and monetarism, but a lived experience that changed communities, careers and migration patterns for generations.

By T.S.…