Samuel O’Connor

This section of the essay will analyze the role that that the Irish had in the construction industry of Australia in the early 19th century. Australia in the early 19th century was classified as vacant land by the British colonial rulers at the time, this meant that all land could be freely settled by anyone. The influx of Irish migrants to the region meant that the scarcity of labor coupled with the rapid development of the colony furthered the expansion of Australia’s quickly growing economy. The Irish were typically laboring in poor working conditions, a reflection of how significant the role of the Irish was in Australia was that of how many Catholic Churches were built in Australia during this period.[1] The aspects of construction that will be analyzed in this part of the essay will be living quarters, roads and bridges. This segment will also pay particular attention to James Dempsey; an Irish immigrant who was forced to move to Australia after the 1798 Rebellion and prospered in the construction trade where he made a small fortune.[2] The area in question that this essay will analyze is New South Wales.

 

The Irish rebellion of 1798 could not have come at a better time for the development of the freshly colonized territory of Australia. The rebellion meant that there was a huge number of convicts being sent from Ireland to the penal colony to be used as forced labor. The mass movement of a significant portion of the Irish population meant that there was a large skilled workforce readily available and could forcibly be put to use.[3] They played a major role in the economic development of these Australia as free labor meant that work that took place in difficult conditions were carried out regardless of the complication. Australian economy was heavily reliant on the work of Irish migrants to assist in making the economy functional and diverse so as to allow to become somewhat self-sufficient and not rely heavily on the UK. [4]

 

Construction in Australia began from nothing, there were very few architects in the colonies and no one that was adept at the organization and art of building techniques. This meant that there were men from all types of work that were forced to adapt to the position that they found themselves in. The lack of skill was apparent but the tools and the materials that they used were also quite poor. Trial and error was the main method of construction in the early days of the Australian colony, work on significant buildings began almost immediately after the first settlers but the living areas of early builders. The small core of people whom had decent building skills were far too stretched to accommodate everyone in building, it was a rarity to see buildings that were constructed with the technology of the era. They were primarily built by people who were unskilled in building techniques. Issues with local timber was apparent due to the different characteristics to European timber. The Europeans saw how the natives used bark for the roofs of their homes, this was seen as far too primitive for the colonizers who saw themselves as superior to the natives. Stubbornness towards the native’s use of bark soon faded when it was discovered that this was a far more effective way of making roofs.

 

Before the settlement of Europeans Australia’s original roads were bush paths that had been formed by the Indigenous population. Road construction at the beginning of the 19th century was usually not very well funded and relied on government capital in order to be maintained and built. These roads were put under extreme stress during the Gold Rushes and in some cases made the roads that already existed unused.[5] In most other developing nations in the early 19th century road quality was improving hugely due to advance in technology, but in Australia this was quite the contrary. Irish convicts were used as an unlimited source of labor to work hard hours but they were an uninterested workforce and required overseers to maintain constant supervision, the poor construction of these roads meant for regular maintenance.[6] The lack of trained individuals that could survey land meant that the roads built by the Irish convicts were not built across the shortest route making the job far more difficult than it needed to be. The workers lived in wattle and daub temporary housing which were constructed as the roads were built, in an effort to improve the quality of roads a toll system was introduced in 1810. Private operators were given the right to collect these tolls with the promise of maintaining them for ten years, standards of construction were also given so as to ensure high quality roads.[7] Irish workers played a significant role in the construction of these roads, many of them had earned their right to work freely after their “assignment”. The paved roads brought much more accessibility to the colony as before these reforms there were no paved roads outside of Sydney, the reforms also generated an income of £930 in 1815 as a result of Irish labor in the region.

The Early Australian colony was extremely isolated from the rest the developed world at the time meaning it did not have access to the heavy industry that was available to the United States and Britain. The climate in Australia was not what most Europeans would have experienced in the home countries, extreme rain and drought meant that rivers were flooding and drying up on a yearly basis. This proved difficult for the Australian government to cope with as not having access to brides seriously held back economic development in the colony. The state of bridges was in a similar state to that of the roads with convict labor being plenty some but there was a serious lack of skill that could provide permanent structures to ensure the prosperity of the nation.[8]

James Dempsey was an Irish man from Wexford born in 1769, much of his early life is not well written about with the exception of the role he played in the 1798 rebellion against the British rule in Ireland. He had fought in the battle of Vinegar Hill in the Ballymanus Division and experienced a serious shoulder injury later in the war at Hacketstown.[9] When the war was over he was accused of killing two British soldiers in Ballyellis and also the murder of two loyalists to the crown who had been killed as a reprisal after Vinegar Hill. Both of these charges were dropped but he was however charged with rebelling against the crown and his punishment was to be sentenced to transportation to Australia for life. He arrived in Australia in the summer of 1802 alone. While living and working in Australia Dempsey’s skills for building were in high demand, he became the foreman of the government stonemasons as a result of his trade of stonemasonry he brought from Ireland.[10] Usually convicts were forced to live under the watchful eye of the government but because of Dempsey’s contribution to the development of the colony he was given his freedom within 2 years of arriving on Australian shores. Buildings that he constructed in the early 1800s were usually bridges with some surviving segments that are integrated into modern buildings such as the Parliament house.[11] After these early successes particularly with government contracts which included building the Rum hospital and military barracks in Sydney, Dempsey moved towards private industry and real estate. By the end of 1815 James Dempsey had amassed a fortune along with property, he did not indulge in his wealth however. The paper ‘Catholic Weekly’ had reported that he used his earnings to assist Catholics in practicing their religion whatever their circumstances were.[12] It was commonly assumed at the time that any Irish Immigrants whom arrived on the shores of Australia were thought to be criminals P O’Farrell states “it was criminals thieves and men of violence and cunning who made up the great majority of Irish criminals, one third were not common criminals”. It is evident from writings about James Dempsey that he was not one of the common criminals from Ireland. Dempsey was like most Irish people at that time: a strict Catholic and was very involved in the Catholic Community in Sydney with some historians stating that he was one of the founding members of the Catholic community in Sydney. Around the early 1820s was when Dempsey became involved in the construction of buildings of worship, he was responsible for the development of the first Saint Mary’s Cathedral.[13] During the construction of a Catholic Chapel in Sydney Reverend john Joseph Therry was unable to make the payments to the laborers building the church, the proposed chapel was extremely large in comparison to the size of the population it would cater for. Dempsey being responsible for overseeing the operation payed his workers out of his own earnings to pay for the chapel to be built.[14]

 

The penal settlements in Australia were generally small isolated communities and as late as 1820 there were less than 40’000 white people on the Island, the lack of exports and the demand for goods in the home market meant that the potential for economic growth was going to be small.[15] House building and construction amounted for almost two thirds of the total domestic capital. Construction remained a huge part of the Australian economy throughout the 1800s with it still being 10percent of GDP in the1860s.[16] The Irish experience in Australia was quite varied, there were many convicts that were forced to remain laboring without pay but there were also success stories like James Dempsey where he made a significant amount of money and was also able to impact the fledgling colony of Australia on a larger scale. The Irish in Australia have irreversibly changed the landscape and composition of the nation through aiding the development of the economy through the construction of its living quarters, roads and bridges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

  • Tim Denham, ‘Multi-disciplinary investigation of 19th century European settlement of the Willunga Plains, South Australia’ in Peopled Landscapes: Archaeological and Biogeographic Approaches to Landscapes,vol 34 (2012) pp393-412.

 

  • Alasdair Brooks, ‘The Parsonage of the Reverend Willoughby Bean: Church, State, and Frontier Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Australia’ in Historical Archaeology, vol 45, No 4(2011), pp1-19.

 

  • Bryan Palmer, ‘Nineteenth-Century Canada and Australia: The Paradoxes of Class Formation’ in Labour,vol 38(1996), pp16-36.

 

 

  • Michael Quinn, ‘Strikes, Worker Protest, and Union Growth in Canada and Australia, 1815-1900: A Comparative Analysis’ Vol 36(1995) pp175-208.

 

  • Daily Examiner, 3 Apr. 1931.

 

 

  • Catholic Weekly, 14 May 1953.

 

 

 

 

  • Bob Reece “Irish Anticipations of Botany Bay.” Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr, vol. 12, (1997), pp. 116–136.

 

  • V. Jackson, Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century (Canberra 1977) p70-130

 

 

[1] Quinn, ‘Strikes, Worker Protest, and Union Growth in Canada and Australia, 1815-1900: A Comparative Analysis’ p179

[2] Chandler, Lay Carmelites in Botany Bay.

[3] Reece, “Irish Anticipations of Botany Bay.” P130

[4] Jackson ‘Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century’ p113

 

[5] Jackson ‘Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century’ p75

[6] Reece, “Irish Anticipations of Botany Bay.” P124

[7] Jackson ‘Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century’ p80

 

[8] Reece, “Irish Anticipations of Botany Bay.” P121

[9] Chandler, Lay Carmelites in Botany Bay.

[10] Chandler, Lay Carmelites in Botany Bay.

[11] Catholic Weekly, 14 May 1953.

 

[12] Catholic Weekly, 14 May 1953.

[13] Brooks, , ‘The Parsonage of the Reverend Willoughby Bean: Church, State, and Frontier Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Australia’p10

[14] James Dempsey, 5th Nov, 1827.

[15] ‘Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century’ p76

[16] ‘Australian Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century’ p110