Imirce - Migration and Ireland through time
NATIONAL MONUMENTS SERVICE
6th ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY CONFERENCE
In the 1850s a group of Irish people arrived at a copper mine in South Australia, seeking work. These Irish, many from County Clare, settled on a vacant area of land called Baker’s Flat, where they built Irish-style houses, danced and played hurling on Sundays, and retained their Catholic faith. All this occurred against a backdrop of antagonism in the broader community that painted Baker’s Flat as a place of filthy hovels, alcohol-fuelled disorder and disreputable Irish papists. From the 1940s, after the last of the Irish had either left or died, memories of the community quickly faded. My research set out to investigate Irishness on Baker’s Flat, exploring how this diasporic community constructed itself and evolved in colonial South Australia. A geophysical survey, excavation programme, nearly 20,000 artefacts, genealogical histories and archival data revealed a complex settlement which included a potential field enclosure and two vernacular structures-one interpreted as a domestic dwelling and the other as a sweathouse. It transpires that, for close to a century, Baker’s Flat thrived as a clachan-and-rundale system, the first to be recognised in Australia.
Dr Susan Arthure currently teaches and researches at Flinders University, South Australia. Her research focuses on the archaeology of Irishness in colonial Australia. Susan grew up in Trim, Co. Meath, and has lived in South Australia since 1987.