Overview

Its capital is named after German-born Queen Adelaide, its main street after her English husband, King William IV, so it is not surprising that little is known about South Australia's Irish background. However, the first European to discover Adelaide's River Torrens in 1836 was Cork-born and educated George Kingston, who was deputy surveyor to Colonel Light; the river was named in turn for Derryman Colonel Torrens, Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission. Adelaide's first judge and first police commissioner were immigrants from Kerry and Limerick. Irish South Australia charts Irish settlement from as far north as Pekina, to the state's south-east and Mount Gambier. It follows the diverse fortunes of the Irish-born elite such as George Kingston and Charles Harvey Bagot, as well as doctors, farmers, lawyers, orphans, parliamentarians, pastoralists and publicans who made South Australia their home, with various shades of political and religious beliefs: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Federationalists, Freemasons, Home Rulers, nationalists, and Orangemen. Irish markers can be found in South Australian archaeology, architecture, geography and history. Some of these are visible in the hundreds of Irish place names that dot the South Australian landscape, such as Clare, Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Navan, Rostrevor, Tipperary, and Tralee (as Tarlee). The book's editors are twentieth-century Irish immigrants from Dublin (Dymphna Lonergan), Portadown (Fidelma Breen), Trim (Susan Arthure), and by descent from eight Irish-born (Stephanie James).

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Dr Susan Arthure has a PhD in archaeology from Flinders University. Her main research interests are Irishness and the Irish diaspora, with a focus on the Irish Australian experience and the material lives of those Irish who migrated across the globe after the Great Famine. Her research into the Irish community of Baker's Flat, near Kapunda in South Australia, identified the first complete exemplar of a clachan (traditional Irish settlement system) to be recognised outside of Ireland so far. She was a co-editor for Irish South Australia: New histories and insights (Wakefield Press, 2019). Susan was born and raised in Ireland but has lived mostly in South Australia since 1987. Dr Fidelma McCorry (nee Breen) completed a Master of Philosophy in history studying Irish nationalism and loyalism in colonial South Australia at the University of Adelaide in 2013. She has researched the development of the Loyal Orange Institution of South Australia. Fidelma is a human geographer whose PhD (2018) investigated Irish migration to Australia between 2000 and 2015. She is currently a university postdoctoral fellow with the Hugo Centre for Population and Migration Research at the University of Adelaide. Dr Stephanie James holds an adjunct position within the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia. Following years of History teaching at secondary and tertiary level, in 2005 she embarked on a Masters which focused on colonial South Australia's largest minority group - the Irish. From 2010 to 2013, her PhD examined Irish Australian attitudes toward the British Empire at times of imperial crisis. Subsequent research and publications have explored further aspects related to Australia's Irish during World War One as well as issues impacting on Irish South Australians at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the organisers of the 2019 ISAANZ conference in Adelaide, she was also an editor of Irish South Australia: New histories and insights (2019). In 2020, Stephanie contributed an item on 'The Irish' for the 2024 edition of The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History. Dr Dymphna Lonergan is a retired academic from Flinders University (Adelaide, South Australia) with adjunct status. She has continued her ongoing interest in the Irish language and Irish Australia history since retirement. She is a member of the editorial collective for the online Irish Australian magazine Tintean and was part of the editorial group for Irish South Australia: New histories and insights (Wakefield Press, 2019) which included her chapters on 'G.S. Kingston and other pioneers in South Australia' and 'Cultural capital and Irish place names'. Her PhD research on the Irish language in Australia resulted in the book Sounds Irish (2004). In addition, she has published two bilingual short story collections: As Gaeilge (2022) and Scealta Eile (2023) with Immortalise, South Australia.

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