How hope was Australia’s true gold

y 1914, more than 300,000 people had emigrated from Ireland to Australia, with an additional 40,000 sent as convicts to her shores. My ancestors, the Clancys, were part of the exodus. In 1841, they left County Clare on the Shannon River as an extended group of siblings with young families, leaving behind a land riddled with poverty, disease and, as I was to find out, deceased parents. We can only imagine they’d fallen victim to the oppression, famine and harsh existence of the period. The Irish had been robbed of crops by the English and denied the right to any education. Yet the Clancys had some learning and farming skills and, as such, there was promise of land,