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Family Fortunes: How our Aunt Kate made it to Australia in 1914

When her cousins died of fever, our great-aunt and her brother took their place on the ship

‘The photograph shows Kate, and my mother holding me in her arms’

Michael Gannon
Thu May 21 2015 - 15:00

In early September 1952, “Aunt Kate in Australia”, as we knew her in childhood, came to visit us. The photograph shows Kate, and my mother holding me in her arms. Kate was actually my grand-aunt, whom my father (her nephew) corresponded with regularly and from whom a parcel of clothes invariably arrived for us kids at Christmas.

It was only in the past year when researching my family tree that I learned how Kate went to Australia in the first instance. In 1913 her uncle and aunt decided to sell their modest holding near Ballymurphy, Co Carlow, to buy passage to Australia for their family of nine children. Between booking the passage and the date of sailing, diphtheria and scarlet fever robbed the family of two daughters. Somehow it was decided that cousins Tom and Kate would go in place of the girls who died.

On April 15th, 1914, the family departed Borris railway station, picked up Kate and Tom in Kilkenny and continued via Rosslare to London. The following Friday saw them sail from Tilbury Docks in Essex on board SS Indrapura, bound for Melbourne. They arrived there on May 27th, six weeks after leaving Co Carlow.

The Indrapura would later that year be renamed Port Adelaide and "recruited" into the British first World War effort. On February 3rd, 1917, she was sunk by a German war vessel 180 miles southwest of Fastnet, where she still lies today.

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By the outbreak of the war, Kate, as a young woman of 18 years, had already started her new life in Australia, where she married and raised a family of four daughters. By the time she paid her only visit home in 1952, her father and mother had been laid to rest, both in 1938. Kate died in 1971.

It’s not always true to say “out of sight, out of mind”; Kate lived in our minds and our hearts as we grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Holdensrath, Co Kilkenny. She still does. We would love to receive your family memories, anecdotes, traditions, mishaps and triumphs.

  • Email 350 words and a relevant photograph if you have one to familyfortunes@irishtimes.com. A fee will be paid
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