President in Sydney: The near-tropical rainfall brought a little too much of Ireland to Sydney yesterday morning.
But the rain stopped just as the President, Mrs McAleese, arrived at St Patrick's Church in Bondi for morning Mass.
The church was overflowing with young Irish backpackers, many wearing their county GAA colours, who have made Bondi their home while in Sydney.
Sydney's Lord Mayor, Mr Frank Sartor, impressed the President and the audience later when he greeted her in well-pronounced Irish at a reception in the town hall.
The vice-president of the St Patrick's Day committee, Mr Gerry Faulkner, said: "It's a wonderful honour to have the President here. It makes the distance [from Ireland] both physically and psychologically bearable".
The President spoke about the first St Patrick's Day parade in Sydney in 1842 and how much it meant to emigrants, "with very little except what hope and spark they had in their hearts".
Mrs McAleese said that, while "we are living through deeply worrying times", it was in such times that the Irish love of life and company comes into its own.
The President told The Irish Times she was not just referring to Iraq, but also the "ambient world economic climate".
"It is a troubling time, everybody will have some kind of concern. There are very few who lead trouble-free lives," she said.
The sun came out as the President viewed the parade from Sydney Town Hall. It was led this year by Australian rugby international, Owen Finnegan. His father, Pat, is from Navan, Co Meath, and his mother, Josephine, from Co Cork. His brother and two sisters were born in Ireland, leaving Owen the only family member born in Australia.
The first county to be represented in the parade was Kilkenny, though why its contribution consisted of a man driving a motorcycle wearing only his underpants, and a hatchback car with a coffin sticking out of it, is best left to the psychologists.
A "British troops out of Ireland" banner and a group holding pictures of Bobby Sands and the other dead hunger-strikers drew some boos from the estimated 200,000 people who lined the parade route.
This prompted Mr Faulkner, who was announcing the various floats and participants, to say: "We're a democracy, so everyone's entitled to their views".
There were no boos for the "No war in Iraq" banner, or the Cork Association's float which said: "Make tea, not war."
The most striking float was from the Tipperary Association, which had Ned Kelly firing a very loud gun into the crowd. Blanks we assume, but nevertheless he was under strict instructions not to fire in the direction of Mrs McAleese and her Irish and Australian security officers.
After the parade there was a six-hour concert in the Domain, headlined by Sharon Shannon.
Emphasising the inclusiveness of the day, 36 people in the Domain, not all of them Irish, became Australian citizens in a ceremony attended by the federal Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Mr Gary Hardgrave.