Patrick McGrath

Story

My Great grandfather Patrick McGrath together with his 18 year old brother Michael left Scarriff in County Clare in Ireland in search of a better life for himself, his ten siblings, and his parents. He and Michael came as Bounty migrants on the “Duchess of Northumberland” arriving in Melbourne in June 1841. They found employment with a farmer named Brown at first working for him in country Victoria and later Patrick set up as a publican in Lonsdale in Melbourne. He married Margaret Malley and she bore him a son Michael who died in infancy and she died soon after her son. Patrick then married my great grandmother, Margaret Hill who left the poor law union in Tipperary, Ireland at the age of 16 and came to Adelaide under the Earl Grey Scheme on the “Elgin” in 1849 and spent 7 years before sailing to Melbourne on the coastal vessel Burra Burra in 1856. They were married in 1857 in Kyneton Victoria where Patrick’s family were established by that time. Patrick had brought out his mother, father and eight siblings from Scarriff in 1845 on “The Herald”. Patrick and Margaret had 6 sons the fourth of which was my grandfather, Michael McGrath. This Michael married Alicia Marina Mackie who was born on the journey to Australia on the “Great Britain”. The Mackie family hailed from Dublin and Marina’s family settled in Melbourne. Michael and Marina had 7 children the youngest of which was my father, Thomas Michael McGrath, born in August 1900, who grew up in Poowong Victoria on the farm but travelled up to Melbourne to attend Melbourne High School. He joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1918 and sailed right around the world in 1924 through both the Panama and Suez canals. While he was in Canada he met my mother Evelyn Maud Burnett who had migrated to Vancouver from Southsea in England. Four years later in 1928 when he had left the Navy he returned to Vancouver to claim Evelyn as his bride after writing to her for all that time. They sailed to Melbourne on their honeymoon and my both worked there in various occupations before moving to Mildura where my father worked in the pumping station and my older brother, Peter Alan, was born in August 1929. The family then travelled around northern NSW finding work during the depression and my sister Marie Araluen and I (Pauline Margaret) were born in Lismore, Marie in 1934 and Pauline in 1933. The family then moved to Sydney for a year or so then in December 1936 we all moved to Duntroon in Canberra where my father joined the army as a warranr officer in charge of the boiler room at the Royal Military College. He joined the AIF in 1942 and served in the Middle East in WW2 and died in 1944 in Canberra as a resuly of illness picked up overseas . My mother brought up her three children with the help of Legacy and we all received a tertiary education. My brother graduated from Duntroon Royal Militay College in 1949. My sister graduated from Wagga Wagga Teachers College in 1954 and taught at primary schools in Sydney and Canberra. I graduated from University of Sydney also in 1954 and after qualifying as a librarian worked in libraries in canberra and Melbourne including 30 years in the National Library of Australia. I live in Gordon, my sister lives in Farrer and my brother lived in Curtin until his death in 1990.

Patrick’s journey was apparently uneventful. Bounty migrants were well cared for on board. Also on board was Georgiana McCrae about whom an interesting biography has been written but she was a first class passenger. She was coming out to join her lawyer husband in Melbourne where at that time the streets were unpaved and muddy.

My grandfather’s short autobiography records that his father Patrick was very impressed with the tremendous improvements in the city of Melbourne when they visited there as a family in the 1880’s compared to the muddy streets and small houses he saw in the 1840’s.

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