I hope I have not posted this message 3 times now. I have touched something on two occasions and lost this window and all the typing!! So i just wanted to say thanks for the two fabulous replies. There is a copy of the book mentioned in the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, but I will not be going up to the 'big smoke' for a while as I am in the bad outcome risk age group for this COVID.
In relation to some general stuff about links, I live near Koroit district in Victoria which had a big Irish settlement starting in the 1840's. See below. As Jane HR said the Irish often gathered in locations as there was the comfort of family links, the brogue and the Faith and the support that these brought in a strange land. For my generation I just wondered what it meant to leave and never see your home or native ground again.
This book may be of interest to your readers as many of the families came from East Clare. The historian who compiled the work was Helen Doyle.
Church on the Hill: A Centenary History of St Brigid’s, Crossley, and its Irish-Australian Community
This is a richly illustrated history of St Brigid’s Crossley, in south-west Victoria, which traces the origins of its immigrant settlers who arrived in the district from the 1840s onwards, and the development of what likely became the most concentrated Irish Catholic settlement in Victoria. The book traces the development of community life, as well as farming life and the Catholic faith. It investigates an ongoing Irish influence in the area and the part this Irish identity played in relation to some of the prevailing issues of the day, such as the cessation of funding of Catholic schools in 1873 and the debate over conscription during World War I. This book includes over 100 short family histories of many of the families who settled at Crossley, Killarney and Tower Hill.
https://www.garrattpublishing.com.au
