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Zoe Younger

~ Life Changing Journeys, Life changing Love

Zoe Younger

Tag Archives: Irish Australians

Apologies for going Missing in Action…

05 Thursday May 2016

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, LOVE, MY BOOKS, SHATTERED, THE WRITERS' LIFE, TORN

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"North and South", books, courage, Elizabeth Gaskell, friends, goals, Irish Australians, John Thornton, LIFE, loss, LOVE, Margaret Hale., Relationships, Richard Armitage, sailing, Survivors, thriver, victim, writing

Retirement crisis concept as a couple of adirondack chairs sinking in the ocean during a thunder storm as a metaphor for financial investment problems for retiring seniors who lost their savings or broken dreams symbol.

My humble apologies for neglecting you, my friends. Life has been all go and not much stop recently. Now, though, it’s time to get back into routine.

My work on “Shattered” has slowed to a crawl. This is Rosaleen’s story, a redemption story. She and Mary from “Torn” were childhood friends and I’m sorry to say that the Rosaleen of “Torn” was not the friend Mary knew back when. She had always wanted more… more money, more things, a higher position in social circles and she thought she had it all, until “Torn”. Now she must start again, from the bottom; and when I say from the bottom I mean much further and she’d have to dig!

I’m sorry to say that Rosaleen died in the first iteration of “Torn”. She died in childbirth. She was swept off the ship en route to Australia. She was left behind in Africa. What I didn’t do to try to kill her off is hardly worth mentioning but – she survived. She always was a survivor. If there is one thing that stands out from counselling, it is that the victims are dead. The fact that one is a live makes one a Survivor. But, don’t be content to merely survive, make sure you go on to thrive.

Survivors are the backbone of my writing. I admire and look up to people who have not just survived but who go on to thrive. Those who pick themselves up by their own bootlaces and head onward and upward.

Who are your inspirational literary thrivers? One who was in part the inspiration for “Torn” was Elizabeth Gaskell’s John Thornton from “North and South”. For those of you who have not read this book or seen the miniseries where Richard Armitage does a very memorable job of playing “Go where you will… the name of John Thornton of Milton is know and respected amongst all men of business…”. From childhood poverty after his father’s suicide he paid his father’s debts AND raised himself and his family to fame not “in England only, but in Europe…” as his mother proudly declares. To be bankrupted himself, lose everything and yet not afraid to begin again.

Of course, beside him he had the resilient Margaret Hale, survivor of much family heartache and tragedy. Surviving and Thriving are always so much better when  you are not alone.

So, I’ve told you mine, now please, tell me about one of your inspirational literary heroes?

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Kookaburra

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, THE WRITERS' LIFE, TORN

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Australian bush, gum tree, Irish Australians, Kookaburra, Laughing Jackass

martin-chasseur gant ailes bleuesEarly Australians must have thought they were hearing things when they came across their first Kookaburra. If they hadn’t heard of this crazy sounding bird and couldn’t be sure where the laughter was coming from, it must have been a puzzle. When we were kids they were known as Laughing Jackasses.

In Torn, Mary and her young charge first hear his call when they are riding through the bush toward their new home. It seems a strange and unique country to our Irish “new chums” as new Australians used to be called.

So, if you’ve never heard the laugh of a Kookaburra, here’s a link you might enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA0-YAoo9Q

As children, we learned the classic Kookaburra song, it became so much a part of who we are that when a famous Aussie band used a flute riff which sounded similar in a song, it landed them in a court battle on charges of copyright breach which ended rather badly.

Found a rendition on YouTube almost as we used to sing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2VitpGRalw

Some bright spark Aussie kid also did some plagiarizing singing “new” words to the much loved song… “Kookaburra sits on an electric wire, jumping up and down with his pants on fire. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra. Hot your pants must be.”

We hear some birds here in our mostly quiet suburb but it has been a long time since I heard a Kookaburra laugh. How did I get onto this subject then? Well, I was on Facebook and reposted a picture of a brown snake eating a sausage right off a barbeque plate. Someone asked whether the snake killed the sausage first and it reminded me how Kookaburras will swoop on anything meat related when they feel safe enough. Steak, sausages, all food for a hungry Kookaburra, which has to “kill” it first, of course.

 

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Be a Thriver

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, LOVE, TORN

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Irish Australians, Irish Famine, Survivor, thriver, victim

In style end of the XIX begining of the XX century

Victim? Survivor? Thriver?

Different individuals can go through the same circumstance and come out vastly different. Even siblings in the same family can react differently to trauma. What makes one a victim, another a survivor and another a thriver?

This fascinates me. So much so that my book, Torn, begins in Ireland at the time of the Great Famine and follows Mary who chooses to be a Thriver. She survived when the rest of her family died of starvation. But she does much more than Survive.

“The victims are dead. You are a survivor.” Those words are still as powerful today as they were when I first saw them. But, is survival enough? Not for Mary, not for Liam and not for me. My characters want to live the best life they can. Mere existence is not enough.

How far would you be prepared to go to get the kind of life you want? Many Irish famine survivors were prepared to go to the ends of the earth to make a new life. The ships they sailed on were called “Coffin Ships” because of the number of victims they carried. Some victims had no chance of arriving at their destinations because of their physical condition on embarkation. Others died because of the conditions on board, the overcrowding, sickness and disease.

Thankfully, Mary and Liam are not forced onto one of those ships. They, along with their friends and some of Liam’s horses, sail to Moreton Bay, in what was then part of New South Wales. Some years later it became part of Queensland but, that’s another story.

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Weekend Writing Warriors

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, LOVE, MY BOOKS, TORN

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Tags

Colonial Australia, horses on ships, Irish Australians, Irish Great Famine

Begrüßung Stute und Fohlen Late for my first Weekend Writing Warriors. Humble apologies. http://www.wewriwa.com

A snippet from my as yet unpublished debut novel, “Torn”, my Irish Australian Colonial. Sailing to the other end of the earth, Mary and Liam are drawn together by concern for a horse…

“Mary barely moved except to snuggle closer to Bess. Liam, watching, felt jealousy rear its ugly head. Jealousy—of a horse? Surely that could not be! Yet his arms hungered for her warmth. He left the stall before his thoughts could run further amok. It was near enough to time for morning chores again and for once he was glad of it. There was nothing like shovelling fresh manure to lay such thoughts to rest.”

 

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Torn

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in MY BOOKS, POETRY, TORN

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Colonial Australia, Debut novel, Fiction, Irish Australians, Irish Great Famine, Survivors

Torn is the title of my upcoming debut novel, an Irish/Australian colonial story.
Leaving Cork Harbour, the “Harbour of Tears”, bound for Moreton Bay in colonial Australia is one Mary Ellen.  Here for you is a little hint of her heartache.

Away from my homeland, from Erin’s green isle
I’ll mourn you my dear ones for yet a wee while
You sleep and you slumber in graves wide and deep
Together forever I trust in His keep
I swore on your deathbed I’d live to tell why
You sleep in that grave now while others pass by
Our crops, yes those praeties, were hit by the blight
With nought left to eat and no strength left to fight
I promised you, Ma, I’d go over the sea
Away to that land where e’en poor ones are free
We sail ever southward, across the wide world
My heart it is breaking, for freedom unfurled
There’s Michael and Patrick and Denis and John
We leave you behind as we sail ever on
My sweet Ma and dear Da I will love you for ever
I’ll remember your faces. Forget you? No never.

© Zoe Younger 2013

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