Andy Hawkins: Australia, Culture, Celtic Tiger, Coal Quay, Holy Communion, Inishfallen, London

Andy Hawkins.jpg

Title

Andy Hawkins: Australia, Culture, Celtic Tiger, Coal Quay, Holy Communion, Inishfallen, London

Subject

Life History: Cork; Ireland; Australia; London; Work;

Description

Andy Hawkins was born in The Marsh and lived there until he was 7 when his family moved to Mayfield. He was the youngest of nine. He went to St Francis School. His father ran a small carpentry business in The Marsh. His father died when Andy was young and his mother died in February 1979. Andy went to London at 17 and to Australia at 19 where he lived for 30 years. His wife Bernadette is from Cork. His two children were born in Australia and still live there.

When he was seven they moved to Mayfield and he remembers the novelty of having a bath and developing an interest in wildlife and in breeding birds. He describes how he went to Ross’s Wood and on fishing trips with his dog Buster. His got his first pair of long trousers for his first Holy Communion. A family friend offered the ‘communion breakfast’ which was the norm back then.

Soccer was a big interest for him. He describes, with excitement, the big adventure it was going to games and travelling out of Cork for a match. A big treat was getting his 2 and 6 pocket money on a Saturday morning so he could spend it on watching Cowboy films at the cinema where “who is the boy” was an important question.

Andy recalls a local man called Seanie Downey who was a boxer in the Irish Army and who represented Ireland in gymnastics. He talks also of another well known local figure called John Walsh who sold bundles of sticks and give him donkey rides along the Coal Quay.

Andy’s brother kept a pigeon loft and Andy earned thruppence to clean it out. He was fascinated that the birds returned ‘for their dinner.’ They kept a garden and his mother taught him about growing fruit and vegetables. His mother became a widow in her 40s. In those days women never remarried.

When Andy was 14 he ran away to London with a childhood friend. They were picked up by police and sent home. He left for London at 17 on the Inishfallen and gives detailed description about his arrival in London, sleeping rough, getting work on building sites and his dream to go to Australia.

At 19 he left for Australia via Singapore. His first job in Perth was in a foundry. He hitchhiked to other towns and took the Indian Pacific train to Adelaide to avoid being conscripted. He spent time in Sydney and Perth and describes with humour some of the unusual jobs he had: working with horses and being the driver for an alcoholic railway manager. He recounts how his saving grace in Australia was the fact that he could play music. He started traditional music sessions in pubs in Perth and it was a great scene.

Andy describes coming back to live in Cork in May 2000. It was more complicated and expensive to get accommodation and services than in Australia. When he left Ireland was more conservative so he wasn’t prepared for how less subservient people were and how they discussed their sex lives openly at work.

There was a sense that Ireland had made a sudden jump into the Celtic Tiger. Andy noticed how much more money young people had and how much beer they drank. He felt the community spirit had gone and the new building developments didn’t take care of people’s community needs. Describes how he loves being back in Cork for the social life and knowing so many people and for the ‘ball hopping’.

Note; This interview was conducted as part of the Cork 2005 Project

Date

2 October 2004

Identifier

CFP_SR00340_hawkins_2004

Coverage

Cork; Ireland; London; England; Perth; Austrailia; 1960s - 2000s;

Source

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Language

English

Type

Sound

Format

1 .wav File

Interviewee

Interviewer

Duration

74m 14s

Location

Blackpool, Cork City, Cork, Ireland

Original Format

MiniDisc

Bit Rate/Frequency

16bit / 44.1kHz

Transcription

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com


A.H.: I did. I’ll tell you the first experience about going abroad. One of the people I met when I moved to the Northside was a man called Kevin Gardner. Kevin and I became very close and we were always talking about slipping away out of Ireland, you see. I was only fourteen at this time, you see. Kevin was fifteen and a half. To tell you the truth, we ran away. We got a train from Cork up to Dublin —two kids— and we got a boat from Dublin to Liverpool. I remember because when we got off we went to a place called Lime Street Station in Liverpool. And we must have been noticeable. We must have stuck out because the next day the guards picked us up —my poor mother at the time God, and they sent us back to Ireland, you know. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the mother when I got back, you know? So I got the real taste for travelling then. And then, when I was seventeen, I said to my mother I’d like to spend some time with another distant relation who lived in London for about twenty-odd years at the time. So, I said I was going for a visit but, in actual fact —I was seventeen years of age— I got the Innisfallon at the time… we used to get it to Wales and get the train and I went to London but I didn’t stay… I met two Cork men at the time: Thomas Mulcahy and Seán O’Rourke from the Northside and we eh… they put me wide —so to speak— about getting flats. So I didn’t go and visit the cousin at all, because I knew there would be sort of restrictions on me. I wanted to be a free spirit at the time. But I spent the first five weeks in a place called Shepherds Bush and one of the lads said to me, like, you know, “what we have to do —because we had no place at the time— is go into the bus station in Shepherd’s Bush and they were wide because they had been there for a while— always pick the last bus in the station to sleep in because it would be last out in the morning”. It would be the furthest bus away, you see Noel, and many a night we were woken up at about three or four in the morning and told “get out!” and we’d be sleeping in benches until we got…

N. O’S.: And how many other… would there have been other children or young people…?

A.H.: There was five of us! I always remember there was three from Cork and two from the North of Ireland and we kind of… we stuck together because we were all Irish. We were very young at the time and I actually was working! I then… what happened is the boys said “to get a job now, like, this is where the Irish people hang out, in certain pubs” —there in London. And I met this man and they told me he was “the ganger man”. The ganger man at the time meant nothing to me. I soon picked up on all the slang words, so to speak, and I met this man called George Foley, who was a Cork man. George Foley, the first thing he says to me was “I’ll give you a start, but you’ll have to change two things: first” he says “you have to change your age, you’ll have to tell people you’re nineteen” —I was only seventeen for God’s sake — “Okay” I said, “what is the second thing”, he said “the second thing is you have to change your name” because everything was into the hand… this, that and the other… I learnt an awful lot, like, about how to get on as a young Irish person in London from people who had been there for twenty and thirty years. And I appreciated that. Now, it was during this time on a building site in London, I met a truck driver who used to deliver stuff to the site in what —at the time to me— was a very peculiar accent. And, as time went by, anyway, he told me his story. He was an Australian. Now, I had read about Australia, but I knew nothing about it…

A.H.: I did. I’ll tell you the first experience about going abroad. One of the people I met when I moved to the Northside was a man called Kevin Gardner. Kevin and I became very close and we were always talking about slipping away out of Ireland, you see. I was only fourteen at this time, you see. Kevin was fifteen and a half. To tell you the truth, we ran away. We got a train from Cork up to Dublin —two kids— and we got a boat from Dublin to Liverpool. I remember because when we got off we went to a place called Lime Street Station in Liverpool. And we must have been noticeable. We must have stuck out because the next day the guards picked us up —my poor mother at the time God, and they sent us back to Ireland, you know. Needless to say I wasn’t too popular with the mother when I got back, you know? So I got the real taste for travelling then. And then, when I was seventeen, I said to my mother I’d like to spend some time with another distant relation who lived in London for about twenty-odd years at the time. So, I said I was going for a visit but, in actual fact —I was seventeen years of age— I got the Innisfallon at the time… we used to get it to Wales and get the train and I went to London but I didn’t stay… I met two Cork men at the time: Thomas Mulcahy and Seán O’Rourke from the Northside and we eh… they put me wide —so to speak— about getting flats. So I didn’t go and visit the cousin at all, because I knew there would be sort of restrictions on me. I wanted to be a free spirit at the time. But I spent the first five weeks in a place called Shepherds Bush and one of the lads said to me, like, you know, “what we have to do —because we had no place at the time— is go into the bus station in Shepherd’s Bush and they were wide because they had been there for a while— always pick the last bus in the station to sleep in because it would be last out in the morning”. It would be the furthest bus away, you see Noel, and many a night we were woken up at about three or four in the morning and told “get out!” and we’d be sleeping in benches until we got…

N. O’S.: And how many other… would there have been other children or young people…?

A.H.: There was five of us! I always remember there was three from Cork and two from the North of Ireland and we kind of… we stuck together because we were all Irish. We were very young at the time and I actually was working! I then… what happened is the boys said “to get a job now, like, this is where the Irish people hang out, in certain pubs” —there in London. And I met this man and they told me he was “the ganger man”. The ganger man at the time meant nothing to me. I soon picked up on all the slang words, so to speak, and I met this man called George Foley, who was a Cork man. George Foley, the first thing he says to me was “I’ll give you a start, but you’ll have to change two things: first” he says “you have to change your age, you’ll have to tell people you’re nineteen” —I was only seventeen for God’s sake — “Okay” I said, “what is the second thing”, he said “the second thing is you have to change your name” because everything was into the hand… this, that and the other… I learnt an awful lot, like, about how to get on as a young Irish person in London from people who had been there for twenty and thirty years. And I appreciated that. Now, it was during this time on a building site in London, I met a truck driver who used to deliver stuff to the site in what —at the time to me— was a very peculiar accent. And, as time went by, anyway, he told me his story. He was an Australian. Now, I had read about Australia, but I knew nothing about it…

N. O’S.: There’s not much life experience at that stage anyway…

A.H.: No, it’s not, you see. Age is experience —which soon came along after that. And, eh… I had spent quite a while in London and I met a lot of Irish people —a lot of Cork people, in fact— and they had no intention of going nowhere, to be very honest with you. And that was their thing. I don’t blame these people, like. It’s just that me… I just had this thing that I wanted to go and see how the rest of the world was. I first landed then in South-East Asia before I went to Australia. I eventually got my visa to go to Australia in a place called “Australian house on the strand”. I got my little brown suitcases at the time… And I can remember very clearly —this actually happened to me— I got a train from Victoria and I was heading towards Heathrow airport and —there must be about eight million people in London— and I was sitting in the carriage and Noel’s —my brother’s— friend comes into the carriage and spots me… comes up to me —he was a man of about twenty-three, twenty-four at the time. He says “Where are you going?” Well I told a lie at the time, I said “Well, I’m actually going home”. “That’s great” he says, “they’ll be looking forward to see you!” But he looked at the tag on my bag and he says —and he hit the roof—, he says “does your family realise you’re going to Australia” you see? So I said “Ah, yeah! I told them”. He was very insistent in coming to the airport, so much so, I jumped off the train —I did! I actually jumped off the train to give him the slip and I got to the airport. But, you see, I wanted to stop over —I didn’t go straight to Australia—, and headed down to Singapore…

Collection

Citation

Cork Folklore Project, “Andy Hawkins: Australia, Culture, Celtic Tiger, Coal Quay, Holy Communion, Inishfallen, London,” accessed March 29, 2024, https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/28.