Ep 115 Irish girls at Australia’s Newcastle Industrial School

The Newcastle Lock-Up is a contemporary arts space housed in the old Newcastle Gaol, two hours north of Sydney. Irish-born poet Anne Casey visited it recently, while carrying out research for a voiceover that she had been asked to contribute to an exhibition. In this episode, she speaks to Róisín Ingle about the unsettling voyage into the dark and shocking histories of immigrant and marginalised children in Australia in the mid-19th century, that the visit sent her on. She discovered horrifying accounts of sexual abuse, forced child prostitution, drunkenness, savage violence and neglect. Her research forms part of the Stitched Up exhibition, been created by the Australian fibre art curator Anne Kempton and artist Jane Theau. It runs from June 23rd to August 6th at The Lock-Up in Newcastle, but there are also plans to bring it to Ireland next year.