Henry Joseph Curran (1843-1882) was an Australian journalist and leading figure in the Catholic communities in Goulburn and Boorowa in the 1860s and 1870s. Curran worked for newspapers in Goulburn, established and edited the Burrowa Advocate and also worked in Sydney on the Freeman's Journal .
Curran was born in Gundaroo in 1843. His parents, Joseph Curran, a shepherd, and Margaret Conba, a dairy maid, both from Cork, arrived in Sydney through the assisted passage scheme on the Lascar in 1841. The Currans were indentured workers on the farms of the MacLeod family at ‘Maryvale’ in Liverpool and then ‘Barnsdale’ in Gundaroo, before moving to 'The Oaks' near Queanbeyan in 1847. [1] By 1861, Joseph Curran had deserted his wife and family. Although she had been left destitute and was taken to court by her husband’s creditors, she managed to keep the family together and raise her seven children on her own in Queanbeyan. [2]
In 1857, thirteen-year-old Curran won an apprenticeship at the Goulburn Chronicle and Southern Advertiser , which had been recently established by William Vernon and Ludolf Mellin. Life was not easy for the apprentices at the paper, with the family of one boy taking Mellin to court over cruel treatment. [3] The Chronicle was taken over in 1864 by its less-liberal rival, the Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, owned by William Riley and Breadalbane’s absentee squire, James Chisholm. The two papers merged into the Goulburn Herald and Chronicle. Curran eventually became one of its senior journalists.
During the 1860s, Curran also became active in Goulburn’s literary societies and a leader of the local Catholic community, including serving as president of the Goulburn Catholic Literary Society. [4] He became closely aligned with prominent priests, Rev. Patrick Dunne and his nephew, Rev. John Dunne. The Dunnes had a history of promoting social issues and Curran promoted their causes in his work. [5]
In 1865, Curran married Anne Lodge, who was from a family of Catholic publicans of the Goulburn-Breadalbane district. Her father, Henry Lodge, was the proprietor of the John Barleycorn Inn. [6] Anne’s brother, Thomas Lodge, had been the proprietor of The Coach and Horses (known as the Red House) at Breadalbane as a tenant of James Chisholm, before building his own Breadalbane Hotel in 1858, which became a centre for the local Catholic community, before the church was built. It even hosted visits by Archbishop John Polding. [7]
In 1865, Curran and Lodge were caught up in the colonial government’s efforts to quash bushranging, in particular, curtailing Ben Hall. The government was suspicious that Catholic enclaves were sheltering Hall and his gang. [8] When Curran wrote up his account of Hall’s hold-up of the Yass Mail in which the passengers were taken to his brother-in-law’s Breadlabane Hotel and shouted lunch by the gang, the authorities came down hard. [9] They did not want Hall presented as a hero and Chisholm was no friend of Lodge. The police raided Lodge’s hotel, and he faced trumped-up charges of receiving stolen goods. This occurred shortly before an early morning raid on nearby Byrne’s farm, where Hall’s gang was surprised and almost captured after a fierce gunfight. [10] Inadvertently, Curran’s article had been instrumental in his brother-in-law’s demise. Lodge lost government mail and road contracts and then his publican’s license. His father-in-law was also bankrupted and walked away from the John Barleycorn. [11]
In 1873 he was approached by the Dunnes to set up a new paper at Boorowa, where John Dunne was the new priest tasked with reforming the parish. [12] Curran established the Burrowa Advocate in August 1873, but due to divisions within the community arising from Dunne’s reforms, the paper failed to gather enough support to survive. Curran was financially ruined.
Curran became a journalist with the Freeman’s Journal in Surry Hills, Sydney by 1875. After Anne died prematurely in 1880, he struggled with alcoholism and became gravely ill himself, unable to work. His youngest child, Francis, aged 16 months, was put into an orphanage, while his eldest son, Henry Roland Curran, tried to support the remaining children on a factory worker’s wage. Henry Joseph Curran died of liver failure in March 1882. His children were split between their uncles. Two were adopted by his brother-in-law Thomas Lodge, another two by his elder brother Patrick Curran, and Henry junior was apprenticed to his uncle, George Curran, at the Ginninderra Blacksmith's Shop. [13]
Boorowa is a farming village in the Hilltops Region in the south west slopes of New South Wales, Australia. It is located in a valley 340 kilometres (210 mi) southwest of Sydney around 490 metres (1,610 ft) above sea-level. The town is in Hilltops Council local government area.
Cootamundra, nicknamed Coota, is a town in the South West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia and within the Riverina. It is within the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council. At the 2016 Census, Cootamundra had a population of 6,782. It is located on the Olympic Highway at the point where it crosses the Muttama Creek, between Junee and Cowra. Its railway station is on the Main Southern line, part of the Melbourne-to-Sydney line.
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The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn is a Latin Rite archdiocese located in the Australian Capital Territory, and the South West Slopes, Southern Tablelands, Monaro and the South Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia. Erected in 1948, the archdiocese is directly subject to the Holy See.
The Goulburn Chronicle and Southern Advertiser was a weekly English language newspaper published in Goulburn, New South Wales from 1855–1864.
Queanbeyan District Cricket Club is a cricket club operating in the Queanbeyan district of New South Wales and playing in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) cricket competition. It was formally founded in 1863.
Carwoola is a locality in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is immediately to the south of the Kowen district, which is located in the Australian Capital Territory. The Molonglo River passes through the Carwoola area before opening out into the Molonglo Plains. The Kings Highway and Captains Flat Road are the two major through routes. Carwoola is part of the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council and the Southern Tablelands geographic area. The area also roughly aligns with the original Carwoola Parish.
The Maher Cup was an Australian rugby league challenge cup contested between towns of the South West Slopes and northern Riverina areas of New South Wales between 1920 and 1971. The main teams involved were Cootamundra, Tumut, Gundagai, Temora, West Wyalong, Young, Harden-Murrumburrah, Junee, Barmedman, Cowra, Grenfell and Boorowa.
Henry ‘Babe’ Curran (1896–1964) was one of the most successful Australian woolgrowers during the industry's boom in the 1940s and 1950s.
George Gribble (1868–1947) was an Australian farmer and soldier, who won renown in tent pegging and other sports.
John Casey was an Irish rebel, who was caught and tried in 1824 and transported to Australia in 1826. He won his freedom by helping capture the bushranger, John Tennant, in 1828 and became one of the early pioneers of the Gundaroo district. John Casey came from Loughmoe in County Tipperary.
Deasland was an historic homestead at Ginninderra in Canberra’s north on the Barton Highway. It was demolished in early 2022 due to 'Mr Fluffy' asbestos contamination.
Frogmore is a village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. It was previously a mining town.
Thomas Frederick Lowry, better known as Fred Lowry, was an Australian bushranger whose crimes included horse theft, mail-coach robbery, prison escape, and assault with a deadly weapon. Lowry briefly rode with the Gardiner–Hall gang, but soon afterwards formed his own gang with John Foley.
Mrs Winter, a bushranger in nineteenth-century Australia, was briefly associated with John Tennant, the ‘Terror of Argyle’; she is believed to have been the convict Mary Winter.
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Thomas Lodge was a publican in Breadalbane, who was falsely accused of abetting Ben Hall and his gang in 1865. Although acquitted, he was stripped of government contracts and bankrupted. Lodge was born in Leicester, England in 1830 and died in Mandurama, NSW, in 1906.
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