Most of the orphan girls married early. In Sydney, it was said that the hiring room at the barracks resembled a meat market at times, but with eight or nine men to one woman in rural Australia, the girls could pick and choose. Many went for older men, perhaps because they offered security.
Norah Shea married an Englishman 17 years her senior and had 11 children. Her grandson was Sir Stanley Savige, the founder of Legacy, which supports war widows. Nineteen-year-old Hannah Raftery married an English Protestant but had a bet each way: they had both a Church of England and a Catholic ceremony. Johanna Kelly must have married for love: why else would an eighteen-year-old Irish Catholic go for a one-legged English Protestant 20 years older than her? They had forty-three years together. She died at the age of 96, having produced 12 children. Some of the orphans were far less fortunate. The Famine had taken a terrible toll on young girls entering adolescence. As historian Janet McCalman writes in Sex and Suffering, the Royal Womens' Hospital in Melbourne records that in 1860 "one in fifteen of the patients born in Ireland had a contracted or deformed pelvis".
When these young women became pregnant after years of proper nutrition in Australia, their babies developed normally - a dreadful calamity, as such big, healthy babies could not pass through their mothers' stunted pelvises. In a pre-Caesarian age, the only way of saving the mother's life was to kill the baby in utero and extract it in pieces. The Royal Women's Hospital records how in 1863, Irish-born Mrs M.C. lost her third child that way. The following year, a Mrs M.O'C lost her sixth baby to the deformed, heart-shaped pelvis that was the legacy of the Famine years.
Last September, President McAleese visited the Hyde Park Barracks, where about 2,000 of the orphan girls spent their first days in Australia. Inaugurating the memorial sculpture, she pledged that the Irish government would contribute over one-sixth of the $300,000 cost.
She praised the girls' courage, saying she could not imagine how her own teenage daughters could cope alone so far away, even with today's telecommunications. Referring to the Earl Grey and the treatment of the Belfast girls, she commented acidly that she "would have difficulty ever drinking that tea again".
The orphan girls' presence was palpable. The barracks displays the simple counter games they played to while away the time as they awaited their placement; a delicate orange rosary used for spiritual solace; endlessly-mended bonnets and petticoats showing the meticulous stitching that one historian lyrically describes as "the handwriting of the illiterate".
Menstrual rags are among their more curious legacies. The numerous rats in the building would drag away bits of fabric, including the girdles and strips of cloth used during menstruation, and incorporate them into their nests beneath the floor, where they remained undisturbed for over 100 years.
Maria McDermott, aged 14, spent three months at the barracks in 1849. Her older sister, Eliza, arrived the next year. At 18 Maria got married in nearby St Mary's Cathedral, reputedly built with the pennies of the Irish poor. The marriage didn't last - "that happened a bit in our family," says Maria's great-great-granddaughter, Terrie Pollard. Left to bring up her two children, Maria became a midwife and "looked after the downtrodden", including prostitutes.
Pollard was already secretary of the Famine commemoration committee when she discovered her own orphan girl links. Pride has replaced the anger she first felt for Maria and the family she lost in the famine. "The strength of these women and what they did for the Australian personality - the fighting spirit, the contrariness, the sense of humour. How they survived was fantastic."
Today, exactly 150 years after Maria McDermott landed in Sydney, an ecumenical service will be held in St Mary's Cathedral where she got married. To the beat of a bodhran, 32 descendants of the orphan girls, one from each county in Ireland, will walk down the aisle to light a candle to their memory.
A stone's throw away, in the southern wall of the Hyde Park Barracks, is the sculpture in their honour. Former builders' labourer Jack Mundey, chairman of the Historic Houses Trust and himself of Irish descent, used all his charm to persuade the more conservative members to make the site available. For two years, a committee chaired by Tom Power laboured to raise funds through everything from raffles to, ironically, gala dinners.
The Land Titles Office, which owns part of the site, the Premier of New South Wales, the Lord Mayor of Sydney and the corporate sector contributed, as did individuals all over Australia, the USA, Ireland, Britain, and New Zealand.
The Valamanesh work, chosen from a field of 42, "meditates . . . with dignity and irony on the legacy of absence," says Paul Carter. "It will create a deep pool of silence in the midst of the noisy river of downtown Sydney . . . asking the visitor to slow down . . . to see in the visible and physical what is invisible, present but unspoken."
Although Sydney's is called the National Monument, Melbourne has already paid tribute to the orphan girls. On December 6th last year, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of 191 girls on board the Lady Kennaway, a bluestone rock in Williamstown was dedicated to their memory, to serve as a stone both of mourning and of welcome. The simple ceremony was opened by Victor Briggs of the Bunurong people, in an acknowledgement that Irish and Aboriginal people had a shared history of oppression, and in regret that the Irish had also been party to the dispossession of indigenous Australians.
Curiously, the unveiling of the Williamstown monument was criticised as "romanticising" history, by none other than Janet McCalman, the respected historian who had written about pelvic deformities in Irish famine victims. She argued that the Irish did not have a monopoly on suffering: Scottish Highlanders had also been dispossessed and yet were not painted as victims.
But the Famine memorials are about celebrating life as well as lamenting the dead. "If there's one word I describe these girls with, it's `survivors'," Joan Dwyer says. "Be honest about it - they were not maybe the most attractive people in the world. They might not be educated, they might be foul-mouthed, but there's no food and no work and they are strong, and prepared to do difficult things to survive."
"I compare them with today's terminology on street-kids. They're not going to be nice middle-class people - they're just not going to be that - but that doesn't mean they're bad. With the right opportunities, they too can be the foundation of families for the future. That's what I like to hold onto the orphan girls for. Not because it's some romantic story of the past, but it's a story for us today to say what are we doing with our children?
"I know that Ireland feels sad at losing her girls. But I see it is as Ireland's gift to us. Four thousand-odd girls. It's a wonderful gift."
Siobhan McHugh is a Sydney-based writer and broadcaster, author of four books on Australian social history. She co-wrote the television series, The Irish Empire, which starts on RTE on Monday, September 13th.