The Irish Flute Shop at the End of the Universe?

Irish Flute
1

I was sitting musing, after lunch. I think I was awake. A funny thought crossed my mind. As they say, it didn’t take long.

Down here in Australia, in Malua Bay, New South Wales, I’m a long way from Irish Flute Central (wherever that might be!). Am I perhaps the furtherest outpost of Irish Flute making, The Irish Flute Shop at the End of the Universe? And if not, who is? And how would we know?

So, I made some assumptions. Let’s run with Dublin as centre until someone beats us over the head with a more convincing argument. I tried Google Maps to provide me with a distance from there to here, but it apologised. So I simply Googled the question “Distance from Dublin to Malua Bay” and got an instantaneous response. I was impressed they even knew of Malua Bay!

Anyway, it turns out to be 17,330KM, which translates to 10,768.36 miles.

That second figure is interesting in that Australia often comes up in old songs as “10,000 miles away”. They weren’t far wrong!

Another interesting factoid is that, given the circumference of the Earth is given at about 40K, halfway round would be 20K, so my 17,033 leaves almost 3000 more for someone to be even further out. Who are you, and where are you?

It would be interesting to place markers for all the known Irish flute makers we know of on a map of the world. It could open up some local business opportunities for an enterprising Yak herder somewhere…

2

I have two colleagues, one Australian and one New Zealander. They both taught US history at Sydney. Sydney seems like a great place, I told them–why would you leave? Especially why would you leave New Zealand?

They both said they really felt that they were on the edge of the world in Australia, especially since they did US history. They both said even in the digital age Australia felt vry remote and very far away.

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Terry, nice hearing from you ! haven’t spent as much time here, but you posts are always fun to read.

eilam

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Thanks Eilam, good to hear from you.

And whoops, I noticed a stuff-up in my post. I’d said: "Another interesting factoid is that, given the circumference of the Earth is given at about 40K, halfway round would be 20K, so my 17,033 leaves almost 3000 more for someone to be even further out.

That of course should have been 40,000K and 20,000K. If it were only 20K to Dublin, I could ride my pushbike there in about an hour! Except the tyres are flat…

5

Yeah, interesting, PB&J. We in Australia, and perhaps especially those of us in regional coastal Australia, are very aware of being on the edge of civilisation, rather than in the middle of it. I think it was always thus, perhaps originating in Australia’s convict past? When you were banished to Australia on a dangerous 6-month journey below decks in a sailing ship, you would end up with a very well-defined sense of remoteness.

Not that it’s a practical problem these days, with high speed Internet for communications and very good freight services for sending important stuff like flutes around the world (although we did see that take a battering in the recent pandemic outbreaks). But I can imagine if one was an academic particularly in the social sciences, one would crave the opportunity for intellectual discourse. When I worked, over 50 years ago, at the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU, everyone took morning tea together in a very large tea room. And people moved around the various circles. So your circle could include some of the leading Earth scientists of the day, doctoral students, electronics people like me, chaps from the machine workshop or woodworking shop, administrative staff, etc. And how often some chance item of discussion would be picked up, and would be worked back and forth, and lead to someone saying, “can you come back to the lab and see if you think that would help us…” It was an informal version of the multi-disciplinary approach. Informal, but invaluable.

I don’t know if it’s just me, or maybe flute-makers at large, but I quite enjoy the isolation of the workshop, and even of the region. But even I crack from time to time, and head overseas. Not to take in the sights, but to visit my old friends, the flutes, in the great collections. I am Mole, from the Wind in the Willows.

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I loved Australia, and have no argument with solitude, but I just could not get a sense of ground there. Have lived in many countries and travelled at street/local level to tens more, at home anywhere but belong nowhere. In oz I just could not find an “at home” though, I think the only country I couldn’t. We lived in Indonesia , similar longitude, and that was fine. It isn’t the people, australians are good people and I always got on with. Sometimes I think I should have stayed on, it has much to offer, but straight away I get the same sense of why I left. It’s odd.

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It’s a country I’d very much like to visit although to be honest as i get older the flights get more and more uncomfortable and that’s a loooong flight. I’m a fairly big guy, six foot four, and unless I pony up a lot of money for more legroom it’s torture.

So many similarities and differences with the US and it would be fascinating to see how these play out

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I found the US ok, mostly for what it wasn’t as a country than what it was as one. This was a while back but I remember there being a sort of paranoia to society also , that was California and crossing into Mexico felt more familiar, having lived in Spain much. BC in Canada was all I visited to the north, except for jfk airport which I remember thinking the trashiest airport I had ever visited. BC I found similar to Europe in many ways…maybe is not so much now.

North america is a large place though so I couldn’t or wouldn’t judge it as a whole, even somewhere like UK can be very different from one region to another.

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Yeah, this stuff about where you feel comfortable is complex. And further complicated I think by the passage of time. Back in '74, we spent 7 months in England, Ireland and Scotland. I had a big personal agenda on arrival - trad music organisations to infiltrate and investigate, associated people to interview, etc etc. So that kept me very busy at first. And of course, one thing leads to another, so the list of organisations and people grew for a while, rather than faded. So, for example, I had no thoughts of making flutes when I got there, but I was full of ideas and information before I left. This trip was transformative.

And just the mechanics of finding somewhere to live, where to get food we could afford, ways of getting around cities you weren’t familiar with, etc, etc all take some time to master. But master them you must if planning to spend months there. And there were lots of distractions - lots of new friends, and bumping into and catching up with old friends who we weren’t even aware were over there. Festivals and sessions - Slatteries, the Favourite, The Sugawn Kitchen, Sandy Bells and more - we couldn’t miss. Whistle lessons with Mary Bergin. Twinings tea and orange pound cake with Maud Karpeles. We were in traditional music heaven!

But bit by bit, as the agenda items all got ticked off, something started nagging at the back of the mind. It was getting late in the year, and it was getting cold. Damn cold. And I was seriously over green. (Is this safe to say here?) Forests in the Celtic isles are so verdant green. I found that I was missing the blue-grey-greens of the Australian bush. Who would have guessed? In growing up in Australia, I’d adapted to the full Dorethea McKellar:

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!

So we booked flights “home”. And landed and queued in Perth in the blistering sun. And loved it!

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Terry, I think Maurice Reviol has you beaten by about 1,000 km. I believe he is in Aukland, New Zealand.
If there are any Irish flute makers on the South Island of New Zealand, one of them would likely take the prize.

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Maybe I should have gone a bit further inland, or west in Australia . For me it is Mediterranean scrub in high summer with a permanent heat, sea in the distance, Africa on the horizon. Or endless olives on chalk soil, open pine forests for shade. I suppose if you spend long enough anywhere it becomes your own.

I really can’t stand the permanent cold of England though, it is just too miserable. Portugal is greener than southern Spain, and Algarve is quite remote also, not where I am most used to but it is good. The Atlantic has a very different feel to it than the med even though so close.

Here is a clip of drone footage from a spring near Silves, the largest town nearby, which gives some idea of the countryside here, as well as a view of the estuary towards Portimão

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VUhDrsgbpKg

We are somewhere in the surrounding countryside shown. My home town in Spain they built a city on it, just like that. We moved to the countryside nearby, and then so did everyone else also. Portugal is more sensible.

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Ooow, I think you’re right Paddler, Auckland is 18,167Km from Dublin, compared to my puny 17,330K. I haven’t kept up with Maurice’s movements and activities lately. Time to give us all an update, Maurice? Are you the Irish Flute Shop at the End of the Universe?

If there are any Irish flute makers on the South Island of New Zealand, one of them would likely take the prize.

Indeed. Auckland is close to the top of the north island, whereas a maker in Dunedin would be 19,140K from Dublin, approaching the theoretical maximum of circa 20,000K.

And interestingly, the trip from Dublin to Auckland is shown as a south west direction, whereas both Malua Bay and Dunedin are on a south east vector. We are indeed antipodal.

Sigh, taking us back to the discussion on the famine, pause to think on the journey undertaken by the 4100-odd Irish famine orphan girls brought out to Australia circa 1850 under the Earl Grey scheme. From the poorest, most remote parts of Ireland literally halfway round the world. And meeting extraordinary resistance from some aspects of colonial society, eg, from the ultraconservative Melbourne Argus:

“Another ship-load of female immigrants from Ireland has reached our shores, and yet, though everybody is crying out against the monstrous infliction, and the palpable waste of the immigration fund, furnished by the colonists in bringing out these worthless characters …”.

Fortunately, the famine girls at large flourished here, and found ready work and husbands in a young colony crying out for women. I had the privilege of playing at the launch in Yass of a book on the story: A decent set of girls- : the Irish famine orphans of the Thomas Arbuthnot 1849-1850 / Richard Reid, Cheryl Mongan. Book. Bib ID, 2502952.

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Terry, I would commend the play Female Transport for your pleasure. I believe ´Compelling´ is a good descriptor of this play. There are clips, and even a full length video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVGujQrjuJ0 ) of the play on Yutbe. The drama is set aboard one of the penal transportation ships.

Bob

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For the record, Campbell Island looks like the nearest point of land antipodal to Ireland: https://www.google.ca/maps/@-52.5545546,169.1554258,12.46z. The farthest you can get from St. Stephen’s Green is about here: https://www.google.ca/maps/@-53.34,173.74,6z.

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Woah, we in Australia talk about “splendid isolation”, but Campbell Island appears to have nailed it. Not seeing a pub though, and postal services for getting flutes out might be a bit of an issue. Have to train an albatross, I guess.

We had a session today, just over an hour north of here. One of the fiddle players is heading out on a supply ship for the Australian Antarctic base. Yeah, I know, things young people do these days!