In July 1857 Michael and Patrick Flanagan, sons of John Flanagan and Anne Maguire, and grandsons of Patrick Flanagan senior, travelled to Liverpool, and five days later sailed for Melbourne on the Oliver Lang. Returned on shipping registers as Pat and ‘John’ Flanagan, labourers of 24 and 21 years of age respectively, they arrived in Australia on 16 October accompanied by a 22-year-old friend, Pat Mooney. Their migration was probably spurred in part by the lure of the Australian goldfields to which they gravitated after arrival.

Letters indicate that Michael and Patrick went their separate ways in Australia though they reunited to voyage to the New Zealand goldfields in the mid 1860s. The brothers were part of a strong influx of Irish migrating to the West Coast from Australia. Though we still await confirmation of the overall accuracy of Fr Binsfield's comments ‘that the Irish miners in Westland in those days came from the well to do classes at home … . Most of them were sons of well to do farmers’, Michael and Patrick Flanagan certainly fitted his generalisation. Their grandfather occupied a 28-acre property at Duffstown as well as property at Balfeddock, in the civil parish of Termonfeckin, County Louth. His combined holdings fetched a staggering £138 rental per annum in the mid nineteenth century.

By April 1865 the Flanagan brothers had settled at Hokitika. In early 1867 they moved to Charleston, dubbed a town of ‘calico and canvas’. From there Michael, somewhat enviously, informed home readers that Patrick ‘is one of the very few upon whom the climate or the hardships to be endured in this vagabond life seems to have no ef[f]ect’ (Fl 2).

The Flanagan series of letters is especially revealing for its discussion of the social networks within which Patrick and Michael moved. Though natives of Louth were only a small percentage of the Irish contingent on the West Coast, the Flanagans encountered other miners from Termonfeckin, such as Peter Greene. On hearing this, their brother Richard wrote, ‘it must be very pleasant to have one near you from your own neighbourhood at home’ (Fl 1). Michael Flanagan was also able to inform home readers that fellow Louth man ‘Richard Sheridan is quite well’ (Fl 2). Wider networks were also evident at Grahamstown in 1869. As Patrick told Michael after his arrival there, ‘I have seen a good number that I know’ (Fl 6).