Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/182

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THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

joined one of the first emigrant bands to the new Australian colony, where he soon found scope for the exercise of his vigorous brain-power and his innate literary talent in the leading journals of Brisbane. For many years, and up to the day of his death, O'Carroll was universally recognised as the ruling literary force in the Northern colony—a lofty altitude for an erstwhile unknown Irish emigrant to attain in a mixed community. "What characterised him above all," said the Brisbane Courier, the principal journal of Queensland, whose pages he brightened with his best work and his noblest thoughts, "was the conscience he put into his work. He was never the sort of man who would take up a subject—like a lawyer his brief—and make the best of it without much thought or care concerning the truth of the matter at issue. Truth was the keynote of his nature. The same love of truth made him the most loyal and trusty of comrades to his press colleagues. And there was a strong strain of chivalry in his nature, which found vent in a devotion to his paper similar to that which a soldier bestows upon his regiment. Neither in himself, nor in anyone under his orders, would he tolerate half-hearted service, or anything less than the very best work that could be done. There are men holding high positions in his profession in other countries, who will testify to the value of the sometimes sharp, but always kindly, lessons they received from him when they were among 'O'Carroll's boys.'"

Another brilliant journalist, who was carried away in the very prime of life, was Robert Atkin, a kinsman of Thomas Davis and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. The monument over his grave by the sea at Sandgate, thirteen miles from the capital, bears the following fraternal inscription: "Erected by the members of the Hibernian