Michael is joined by Dr Cindy McCreery, Senior Lecturer Department of History at the University of Sydney, to discuss the controversy behind Australia’s first Royal visit.

On a sunny day in March 1868 at Clontarf on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, a bullet fired from the pistol of one Henry James O’Farrell struck Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria.  Although the twenty-three year old prince was only slightly injured, and soon made a full recovery, the wounds inflicted on Australian society ran deep.

The assassination attempt was met with shock and horror by Colonists loyal not only to Queen Victoria, but to the royal family the Empire it represented.

As Dr McCreery points out, “the assassination attempt was used by the Colonial Premier Henry Parkes (later famous as the ‘Father’ of Australian Federation) ‘as the pretext for a witch-hunt against Irish people in New South Wales’.”

“Parkes declared O’Farrell part of a wider Fenian (Irish nationalist) terror network determined to bring down the British Empire. He introduced the punitive Treason Felony Act which not only suspended civil rights, but enflamed sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics – divisions that would last beyond the Second World War.”

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