Wandering Aengus: The life and times of Oliver St John Gogarty

Gerard Leslie Brockhurst’s 1939 sketch of Oliver St John Gogarty. Photo: National Library of Ireland

Oliver St John Gogarty is probably best known these days for a pub named after him in the Temple Bar area of Dublin but he deserves to be better remembered. W.B. Yeats called Gogarty “one of the great lyric poets of the age” while former Liberal prime minister H.H. Asquith said he was “the wittiest man in London”. As Ulick O’Connor wrote in Oliver St John Gogarty: A Poet and his Times (1964), Gogarty was a classic Renaissance man; a poet, author, surgeon, athlete, statesman, and conversationalist. He formed friendships with the most influential people in early 20th century Ireland including Yeats, Trinity don J.P. Mahaffy, Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith, and James Joyce, until they had a spectacular falling out.

His father Henry Gogarty qualified as a doctor from Trinity College in 1867 and built up a successful practice in Dublin. Henry lived at Fairfield, a Queen Anne Manor in Glasnevin and he married Margaret Oliver in 1876. Oliver was their first child born in 1878 followed by Henry, Mary and Richard. Henry senior died in 1887 but left his family in comfort. Oliver attended Stonyhurst College in Lancashire but he resented its Jesuit conformity, calling it a “religious jail”. He returned to Ireland to study at Clongowes Wood, and then studied medicine at Dublin’s Royal University. He cycled during the day and drank with medical students at night. In six terms he passed only two exams and his dissatisfied mother moved him to Trinity. Here he fell under the influence of John Pentland Mahaffy, the greatest Egyptologist of his era, whose witticisms and epigrams were beloved of his students including Oscar Wilde. Mahaffy was proudly Anglo-Irish, believing they were superior to the English and were “as curious as the Germans while loathing their inelegance”.

While Trinity was a bastion of the Protestant Ascendency, it had a rebellious undercurrent. Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Thomas Davis, William Smith O’Brien, Charles Gavan Duffy, and the Fenian Thomas Clark Luby, were all educated there. Gogarty loved Trinity and excelled in everything except medicine. He buckled down in his final year and achieved creditable results. Gogarty was a jester and prankster, infamously selling a drunken medical student to the Royal College of Surgeons as a corpse. Gogarty opposed the Boer War, and sent in an anonymous poem to the snobbish Tory social magazine Irish Society, seemingly an ode to “The Gallant Irish Yeoman / Home from the War has come”. But when read vertically the first letter of each line spelled out “the whores will be busy”. Gogarty’s forte was cycling and he won nearly every college race in 1899. He won the 20-mile championship of Ireland in 53 minutes 35 seconds, a record that lasted many years. As one competitor said, you had to watch him like a hawk in races. “If you took your eye off him for a second he was past in a flash, with his cry of “Up, up Balrothery” (their training grounds.) He was suspended for bad language in 1901 and never raced again. He took an interest instead in the Irish literary renaissance. Though his medical progress was slow his poetry won many Trinity prizes, influenced by Mahaffy, and fellow classical scholar Robert Tyrrell, who became close friends, and educated him in Greek and Roman civilisations.

Dublin was another formative influence on his elegance and panache. He admired the 18th century “Bucks”, high-society rakes who fought duels and caroused at the Hellfire Club. Joyce painted Gogarty as “Buck” Mulligan, “a primrose-vested gallant against the picaresque society of lower-middle class Dublin”. Gogarty’s bravery was renowned and he had rescued several drowning men from the Liffey for which he gained medals from the Royal Humane Society.

Ireland was in intellectual and political ferment in the early 20th century. The works of Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory graced the Abbey Theatre, Arthur Griffith gave the Irish independence movement an intellectual foundation, James Connolly and James Larkin founded the Irish trade union movement, the Gaelic League renewed enthusiasm for the Irish language, while home rule prospects seemed bright under John Redmond’s Irish Party. Other important influences were two Georges, novelist George Moore, and writer George Russell, known as “A.E.” who developed occult study in Ireland. Gogarty met them through Yeats whom he regarded with awe. Yeats worked on an adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus in 1908. He consulted Gogarty on classical sources and invited him to Moore’s lively literary salons. Gogarty said Yeats read from his play Deirdre, “his voice sets all vibrating as he sways like a Druid with his whole soul chanting”. Moore caused a sensation when he returned to Dublin to join the literary revival after being the darling of London and Paris. Moore was a great talker but was outdone by the undergraduate Gogarty. Moore called him the “Arch Mocker”, always with a witticism or a new ballad or limerick. A.E. was equally impressed, saying Gogarty had a “reckless imagination”.

Gogarty and his medical friends hung out in Nighttown, Dublin’s red light district, where they were welcomed for their healing powers. Gogarty befriended “the brothel-keepers, bullies, and frequenters” and absorbed the language of the underworld. The Legion of Mary clamped down on the “kips” in 1924 and Gogarty lamented its passing in his poem The Hay Hotel (the Cavendish Row establishment that served late night coffee and crubeens). “There’s nothing left but ruin now / Where once the crazy cabfuls roared”. Joyce portrayed Nighttown in Ulysses where Bloom called on his “old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give medical testimony”. Gogarty met Joyce in 1901, and they had much in common beside a love of red lights. Joyce was impressed by Gogarty’s memory for classical verse while Gogarty loved Joyce’s singing voice. They both hated Dublin middle class hypocrisy. They were similar in appearance and became a familiar sight walking together. Gogarty called Joyce many names including “wandering Aengus” and “Kinch” in imitation of the cutting sound of a knife. When they left Ireland in 1903 to study abroad, (Joyce to Paris, Gogarty to Oxford), they communicated regularly. Gogarty’s letters are at Cornell University while Joyce’s were destroyed when anti-Treaty forces burned Gogarty’s house in the civil war. At Oxford, Gogarty was in constant demand as an entertaining Irishman. He met humanist George Bell, later Bishop of Chichester, and they retained a lifelong friendship.

When Gogarty and Joyce returned to Ireland, they lived together at Sandycove’s Martello Tower, with its inspiring view over Dublin Bay. Joyce worked in a local school and his salary helped pay the rent. Gogarty spent most time swimming at the Forty Foot bathing pool, and Joyce occasionally accompanied him. As the opening chapter of Ulysses showed, the pair bickered. Gogarty was annoyed by the airs and graces Joyce gained in Paris. Gogarty told a friend that Joyce’s “want of generosity became to me inexcusable”. Joyce left Dublin hurriedly with young Nora Barnacle, whom he later married. As they settled in Trieste, he corresponded with Gogarty. When Joyce returned on holidays in 1909, he met Gogarty briefly. They gave differing accounts of what happened. Gogarty said that Joyce stared out the window at a rose garden and then enigmatically said “Is this your revenge?” before walking out. According to Joyce, Gogarty made a long confusing speech which ended “Do you want me to go to Hell?” to which Joyce replied, “I bear you no ill will,” but added “You and I of six years ago are both dead”. It’s not clear which version is true, but they never met again.

Gogarty first met Arthur Griffith in 1899. Gogarty revered him, and Griffith was one of the few people spared his acid tongue. Griffith admired Gogarty for his athleticism and found his class background useful. Griffith loved good conversation and basked in Gogarty’s wit. Gogarty was soon writing for Griffith’s newspaper United Irishman. Griffith held the first annual convention of Sinn Fein in 1905 where Gogarty said the Irish were “the victims and tools of the most disgraceful government in the world”. The United Irishman printed his fiery speech in full. Trinity friends were alarmed at Gogarty’s extremism and were worried authorities might take action against him.

They never did and Gogarty graduated in 1907 after 10 years of study, including six months of living in hospital to gain certificates in obstetrics, medicine and surgery. He married Galway woman Martha Duane who gave birth son Oliver in July 1907. The newly qualified doctor moved to Vienna to do postgraduate work to specialise in ear, nose and throat surgery, taking Martha but leaving newborn Oliver with a nurse in Dublin. Gogarty loved Vienna as “the most civilised city in Europe” and enjoyed its excellent training opportunities. He returned to Dublin in 1908 and worked at Richmond Hospital. Hospital work was unpaid but brought lucrative referrals through contacts with GPs. Routine Ear, Nose and Throat work took little time and Gogarty got the reputation of being a top notch surgeon who worked at great speed, “lightning with his hands”. Second son Dermot was born in 1908 followed by daughter Brenda in 1912.

Gogarty settled in Ely Place and bought an expensive Rolls Royce which became well known in Dublin. Some considered Gogarty’s driving suicidal, and he would deliberately skid his car in the rain. He remained a church-goer, though an unorthodox one (one woman at Mass saw his lips move as if in prayer but found he was reading from Horace’s Odes). He admired the Irish Christian Brothers’ free secondary education and he retained a lifelong friendship with Dr Michael Fogarty, long-term Bishop of Killaloe, as “the reverend Dr Fogarty and the irreverend Dr Gogarty.” Every Friday, Gogarty hosted a literary evening. Guests including Yeats, Moore, AE, Augustus John, and Horace Plunkett enjoyed the “stimulating seriousness and wit of their host”. Gogarty was a regular at The Bailey in Anne St. where he smoked cheroots, sang ballads, and told stories. Rapt attendees included talented young MP Tom Kettle, who matched Gogarty for epigrams. Gogarty studied with Kettle at Clongowes and admired the “laughter in his soul”. Another Bailey frequenter, Piaras Beaslai, said Gogarty swiftly moved from topic to topic “telling a number of anecdotes, decorous and indecorous”.

The 1912 Home Rule Bill was initially welcomed by extremists like Griffith and Patrick Pearse. But tensions in Ireland grew after Ulster Unionist resistance and the formation of paramilitary groups. The Ulster and Irish Volunteers imported arms into Ireland, and the division dismayed Gogarty. He told his friend Lord Dunsany he admired the Irish Volunteers but “did not wish to join when others were joining for party-political motives”. When the First World War broke out, home rule went on the backburner. Redmond supported the war effort, which a splinter group of Irish Volunteers opposed. Gogarty agreed with Griffith that support of the war needed to be tied to immediate home rule. When the Easter Rising broke out in 1916, Gogarty was driving to Dublin and armed police stopped him at Mullingar. With patients to see on Easter Tuesday he managed to get back to the city and found out that Pearse and Connolly were at the GPO. Gogarty told Moore that the unpopular rising would serve only to redeem the credit of the British Army which was failing in Europe. But after the executions, the public mood changed, as expressed in Gogarty’s poem The Rebels. “Death withholds them more / Separate for ever and aloof”.

In 1917 Gogarty bought an isolated Connemara mansion on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Renvyle House became a haven from city life. He entertained distinguished visitors and painter Augustus John captured its colours in his landscapes. It was a far cry from the city slums which Gogarty wrote about in his play Blight: The Tragedy of Dublin. It caused a sensation at its Abbey Theatre opening. The Irish Times said it “revealed the horrors of slumdom”. Gogarty wrote it under the pseudonym Alpha and Omega. Gogarty was Alpha while judge Joseph O’Connor, who provided anecdotal material, was Omega. The play’s criticism of the government and the war effort was controversial, and, despite its popularity, Lady Gregory ended its run after 10 days, under external pressure but influenced Sean O’Casey’s later work.

In 1918 the war was going badly. Ireland seemed on the brink of revolution when Lloyd George proposed conscription in the country. When elections were held in December 1918, the Irish Home Rule party was wiped out, and Sinn Fein won an overwhelming victory. They followed Griffith’s abstention policy and the First Dáil sat in Dublin in January 1919. It was suppressed and there were thousands of arrests. Gogarty produced another Abbey play called A Serious Thing, released under the name “Gideon Ousely”. Its plot about the Roman occupation of Palestine was a thinly disguised satire of British rule in Ireland. Roman soldiers wore khaki because, as the program notes said, “it seemed the most appropriate uniform”. Ireland descended into terror and violence. Gogarty was lucky that when the Black and Tans briefly arrested him, they did not find a cigarette case full of newspaper clipping detailing their atrocities. Gogarty’s Ely Place home was a safehouse for I.R.A. leaders on the run. His daughter Brenda remembers seeing Michael Collins many times. Her parents worried that she might blurt out at school that a strange man was staying at the house. Gogarty used his car to assist a jailbreak, taking fugitives “at rare speed” away from Mountjoy. His bravery was recognised and almost as important, according to Collins’s 2IC Richard Mulcahy, was the social milieu Gogarty provided. “Gogarty’s house was a valuable meeting ground for people of different beliefs and creeds”, Mulcahy said, a place where Republicans could meet Unionists and landed gentry who differed politically, but who “had the common good of Ireland at heart”.

Gogarty played a cameo role in the 1921 peace negotiations. Griffith asked Gogarty to drive him to Kingstown where South African general Jan Smuts arrived for talks. Griffith wanted to brief Smuts before he got into the hands of Castle officials. Smuts got wind of Griffith’s plan and hid in a lifeboat while Griffith and Gogarty searched the ship for him. Later at the Mansion House, Smuts told Irish leaders not to try for a republic. “I tried a Republic and it was a failure,” he said. Collins and Griffith led a delegation to treaty talks in London. In an October 1921 letter, Gogarty was pessimistic and thought Ireland could not be freed before Egypt or India. “There will be a war here in any case and it will take six months to meet it and more,” he wrote. Gogarty’s words proved prophetic but it would be Irish fighting against each other, not against England, after the divisive Treaty was signed in December. Gogarty supported the Treaty and became close to Collins. Gogarty recognised that Collins was a man of action, but he “loved beautiful things and had a warm sympathy for Art”. Collins loved Gogarty’s humour and they would drive to take tea at Beechpark, the mountainside home of vice president W.T. Cosgrave. Cosgrave admired them both as men of courage and said, “that pair of rascals took more delight in shocking me than in talking serious business”.

Double tragedy struck in August. First, Griffith died of a brain haemorrhage and Gogarty had to embalm his great friend. “Arthur Griffith justified Ireland,” he eulogised. “It remains for Ireland to become worthy of Arthur Griffith.” Ten days later Collins was killed in an ambush in Cork. Ireland was traumatised by his death, and Gogarty embalmed another great friend. With fine skill he hid the gaping wound in the back of Collins’ head. Gogarty’s grief came out in a poem when he asked “What Cain has caught his country by the throat?” The civil war became increasingly bitter and there were numerous summary executions. Rebel leader Liam Lynch ordered that the cabinet, Pro-Treaty TDs, High Court judges, and “aggressive Free State supporters” were to be shot on sight. In December the government created a parliamentary upper house and Yeats and Gogarty were named senators. Gogarty became a Republican target. He was taking a bath on January 20, 1923 when armed gunmen broke into his home and pressed a gun into his ribs. “Isn’t it a good thing to die in a flash, Senator?” a gunmen said, as they bundled him into a car. Gogarty kept his wits and amused captors with his humour. They took him to a house on the banks of the Liffey near the Salmon Weir. Gogarty asked if he could go outside and when he did he threw his coat over an assailant and jumped into the freezing and flooded river. Gogarty survived the shock, though thought he might suffer a heart attack. Swept on by floods, he could barely breathe, but grabbed an overhead branch and pulled himself to shore. He dragged himself to Phoenix Park police barracks where he could merely hiccup at the sentry. He was revived with brandy, but was still in shock when a doctor arrived. “I am Senator Oliver St John Gogarty” is all he could say. Later, Gogarty fulfilled a vow he made while immersed in the raging torrent that he would present two swans in thanksgiving if he made it to safety. Cruel poems satirised Gogarty’s wild adventure. “Faith, thin, Oliver St John Gogarty, ye’ve too much bounce to sink”. He remained in danger, and carried a revolver. Consulting room patients were examined by eight guards before they could see him. In May 1923 he had to move his practice to London, though he returned to Dublin to fulfil senatorial duties. The war finally ended and Eamon de Valera was arrested, Gogarty complaining that Dev had “done more damage to Ireland than Cromwell“.

Gogarty’s dazzling conversation made him the toast of London intellectuals, politicians, and royalty. Dissident republicans threatened to kill him if he didn’t resign from the Senate, a threat Gogarty called “impertinent”. A visit to Bristol reminded him of home, and in 1924 he returned to Dublin. He got involved in the organisation of the Taillteann Games, a revival of an ancient sporting festival, open to athletes of Irish descent. Gogarty’s task was to invite international “worthies” to the Games. He gathered an eclectic list of people he deemed had sufficient personality, including author G.K. Chesterton, Indian cricketer Prince Ranjitsinhji, architect Edwin Lutyens, and Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie. Gogarty led visitors on morning hikes to Howth before watching the daily games. He finished third in archery while winning a gold medal for poetry with his book An Offering of Swans. The collection contains a preface written by Yeats, who recounted how Gogarty asked if anyone had spare cygnets as he was “at a loss for birds to present to the Liffey”. He finally procured swans from Lady Leconfield’s Petworth House lake in West Sussex and held a presentation ceremony opposite the Salmon Weir where he escaped from the river in 1922. The Dublin legend persists that all swans on the Liffey are descended from Gogarty’s breeding pair.

In the Senate, Gogarty proposed investment in roads which he saw as replacing rail traffic and advocated an Irish merchant marine. He pushed for new housing to replace Dublin’s notorious tenement slums. He supported action against Republican dissidents and introduced a Public Safety Bill after Kevin O’Higgins’ murder in 1927. An admirer from afar, Winston Churchill, called Gogarty “a figure from the Antique, cast in bronze”.

Gogarty added a new string to his bow when he discovered flying. He took pilot lessons at Baldonnel Airport with the Irish Air Force and used his charm to gain access to their planes. “Ah St John could get anything he wanted” said one officer. “You couldn’t refuse him”. Soon he was flying across the sea to perform operations in London. In 1928 a student of Rodin offered to do a sculpture of him. Gogarty flew to Paris, sat with the sculptor for eight hours, then flew back to Dublin at first light to receive patients that morning. He and fellow pilot Lady Heath flew to an isolated Mayo beach for a swim but the plane failed on soft sand, and they were stuck on an off-shore island for several days. When Joyce heard about it, he said “I am glad to see Buck Mulligan is unhurt”. Gogarty formed the first Irish Aero Club in 1928. When he went to California in 1932, he loved flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours. America may go on ruling the air, he told one correspondent, “if the over-weaning confidence of her Admirals does not end in dashing the whole of our civilisation against the shores of Japan”.

The de Valera government abolished the Senate, claiming to extricate Ireland from “the paralysing dilemma of the Treaty”. Gogarty regarded it as an attempt to conciliate proletarian elements and called it “the worship of mud”. With his senatorial career doomed, he launched a ferocious attack on De Valera’s “peevishness and megalomania” saying he had betrayed American ideals of democracy. The Senate was dissolved in 1936 and though the 1937 constitution conjured up a new rubber stamp upper house, Gogarty was not among its members. As war loomed again, he published three books of verse and three prose works, including his memoir As I Was Going Down Sackville St (1936). His growing fame affected his medical practice as patients worried he might write about their experiences.

Gogarty was sued for libel over his memoir. Henry Morris Sinclair claimed that one passage about an usurer who enticed small girls into his office for sex had defamed him because Gogarty said the usurer passed on his predilection to his grandchildren, of which he was one. The case caused a sensation in Dublin. Gogarty was accused of having “a pen dipped in the scourging of a putrid and immoral mind”. A surprising witness against him was playwright Samuel Beckett who identified Sinclair from the passage in the book. Gogarty almost got off the hook when the judge claimed the authorship of the book was not proven, but the plaintiff’s lawyer called Gogarty to testify. Gogarty admitted he wrote the book and knew Sinclair and his grandfather. Gogarty’s lawyer admitted defamation but it was so obscure as to be obvious only to Sinclair’s inner circle. The jury found in favour of Sinclair and awarded £900 damages and costs. Gogarty never forgave Beckett and later called Waiting for Godot “nothing but a long wail”.

When war broke out, Gogarty returned to America and made a good living writing articles and giving lectures. He returned to Dublin in 1945 and found it leisurely after the pace of New York. But he had lost his medical clientele and with no source of income he returned to America, where he lived for another decade. Ulick O’Connor said he met Gogarty on his final visit to Ireland in 1956, and he looked slim and erect at 76. They walked the streets together “while he talked the whole time, except when he stopped to meet old acquaintances whom he greeted with exceptional charm”. O’Connor handed Gogarty a boyish photo of him in his cycling days. “He took it with interest, put it in his wallet, and then was gone,” O’Connor recalled. “It was as if for a moment I had revived a past which he did not want to think about if he was returning to America.” Gogarty decided to retire to Ireland but was taken ill with a heart attack in New York. With his old friend W.T. Cosgrave urging him to look after the state of his soul, he took last rites before he died on September 22, 1957. His body was flown to Ireland and he was buried at Renvyle in front of close friends and family. The wandering Aengus had finally found rest.

Warrnambool, Port Fairy and the Great Ocean Road

A highlight of a week in Victoria was three days in the south-west coastal town of Warrnambool. I took the train from Melbourne’s Southern Cross via Geelong, which takes three hours and 20 minutes to Warrnambool. From Warrnambool station it was a 10 minute walk to my apartment and nearby was this marker on the main highway noting the finish point of the 267km-long Melbourne to Warrnambool Classic, Australia’s oldest one day cycle race founded in 1895. Victorian cyclist Blake Agnoletto won the 2025 event in an impressive time of 6 hours and 19 minutes. It is a lot more than I could cycle in one day (let alone six hours), though I had cycled 125km a couple of days earlier in Melbourne as part of the Around the Bay in a Day festival and planned to do another significant cycle while in Warrnambool.

Warrnambool gets its name from Indigenous people who lived in the shadow of volcanic Mount Warrnambool for thousands of years and who had ringside seats when it last blew its top 5000 years ago. French navigator Nicholas Baudin was the first European to sight Warrnambool Bay in 1802 aboard the Geographe. British settlers arrived in the 1830s, but local tribes fiercely resisted them and the so-called Eumeralla Wars went on for almost 30 years. In 1838 former whaler Captain Alexander Campbell took a large tract of land at the mouth of the Merri River and built his main hut where Warrnambool now stands. The township was surveyed in 1845 and grew quickly in the 1850s following the Victorian Gold Rush. The railway line arrived in 1857. Liebig Street is the main street, named for Baron Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), a great agricultural scientist of that period. The T&G Building hosts Warrnambool’s prominent clock tower built around 1940.

After walking around the city centre I wanted seaviews, and walked across the railway line to Lake Pertobe parklands and enjoyed its abundant birdlife. Lake Pertobe is a 58 hectare park, its name derived from “pirtup”, meaning small sandpiper in Gunditjmara language. Lake Pertobe parkland was created 50 years ago from ephemeral wetlands as the brainchild of council employee Edward Johnson and wife Margot. There is a long walking trail east towards the Warrnambool Foreshore Reserve but I meandered west towards Warrnambool Harbour.

I crossed the 1890 heritage-listed Wollaston Bridge footbridge over the Merri River estuary to Pickering Point. The 30-metre-long timber and steel cable suspension bridge was the entrance to the Wollaston Station estate of grazier and Western Victorian politician Sir Walter Manifold. According to the Victorian Heritage Database the bridge is “a sophisticated engineering structure of a substantial span and of notable aesthetic quality with its combination of materials including the stone pillars with cast iron capping, timber substructure and steel cables.” Offshore is Middle Island and its penguin colony which is subject to predation by foxes and dogs at low tide. When the colony declined to 10 breeding pairs in 2005, conservationists tried the novel approach of protecting the birds using trained Maremma sheepdogs. The ploy worked and numbers have rebounded.

On the other side of the bridge I walked along the coastal path to Pickering Point looking out on the “kuurn naa Mullin”, the small islands on the rivermouth where Indigenous people of the Maar Nation gathered and prepared food and held cultural ceremonies. This is part of Merri Marine Sanctuary for colourful seaweeds, fish, crabs, and other marine creatures. Many birds visit the area including Australian gannets, black-faced cormorants, great egrets, and Pacific gulls. The clifftop sand dunes contain fossilised footprints of extinct marsupial lions and diprotodons. I emerged back on the road at Pickering Point and noted the start point of the Port Fairy-Warrnambool rail trail, which I planned to do the following day. I took the long walk back to town for the evening.

The following morning I was due to collect my rental bicycle at 9am. Before that I walked to Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum, which hosts Warrnambool’s lighthouse and the town’s garrison. One of the earliest public works in Warrnambool was the road cutting through Flagstaff Hill though the lighthouse was originally sited near Middle Island. In 1871 the lighthouse complex was dismantled, ferried to the mainland and re-built on Flagstaff Hill. It was too early in the morning for me to go inside but it is laid out like an 1870s period village. The museum features a large collection of items from the many shipwrecks in the area.

I went back to town and paid $70 to rent a bicycle for the day. I went to the rail trail starting point I spotted the evening before and set off alongside the beautiful Merri river estuary and wetlands. The 37km route follows the route of the old railway between Warrnambool and Port Fairy via Koroit. The line opened in 1890 but closed in 1977. Plans for a rail trail began in 2005 and it opened to the public in 2012. While I’m always sad to hear about the demise of a railway, I like a good rail trail and having cycled Waterford’s Greenway and part of the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail, I was looking forward to riding this one. I had the track mostly to myself as I scooted past the lovely wetlands.

After an hour of riding on a mix of different surfaces, I arrived at the halfway point of Koroit Railway Station. I briefly left the route to grab a coffee and a bite to eat in Koroit’s small town centre. Koroit was established in 1858 and many Irish immigrants moved into the locality, pleased by the quality of the potatoes they grew in the rich volcanic soils. The railway arrived in 1889, with a large brick building replacing an original timber structure in 1907. Though the last train came through here in 1977, the station building, platform and goods shed have all been retained. From here I headed back to the coast so I cycled into a headwind for the second half of the ride to Port Fairy.

I cycled through the Tower Hill marshes which Chinese labourers drained in the 1860s-70s to open them up for farmland. I soon approached the Moyne River on the outskirts of Port Fairy township with its flotilla of small boats. A powder magazine was built near here in 1861 and held gunpowder used in civil works and quarrying. Also here is a monument to the 10 dead crew members of Port Fairy ship the SS Casino which was wrecked off Apollo Bay on July 10, 1932.

Before I went into Port Fairy I detoured across the causeway to Griffiths Island with its large breeding colony of short-tailed shearwaters, or muttonbirds. What began as an easy boardwalk ride, soon became a tough task on a bumpier sandy surface and became impossible when I ran out of beach. With the tide in, I had to clamber over rocks carrying the bike. The reward was getting to the end of the island and a close-up of the beautiful bluestone lighthouse which has faithfully guided ships into the security of the river port since 1859. The last lighthouse keeper left in 1954 when the light was automated.

This area was the haunt of whalers and sealers in the early 19th century and gets its name from the sealing cutter The Fairy which landed here in 1828. Port Fairy was a whaling station by 1835, and the first store opened four years later. In 1843 Irish-born solicitor James Atkinson purchased land in the town, drained the swamps, and built the first harbour. He renamed the town Belfast after his Irish hometown though it reverted to the ship’s name in 1877. The Warrnambool Standard complained that name changes were getting out of hand and municipalities were “as desirous of getting new names as if they were young ladies”. The National Trust has classified over 60 of Port Fairy’s 19th century buildings including the Seacombe House hotel and its external appearance remains little changed from when it opened as The Stag Inn in 1847. The builder was Captain John Sanders whose schooner ran aground on the rocks off Griffiths Island in 1842 and he decided to stay on in town. His hotel boasted a dining room, a commercial room, five parlours, 28 bedrooms (eight of which were “second-class”), a bar and billiard room, and private apartments. 

I had lunch in Port Fairy’s busy tourist precinct and then set off for the return 37km, again having a tailwind as I headed inland and a headwind as I headed back to the coast at Warrnambool. I finished with a spin past the railway station to Warrnambool Foreshore Reserve. I had a great view looking west from here along the beach back to Middle Island and Warrnambool’s breakwater which was constructed in the 1880s. I cycled back to town along the beach path and with all my diversions and add-ons I clocked up 95km by the time I handed back the bike to the shop. With all that sea air and exercise, I slept well that night.

The weather was lovely again the following morning which was excellent news as I had another big day planned. I did the bike ride on Tuesday because on Wednesday I wanted to take the V-line bus that plies the route between Warrnambool and Apollo Bay which only runs three times a week and only once each way on those days. At 8.30am I climbed aboard the bus at the railway station and I was the only passenger, which is a shame because the route is a gem. Not only does it serve the towns of the Great Ocean Road but it stops for periods between 10-30 minutes at the Bay of Islands, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, and 12 Apostles so tourists can have a good look around. Our first stop was to the Bay of Islands. The driver told me to be back in 10 minutes.

We stopped again at Peterborough, London Bridge, Port Campbell, Loch Ard Gorge and the 12 Apostles. We picked up no other passengers and I left the bus at 12 Apostles around 10.10am which meant it was empty from there to Apollo Bay. My plan, as I told the driver before I hopped off, was to walk around 20km back the way we came through Port Campbell then on to London Bridge. Then, having confirmed he was also the driver for the return bus leg that afternoon, I asked him to collect me at the London Bridge stop. The driver acknowledged my plan and if he doubted my sanity he was kind enough to keep those thoughts to himself. The bus was empty but 12 Apostles was not and the visitor centre was crammed with proper tourist buses full of people who paid far more than the $5.50 I shelled out for my ticket there. They all wanted the Instagrammable view of the eponymous apostles, stacks of limestone rocks carved out from the cliffs by the waves and the wind. It is doubtful there were ever 12 stacks here and only half a dozen apostles are viewable from the platform. It was pretty, but also pretty busy and I was happy to move on. Besides, I had 20km to walk and then a bus to catch.

There was no walking track west of the Apostles, so I walked by the side of the road. But there was not much traffic and the sea was always in view. After about 3km I was back at Loch Ard Gorge, where the bus had briefly disgorged me an hour earlier. This time I took a proper look around its many walking tracks and it is a stunning place. It is named for the clipper Loch Ard, shipwrecked here on June 1, 1878 near the end of a three-month journey from England to Melbourne. Only two of 54 passengers and crew survived. One was a ship’s apprentice who heard a female passenger’s cry for help in the water and rescued her, then raised the alarm with local pastoralists. The graves of four of the victims are nearby. After admiring the gorge and the cemetery I walked on to the Muttonbird Lookout, Thunder Cave, and Sherbrooke River. The plan from here was to cross to the other side of the river and then pick up a dirt path back to the main road, to avoid having to backtrack. Though nothing at the site said this was possible (probably because few people actually walk from Loch Ard Gorge to Port Campbell), it looked doable in Google satellite view. Sure enough, there was a spit of beach between Sherbrooke River and the sea so I crossed that and picked up the path on the other side. From here it was a short walk back to the Great Ocean Rd and I had 5km to go to Port Campbell.

Back on the road there was no real shoulder, but it remained quiet with good views and I was able to walk easily enough on the grassy verge. Kudos to the one kind ute driver 2km out of town that wanted to know if I “needed a lift to Port?” I thanked him but preferred to keep walking. Port Campbell soon hove into view. The port and town are named after Captain Alexander Campbell, the same Scottish-born whaler who founded Warrnambool. He arrived in Victoria in 1836 after working in Van Diemen’s Land. Campbell built the whaling station at Port Fairy, and in 1838 he took refuge in a storm in a large inlet that was later named Port Campbell for him. The town was settled in the 1870s, with a wharf constructed in 1880. It remains a popular tourist spot as the closest town to the 12 Apostles.

I had fresh fish and chips for lunch and was sorry I didn’t bring my bathers as I passed the beach. I was looking forward to the next bit of the walk as it was off road. Called the Port Campbell Discovery Walk it leaves town to the west via the Port Campbell Suspension Bridge, which spans Campbell’s Creek, then quickly climbs 200 steps to the cliffs with great views back to Port Campbell township and its lovely bay. The walk goes to Point Sturgess headland and then back to town but I found a way off leading to a dirt road and then back to the highway, with an hour to go to London Bridge.

After what turned out to be 24km of walking, I arrived at the limestone arch of London Bridge around 3.25pm, about 10-15 minutes before the bus arrived. I remember coming here in 1989 when the “bridge” was still standing and we risked the blustery conditions to walk on the headland. Barely a year later the connecting rock formation collapsed, leaving two people stranded on the rock. “There was no warning,” said one of the two stranded tourists. “The arch just broke into a couple of large pieces and fell into the sea. I yelled out to Kelli to sit down and hang on because I thought we would be washed off.” After the alarm was raised in Peterborough, they were rescued that night by helicopter. The outer arch is the next candidate likely to fall to erosion. I had no dramas today, and I happily boarded a now full bus back to Warrnambool and had another early night after my exertions. I paid another bargain $11 for the early train back to Melbourne the following morning leaving me with many great memories of three days on Victoria’s stunning south-west coast. I was also happy it was possible to get around without a car.

Protest and Punishment: Colonial Australia’s political prisoners

Fenian prisoner John Boyle O’Reilly arrived on the last convict transport from Britain to Australia in 1867.

Of 162,000 prisoners sent to the Australian colonies, around 3600 were convicted for political or social crimes. The fate of those 3600 is the subject of British historian George Rudé’s Protest and Punishment: The Story of the Social and Political Protesters transported to Australia 1788-1868 (1978). Making the distinction between these and other convicts was not easy. Rudé defines them as having committed social crimes to defend common rights or protesting as a collective act, though not always carried out collectively. Crimes included trade unionism, machine-breaking, foot rioting, taking oaths, treason and sedition, rioting, and armed rebellion. Activities like rural arson, poaching, cattle-maiming, assaults on peace officers, and sending threatening letters, may or may not have been protest. Some offenders did these crimes for personal reasons while others had political reasons for doing so. Rudé calculated that 2250 Irish people, 1200 Britons and 154 Canadians were political protesters, 120 of them women. The vast majority of the Irish were involved in the land and tithe war, while others were armed rebels from 1789/1803 (United Irishmen), 1848 (Young Irelanders) and 1867 (Fenians). Most British protesting prisoners were “Swing” rioters but also included Scots Jacobins, naval mutineers, Luddites, radical weavers, Bristol and Welsh rioters, Tolpuddle Martyrs, and Chartists.

Britain underwent rapid industrialisation during the convict era, transforming from a rural to an urban society with huge growth in London, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow. Social disruption led to increased urban crime. Rudé notes seven major phases of collective protest, beginning with the French Revolutionary period with its Scottish martyrs (who were given political prisoner status due to their wealth and education) and naval mutineers of Spithead and the Nore. There was also widespread social protest in 1811-22 including Luddism and food rioting, the great 1819 Manchester weavers rally that led to the Peterloo massacre, and the 1820 Cato St conspiracy in London to blow up the cabinet. A third phase in 1831-33 was the “Captain Swing” riots of the south and east with massive destruction of threshing machines and threatening letters (often signed “Swing”). Lancashire laundress Ann Entwistle was transported to Australia for breaking into a factory and demolishing machinery while Suffolk weaver Thomas Fobister got the same sentence for cutting and destroying silk in a loom. Eric Hobsbawm called this behaviour “collective bargaining by riot”.

The next three phrases (1837-9, 1841-2, and 1847-9) were outbreaks of Chartism, Britain’s first national workers’ movement with the 1842 Lancashire Plug-Plot riots over wages (where workers sabotaged boilers by pulling out plugs) particularly violent. So too were the “Rebecca” riots in Wales where farmers dressed up as women while pulling down tollgates. The last phase (1850s-60s) included northern attacks on police forces, sectarian battles between Catholics and Protestants, and London riots over Sunday trading.

The situation in Ireland was greatly different with no industrialisation though the population also grew rapidly. England treated Ireland as a colony and its economy was stagnant. Ireland’s rural population was beset by absentee landlords and ruthless middlemen while security of tenure existed only in the north. Land was subdivided to tiny proportions while two-thirds of the population relied on the potato which provided a healthy diet but was prone to crop failures, with devastating effect in the 1840s famine. The predominant British offence of poaching was non-existent while the Irish committed far more robbery at arms, forcible possession, and attacks on houses and land, with Cork and Tipperary the most troublesome counties. Rudé recognised several key phases. The first was the Defenders’ movement leading to the 1798 rebellion. Following from secret societies like the Whiteboys, the Defenders emerged in the 1790s to champion Catholic interests and allied with Wolfe Tone‘s United Irishmen in bloody rebellion which ended with Robert Emmet‘s abortive 1803 rising.

A second phase Rudé called a “land and tithe” war began around the end of the Napoleonic War, lasting until 1834. Led by the Ribbonmen secret society it was mainly a rural movement, though Dubliners like clerk Richard Jones were caught up in it. On arrival in Hobart in 1840, Jones told authorities he had been convicted of “forming an illegal society for the purpose of protecting men of our own persuasion against the Orangemen”.

The famine produced two kinds of protesting convicts; the first, those driven to crime by starvation in individual acts of anger and despair, and the second, upper-class Young Irelanders influenced by European cultural nationalism who rebelled in 1848. Young Ireland inspired the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Fenian movement 10 years later, with its own rebellion in 1867.

Canada supplied political prisoners to Australia from its rebellions in 1837 and 1838. The years 1836-7 saw unrest due to a severe economic crisis in North America. Many in Canada and across the border saw the United States as the country’s liberator from the British yoke. In the Lower Canada (Quebec) revolt of 1837, French Canadians felt that they were conquered people with a different language and religion, though the Canada Act of 1774 gave the Catholic church full spiritual authority over French-speaking people. French leaders called Patriots demanded democratic changes which Westminster rejected so they formed a militia, which led to numerous arrests. Fighting broke out near Montreal but rebels were vastly outnumbered forcing Patriot leaders into American exile. Secret “Hunter Lodges” formed on both sides of the borders ahead of the 1838 rebellion in Upper Canada (Ontario). Here there was resentment against the “family compact” of the Tory domination of government and the Anglican domination of church affairs. British soldiers easily put down that rebellion, and many rebels fled into exile. Some Canadians and Americans were captured and sent to Australia.

The second part of Rudé’s book looks at the punishment the protesting convicts received. Without a police force in the early 19th century, governments used militias and regular army troops to pacify districts and they usually outmatched the violence of offenders. The Luddite disturbances of 1811-12 were put down by 12,000 troops, which was a larger force than Wellington’s army in the Peninsular War. In 1819 Lancashire yeoman cavalry sabred 11 protesters to death at Peterloo while wounding 400, causing widespread outcry. Authorities suspended habeas corpus until 1827 (and continued to do so much later in Ireland). Troops put down the 1830s riots, killing 12 in Bristol, 13 in Merthyr Tydfil and 11 unemployed Kentish labourers at the 1838 Battle of Bossenden Wood. The last major bloodbaths were the 1839 Chartist rising in Newport where soldiers fired on a workers’ march, and the violent Northern Plug-Pot riots of 1842. Soldiers gave way to professional police armed with staves following Robert Peel’s 1829 Metropolitan Police act and further reforms which had the effect of pacifying disorder without much bloodshed.

Peel made important judicial reforms, removing hundreds of capital offences. Before that, 30 Luddites had been hanged as were three Scottish Martyrs and five Cato St conspirators. Peel’s changes were motivated by efficiency rather than humanity and many capital offenses remained for crimes against property. The other fearsome punishment was transportation to Australia, effectively a life sentence regardless of the actual term. Transportation numbers rose considerably after 1827. Of the 200 people charged in the Swing riots, a quarter were sent to Australia while just 19 were executed. Hampshire farmer John Boyes was found guilty of “demanding money with menaces” and transported for seven years while Wiltshire ploughman Thomas Light got the same sentence for machine breaking and robbery. Dorset’s Tolpuddle Martyrs got in trouble for forming an agricultural union. Though unions were legalised in 1824, a magistrate connected to the Whig administration found six Tolpuddle men guilty on the technical charge of being bound by an unlawful oath and they were transported to Australia. In the Newport riots, eight were condemned to death but all sentences were commuted to prison or transportation. There were no executions after the Plug-Pot riots though 50 people were transported. New South Wales ended transportation in 1840 and so did Tasmania in 1852 leaving only Western Australia to accept convicts, and over 700 arrived in the west between 1854-67, half of them arsonists.

Justice in Ireland was always more brutal, arbitrary, and vindictive than in England. After the 1798 rebellion, there was no regard for the niceties of the law. Many were transported without trials or documentation, causing complaints from New South Wales governor Philip King. Many ended up at the government farm at Parramatta where discontented Irish prisoners plotted the Castle Hill rebellion of 1804. Peel came to Dublin in 1812 as Irish Secretary determined to improve lax Irish bureaucracy and introduced a Peace Preservation Force (replaced by the Irish Constabulary in 1836) and stipendiary magistrates. Ireland suffered under numerous coercion acts which imposed curfews and bans on possessing weapons. Many arrested for breaching insurrection acts ended up in Australia. Protests were muted between 1823-29 due to Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic Emancipation but rural unrest spiked again in the 1830s. The new Irish Constabulary helped stamp out famine crime as well as put down the rebellions in 1848 and 1867. They were rewarded for their latter efforts with the title “Royal Irish Constabulary” and they survived into the 20th century as a training ground for Britain’s colonial police. Four Young Irelanders from the 1848 rising were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered but their sentences were commuted to transportation. A similar fate befell those found guilty of Treason Felony after the Fenian rebellion in 1867.

The most famous 1798 Irish rebels transported to Australia were Wicklow men Joseph Holt and Michael Dwyer. Holt was a Protestant farmer who reluctantly joined the rebels after a private quarrel when militia burned down his house. He commanded Wicklow forces which retreated to the mountains after Vinegar Hill. He launched guerrilla resistance until November when he negotiated voluntary exile to New South Wales. Catholic man Dwyer and 400 other rebels kept up the fight for four years after Holt surrendered. But after Emmet’s rebellion in 1803, Dwyer negotiated freedom to America. The British reneged and transported him to New South Wales instead. Dwyer later joined the New South Wales police force. Another early prominent Irish transportee was United Irishman Richard Dry who became a prosperous Tasmanian woollen merchant. Others, like James Lyons, were sentenced for joining the French invasion of 1798. After being imprisoned in Waterford’s New Geneva, Lyons sailed to Australia on the Minerva with Holt and Dry. A dozen Irishmen were transported after the 1848 rebellion. Seven “state prisoners” including MP William Smith O’Brien, John Mitchel, Thomas Francis Meagher, Patrick O’Donohoe and Kevin O’Doherty got favourable treatment in Van Diemen’s Land thanks to their upper and middle class backgrounds. A second group of five working class men transported after the 1849 Cappoquin Barracks attack were treated more harshly and did not get tickets-of-leave. The last set of Irish rebels were 62 Fenians sent to Australia in 1867 aboard the Hougomont, including John Boyle O’Reilly who had tried to incite mutiny in the army. O’Reilly made a spectacular escape to America, and became editor-owner of the Boston Pilot newspaper. In 1869 prime minister Gladstone pardoned many Fenians, but not the military ones, some of whom languished in Western Australia until John Devoy and John Boyle O’Reilly conspired to rescue them in the Catalpa in 1876.

Australia had secondary punishment systems for hardened offenders with new penal colonies like Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay, Norfolk Island and Port Arthur. Less costly alternatives included the chain gang which in Tasmania were used in hard labour constructing roads and bridges. The treadmill and solitary confinement were used for minor infractions. The most savage punishment was the whip or cat o’nine tails administered by brawny prison officers while tied to a “triangle”. Many prisoners were flogged close to death, though it ceased after complaints by British evangelists.

Few transported prisoners ever made it back to Britain or Ireland. Most stayed on in the colonies after gaining freedom and lived out their lives as farmers, tradesmen, craftsmen, stockmen, and labourers. However the Tolpuddle Martyrs were all released and sent home after a concerted campaign against their unjust treatment. George Loveless, leader of the Tolpuddle men, and the only one sent to Tasmania, was greeted as a hero on arrival in London in 1837. He became a Chartist and his memoir The Victims of Whiggery encouraged the working class to take matters into their own hands. Many Chartists that Loveless inspired also ended up in Tasmania. Chartist leader John Frost had his probation period extended for “making false statements”. He later became a teacher before sailing to New York. On gaining a full pardon in 1857 he returned to England to lecture on convict life in the colonies. Four Irish Tasmanian state prisoners escaped to the US while the other three gained pardons. Kevin O’Doherty, later returned to Australia and became a Queensland doctor and parliamentarian. None of the transported rank and file men from the 1848/9 rebellion returned to Ireland and they died in obscurity in Australia.

Rudé says the debate about the character of the convicts has continued since 1788. The Irish generally were seen as lawless criminals. When the first Irish Defenders arrived in 1797, Governor Hunter called them turbulent, worthless, and horrid. As convicts were emancipated, they often played down their criminal past to find their way in society, though many in authority believed they were beyond redemption. Early 20th century historians painted convicts as “more sinned against than sinning” and called them the founders of Australian democracy. In 1954 AGL Shaw argued that most convicts were urban thieves, pickpockets, and shoplifters “ne’er-do-wells from the city slums”. In 1965 LL Robson concluded that most English convicts were young urban thieves, but said the Irish were, on average, slightly older, more rural, more likely to be married, and less likely to be thieves. Focusing on protesters from both countries, Rudé found that they corresponded more to Robson’s Irish model than the English one. By and large, he said, the sentences handed out to these men and women “should not blot out otherwise exemplary records and deny them the respect that their descendents owe them”.

One small step: Paul Sinton-Hewitt and the rise of parkrun

A parkrun flag at the finish line of Hervey Bay parkrun in Queensland. Photo: Author’s collection

Only half joking, I recently suggested that parkrun had become a world religion and its regular Saturday morning attendance was the new weekly equivalent of Catholic Mass. Founded as a 5km run in London in 2004, parkrun is now a global phenomenon. Last weekend, it had 2723 events in 23 counties with 452,178 walkers, runners, and volunteers. It is free, harmless, and good for the health of participants with many side benefits, as I’ve found since I began parkrunning eight years ago. So I was keen to pick up the 2025 biography of founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt One Small Step: The definitive account of a run that became a global movement.

Sinton-Hewitt, 65, was the youngest of three Johannesburg children to Scottish-Australian photographer James Sinton-Hewitt and South African model wife Mary. James and Mary’s relationship was troubled and she ran away when Paul was five. James made his three children wards of court and they were sent to Johannesburg’s Sons of England Children’s Home. Paul got used to institutional life. He visited his mother who returned to a nearby suburb but made no effort to regain her children. James collected his children after three years and moved outside Johannesburg where he enrolled them as school boarders. Paul was the youngest student and was subject to constant bullying which made it hard for him to trust people. His confidence grew in secondary school and he got into running. During Paul’s teen years, James had a car crash which left him with serious head injuries. Half-brother Noel, James’s eldest son by a previous relationship, held the family together.

Noel found new accommodation and a new school, Potchefstroom High School, 120km from Joburg. Paul hated the fagging system where younger students waited on older boys in a “campaign of licenced bullying”. A growth spurt in his final school year helped his athletic development and he enjoyed middle-distance running. Sinton-Hewitt attended a history class where he confronted the reality of South Africa’s apartheid system, which he knew nothing about thanks to censored news while black townships were out of sight. He believed the system was ugly, unfair, and indefensible. Nonetheless he had no plan to leave. White South Africans had to do two year’s military service so he enrolled in the air force. Despite his institutional background, he struggled with authority and earned many punishments. He was assigned to a sleepy outpost where he learned to interpret radar data.

When the two years were up he went to Scotland to visit his father’s relatives. He got an Australian passport through his father and set off for Edinburgh where cousins welcomed him. But a cousin’s friend told him he was a racist. “You’re a white South African. The way you treat the Black population is disgusting,” he said. The incident shook him and he learned about the Soweto Uprising and the Sharpesville Massacre. He returned to South Africa with heightened disdain for authority. In the early eighties he got a job as a computer programmer for a Joburg financial house and found the work intuitive. Sinton-Hewitt was a competitive solo runner but once he joined an athletics club he enjoyed its inclusivity, which later influenced parkrun. He had to return to military camp for continued service and wrote a letter to authorities asking why someone born in Rhodesia with an Australian passport should have that obligation. He got no reply. For three years he obediently served out postings. Then he accessed his military file and found out that authorities acknowledged his case, but he was never notified. He immediately got out of further call-out requirements.

By the mid 90s, his IT career was thriving. He found a job in Britain, and got a British passport. He married a South African woman and had two children, but the relationship failed, and they divorced. Struggling with life, he sought counselling. The counsellor suggested that his love of running could help him out, noting how it brought him together with others. By the early 2000s he joined the Stragglers social running club at Twickenham and made friends who would also help parkrun. He joined the more competitive Ranelagh Harriers to train for the 2004 London marathon hoping to beat his best time of 2hrs 36mins he set 15 years earlier in Cape Town. He gained a new running companion with a dog and began a relationship with Joanne, a fellow Harrier. Though he lost his job, he was in the best form of his running life. Then he tripped over a furrow in an interclub run, somersaulted, and landed on his back. Though he kept running, the injury worsened, despite his insistence to continue training. The Bath half marathon left him barely able to walk. Admitting defeat, he saw a physio who shocked him by the diagnosis of recovery time. “We’re talking years,” the physio said.

Out of work and with his running ambitions shattered, he searched for new purpose. Remembering South Africa’s informal and vibrant time trial culture, he decided to create his own in London. His partner Jo was supportive but advised, “keep it simple”. There would be no formal calendar but it would be on at the same place and time every week. With Sundays reserved for club meets he settled for Saturdays. Importantly, it was not a race but a regular timed run where people could get whatever they wanted from it. It would be free of entry fees and qualifications, and open to all. He decided the 5km distance seemed accessible and did not take up too much time. The venue was Bushy Park, Teddington, near his Richmond home. He set a starting date but friends told that 8am was too early a start time, so he made it an hour later.

At 9am, Saturday, October 4, 2004, Sinton-Hewitt was at the starting line of the first Bushy Park Time Trial alongside 13 competitors (eight men, five women). They would take an unmarked but intuitive course around the park perimeter. Jo was there with two friends while Paul borrowed a club stopwatch. As the runners crossed the finish line, Jo handed out steel washers which Paul had stamped with a number. Participants wrote down their finish position, name, and email address on a clipboard before returning the washer. When they finished he said they were going for cake and coffee and he would be back next week. During the week he collated the results using a simple computer program and emailed them out. He was back to greet 14 runners the following Saturday. Though only 11 turned up on week 3, Sinton-Hewitt was encouraged that some were becoming regulars. A few friends helped him out with the organisation and they enjoyed the chat while the runners were out on course. By week 4 there were 20 people there. Jo started running with the dog, which encouraged others to bring dogs.

Christmas Day fell on a Saturday and Sinton-Hewitt said he would be at Bushy Park that day. Unsure if anyone would come, he was delighted to find the first arrival wearing a Santa hat, and 26 showed up. New Year’s Day 2005 was also a Saturday and Sinton-Hewitt arrived wearing a tuxedo and trainers to tell participants that as they were all wearing watches, they would time themselves. Organisation became easier with practice and runners saw it as a social gathering. By 2006 there were 100 people at the start line, almost trebling by 2007. It became a popular time trial for running clubs, with a small but steady group of volunteers helping out. Newcomers appeared sheepish, almost requiring permission to run, before Sinton-Hewitt put them at ease. “It’s a run not a race,” he told them. Early finishers stayed on to cheer slower ones over the line.

Someone asked if he had insurance. For a while this was an obstacle he tried to avoid, fearful an insurer would dictate terms of the event. But though it was not a money-making event, this was still risky should the worst occur. Eventually he paid the initial insurance cost to add to the growing cost of washers. There were also cones, tape, and stakes for a funnel. The biggest outlay was a new laptop where he could process the results at the Teddington cafe which runners monopolised post-event.

Then someone asked if he had permission to use the park. He hadn’t, and when the ground was wet, stretches of the course became muddy under the feet of hundreds of runners. Lack of permission became an issue when the local newspaper finally started publishing his event report that he sent in for years beforehand. He arranged a meeting with the park ranger at the Bushy Park lodge house. After Sinton-Hewitt explained his purpose, the ranger replied, “you really think I don’t know what you’ve been doing?” But he smiled and reached for an application form that the relieved Sinton-Hewitt filled out. As they finished, the ranger asked, “You do have insurance?” Without missing a beat, Paul replied: “From the moment I started!”

As the event experienced growing pains, he turned to the sport’s governing body, England Athletics, for insurance cover. They demanded St John Ambulance attend, but Sinton-Hewitt refused, and they agreed once the event had a health and safety review. The major outcome was the need to keep dogs on short leashes. Demands grew on his time and he had to manually enter thousands of new people in his spreadsheet. He created a website for people to view results but it was fiddly. Jo described herself as a “time trial widow”. After three years, his volunteer assistant friend Jim Desmond asked him to start a second time trial. No way, Paul replied, there was only one of him, and his expenses would increase further. Desmond persisted. The demand was there, he said, and he sketched out a plan to run a 5km course on Wimbledon Common. Desmond promised that the time trial community would support it.

The Wimbledon Common Time Trial began June 1, 2007. This time they did everything by the book with Sinton-Hewitt in attendance for the first two weeks alongside run director Desmond while another friend ran Bushy Park. Desmond also ran Bushy Park while Paul and Jo took a much needed holiday. Sinton-Hewitt realised that others could do the job as well if not better than him. To mark the 100th Bushy time trial, runners give him a black jacket with BPTT written on it. Sinton-Hewitt thought it was terrific and wanted to do something similar for 10 others due to hit the milestone. He ordered 10 black jackets with 100 on the back. While it was a joy to mark the achievements, it was more money out of pocket. But they had proven the multi-venue format, so Sinton-Hewitt modified the computer system and looked for teams to start new time trials. By end 2007 there were seven more: Banstead Wood, Hyde Park, Richmond Park, Bramhall Park, Cardiff Park, Albert Park, and Brighton and Hove. A year later there were 15 time trials with 1500 attendees at events in England, Scotland, and Wales. He applied for grants, acquired sponsorship funding, and registered UK Time Trials Ltd. He also employed staffer Chris Wright, a Bushy volunteer. Sinton-Hewitt was adamant it would remain a community project not a commercial one.

The next big change was to the registration model so people could register online in advance. Participants quickly preferred this method to scribbling on a clipboard. Wright asked Sinton-Hewitt to change the name to “park run” as “time trial” didn’t capture the spirit of the event. He refused but after signing a partnership deal with Nike, their marketing team agreed the name was a problem. Sinton-Hewitt told them about Wright’s suggestion and they said it would be better as a single word “Parkrun”. Sinton-Hewitt liked it but asked to drop the capital letter to make it more friendly and informal. Though it led to endless later autocorrecting, parkrun was born. A small community was becoming a social movement.

By 2009 there were 2500 runners at 30 events, with 600 people at Bushy. He introduced unique barcodes for runners that could be scanned at the end of each event. He also hired a second staffer, the trio working from Sinton-Hewitt’s back shed. Runner’s World gave him an award for outstanding achievement as “the perfect example of grassroots sports participation”. It sparked a surge of interest and numbers doubled in 12 months. Undeterred by growth, Sinton-Hewitt wanted to see a run in every community. That was tested when a group in Zimbabwe contacted him requesting to start a parkrun near Harare. Though this resonated as the country of his birth, Sinton-Hewitt thought it might be a step too far. But when he considered it further he realised that what mattered were enthusiastic locals, and the Rolf Valley parkrun was born in 2008 with UK support. Though Zimbabwean political turmoil forced its cancellation a few years later, parkrun was going global. A British expat started one in Copenhagen and by 2011 there were three Danish parkruns. Australian expat and Wimbledon Common time trial regular Tim Oberg returned to the Gold Coast in 2011 with a vision for parkrun down under. Main Beach was Australia’s first parkrun, soon followed by events in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney. There are now 536 parkruns across Australia and that number is constantly growing (though earlier rising Aussies run at 8am in southern states and at 7am in Queensland). Sinton-Hewitt’s time trial friend Noel DeCharmoy started it in New Zealand, which now has 66 parkruns. Sinton-Hewitt’s proudest moment was getting it started in South Africa with the help of local running legend Bruce Fordyce. Fordyce was visiting the UK and had not heard of parkrun. Sinton-Hewitt invited him to attend Bushy Park. Fordyce’s verdict at the end was “You are on to something!” Fordyce established South Africa’s first parkrun at Joburg and the country now has over 220 events.

Fordyce was right. Sinton-Hewitt was “on to something”. While some compared parkrun to Facebook for the way it connected people, Sinton-Hewitt saw similarities with Wikipedia. Both are community-driven, free, and monitored and maintained by a global community of volunteers. Just as each Wikipedia page has unique content, each parkrun event has its own community, its own character, and its own personality. Sinton-Hewitt said this approach has been the key to growth providing independence, responsibility, and local sense of ownership. He sees parkrun’s most significant evolution as its higher average finish times, which means it is attracting more non-athletes and walkers. Parkrun also developed in ways Sinton-Hewitt did not expect. A sports coach convinced him to create a children’s 2km version and there are now over 400 junior parkrun running globally every Sunday. Then a prison gym manager asked him to create a parkrun inside the walls for inmates. In 2017 Black Coombe parkrun at Cumbria’s HMP Haverigg became the first custodial facility parkrun. Sinton-Hewitt said the 24 invite-only participants enjoyed the same positive experience as those on the outside. Now 25 prisons in the UK, Ireland, and Australia have parkruns. Parkrun outgrew Sinton-Hewitt’s shed, and even Sinton-Hewitt himself, who resigned as chief executive. He remains on the board of trustees of what is now a registered UK charity. It employs 70 people with offices in London and six other countries. Sinton-Hewitt remains dedicated to parkrun and he loves volunteering as much as running or walking. He joined 6000 people for Bushy’s 1000th event in September 2024. Volunteering is the heart of parkrun, and I’ve made efforts to increase my volunteering efforts to go with what is now over 300 parkruns in 118 different locations since I started in Cloncurry in 2017. I also like parkrun’s environmental ethos and I’ve tried to follow the instruction: “Please arrive by foot, by pedal-power or by public transport if you can.”

Parkrun’s growth is not without difficulties. When a council wanted to charge for using the park, Sinton-Hewitt reluctantly closed the parkrun rather than pay to put it on. Parkrun has not run in France since Covid when organisers refused French requests for participants to have medical certificates to fulfil safety obligations. Parkrun also attracted negative headlines for removing age and gender category records. Some viewed it as a way to sidestep calls to categorise transgender participants while others lamented the loss of a motivational tool. Sinton-Hewitt said the change was part of a long-term inclusive strategy of shifting emphasis from speed to participation, but admits they could have communicated reasons more clearly. Ultimately, he says, parkrun is a broad church that aims to bring people together by getting active and having fun. “I planted a seed when I was struggling, and wanted to be outdoors and social,” he said. He never stops wanting his acorn to produce bigger oaks. “Sometimes I wonder how life would be life if every human had access to a parkrun in their community,” he said. If parkrun is becoming a world religion, its founder is enjoying every step of the way.