Where have all the young Irish gone?

THE young Irish have gone, thousands of them, but this time it is not Ireland that they have left. This mass exodus has been from West Australia.

Five years ago over 1,000 young Irish emigrants, many from Galway and Mayo, were arriving in Perth every month — but as work in the mines on the coast of West Australia started to disappear, so also have the young Irish.

In 2011 and 2012 many of them were calling it “Perth (birth) of a new nation” as they socialised night after night in the many Irish pubs and discos that made parts of the capital of West Australia look more like Galway – only bigger with its 1.8 million population.

Fast forward to 2017 and some of the biggest Irish pub-discos in Perth’s Northbridge district such as The Cure and The Shed, to name but two where thousands of young Irish danced and drank into the early hours, have closed their doors.

Many hostels and hotels are closed while other Irish venues in Perth are struggling as the emigrant revellers have either moved back home or else gone to Sydney in East Australia or to some other country.

Read the full story in this week's edition