A beautiful painting titled Ikerrin used to hang above the fireplace in my grandparent’s dining room. The watercolour depicted a freestanding gabled brick house framed by an ornately trimmed verandah and a lush garden in bloom. Ikerrin was my grandfather, Jack Meagher’s childhood home, named after the family ancestral lands in the Barony of Ikerrin, County Tipperary, Ireland.

In the lounge room was another curio, a small-framed sketch also captioned, “Ikerrin,” Wattle Road, Hawthorn. This monochrome sketch, anchored to a place by its caption, is almost abstract. I asked my grandmother about it, and she showed me the back of the frame complete with glued on card and envelope addressed to Miss D. Donovan. Read more