If you are a parent, you might struggle trying to find the right extracurricular activities to enrol your kids in, especially if you want them to connect with their cultural identity.

Imagine the additional challenge of finding such a program when outlets for your cultural expression are hard to find in your area. And, if your area is 7.7 million square kilometres across, you can start to put yourself in Felix Meagher’s shoes.

“Me and my wife Christine have four children,” Meagher tells Celtic Life International via Zoom. “And at the time, this was about a quarter of a century ago, my sister-in-law had five. We wanted our kids to be exposed to Irish music. I came to it later in life because my father was very reluctant about his Irish background, as a lot of people in Melbourne were for a long time.”

The dream was to send all nine youngsters to the Willie Clancy School in Ireland to learn traditional Irish song and dance for a summer, but – as they were living in on the exact opposite side of the world in Victoria, Australia – the sheer cost involved quickly put a kibosh on that idea.

“Back then, I was living in Croydon, Port Fairy – a suburb of Melbourne – and I was very involved in a local event called the Port Fairy Folk Festival, which has been going for nearly 50 years,” Meagher continues. “One of my best friends in life, who founded that gathering, said, ‘well, why don’t you have it here?’

“With nine kids and us, we thought, well – we’ve got an audience, and we’ve got a quorum. So, we did.”

That was the start of the Lake School of Celtic Song & Dance, which welcomes families from across Australia and the world to a campsite in Koroit, three hours from Melbourne, for a week each summer in January (remember, it’s Australia). There, students study trad instruments, including fiddle, harp, bodhrán, flute, uilleann pipes, guitars, and more.

Meagher has run the camp since the start but recently stepped back from its operational responsibilities.

The new president, Jim McAlinden, has been a regular at the Lake School for over a dozen years. He notes that enrolment has grown exponentially from the original 25 students that attended the first year of the camp in 1999.

“I think we had about 300, 310 students this year. Plus, the tutors, plus their partners, and there might have been a number of tutors’ children that didn’t actually register but logged into classes anyway. So, you are talking around maybe 350 to 360 people in all that come into this small village town.”

“With the families, I reckon it’s more like 500,” Meagher chimes in.

Cora Browne, assistant chairperson at Lake School, came to Australia from Waterford, Ireland, when she was 15. She had lost track of her Irish culture in spending her adolescence immersed in Australian culture but attending the Lake School as an adult with children of her own has helped her to rediscover it.

“Coming to Lake School and hanging out with people who really appreciate culture has given me a place to stand…”

What started as a small affair is showing no signs of slowing down.

“I would like it to grow and become bigger,” says McAlinden. “The actual town of Koroit is actually waking up to their own Irish culture and background, as there are many families here whose roots come from the early 1900s and 1800s. But we’re not just looking backwards, we are looking forward. The school is not just a little thing in the background – it has a massive impact.”

Meagher concurs. “In terms of its influence, it really punches above its weight. It took a while to build, but the fact that people come indicates that they have decided to dedicate some of their life to this. And once you get a bunch of dedicated people, you can change the world.”

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