ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by locating The Banner of Belfast within the twin narratives of Belfast's foundation and the construction of the local 'Irish' cultural landscapes; the latter is the modern locality. It focuses on the archives of a mid-nineteenth century provincial Victorian news-paper, The Banner of Belfast, to explore the ways in which Ireland was remembered, imagined and contested among the Irish emigrant community in Belfast, a regional port in Victoria's far south-west. The chapter discusses how the contested representations were used to (re)construct notions of self and other within the Irish emigre community; and how these ideas of alterity related to the reconstitution in Australia of aspects of the normative structures of nineteenth-century Irish social and clerical authority. Particular attention is paid to the role of memory in these reformulations of identity and selfhood, and to its sometimes fictive character. The chapter presents the issues in The Banner – colonial land ownership, and the Catholic Church in Victoria.
