In the mid-1800s, the colonies in Australia experienced a population explosion, in part because gold was discovered in Victoria and South Australia. This strike coincided with the early stages of the emigration of millions of people from Ireland in the wake of the Potato Famine, and while many of us are familiar with the Irish came to the USA, a large portion of the migrant population went to Britain’s colonies in the south seas. As the number of Catholic Irish settlers grew, leaders turned to Irish seminars and religious communities to provide clergy, women religious, and lay brothers to staff their schools and churches. One group that was part of that movement was the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, and between 1865 and the early 1900s, more than a third of the Irish Province served on a mission that shaped parishes, schools, and Catholic life across the emerging Australian state. This talk will look at the lives of the men who undertook this mission and the settlers with whom they worked in what remained its own frontier culture.