Throwback Thursday: Summer holidays spent working on Cork island

WHO hasn’t heard of Matt Murphy and Sherkin Island Marine Station? Founded in 1975 by Matt and his late wife, Eileen, it grew from a small laboratory of 140 sq. ft. to a large complex of five laboratories and a library of some 100,000 books, journals, reports, reprints, together with an herbarium of plants and seaweeds. It gained international recognition and was run by Matt and his family until 2015, when project work ceased. Now Matt, ostensibly retired, is working towards an archive of data collected, with the help of his children.

Matt published a popular weekly column in The Echo for several years. Through this he kept readers in touch with the islands and wasted no opportunity to draw parallel with life as it is and was when he grew up in Cork City. Growing up in Cork, he loved the countryside and spent all of his spare time out there, when he wasn’t working at Dunlops. He frequently went canoeing on the many little rivers of the county with this writer’s father, and has written movingly of long evenings and nights spent in the open air.

“Our camp fires were something special. Everyday someone had the specific job to collect a couple of canoe loads of dead wood along the riverbanks for the night fire. The campfires started at round 11.00pm and were still lighting into the early hours. There is nothing more beautiful and tranquil than to be stretched out around a fire with no sound but the crackling of timber with a star-studded sky overhead. Yes, the young people of today have different ideas on entertainment. I wonder will they have as long-lasting memories as we, of our generation, have. It is the simple things in life that leave the lasting memories and, one thing for sure I had an abundance of them in my days with Eileen. It would be nice again if I could, just once more, sit around that campfire with her.” [ An Islander Looks Back.]

When he moved himself and his entire family to Sherkin in the mid Sixties, Matt’s principal aim was to raise the awareness of the marine environment in Ireland and help introduce young people to nature. Eventually this would lead to the Marine Station, but he thought that in the meantime, a holiday camp for school groups, to get them aware of the natural world, would be a good idea. Some fairly basic accommodation (little more than bunkhouses really) was built and he advertised this new facility for summer camps. (This, by the way, was in addition to the horse-drawn caravan business he and Eileen had set up in Banteer – remember those slow-moving peaceful barrel-top caravans which decorated the roads of West Cork in the Sixties? Hard to imagine them in today’s traffic, isn’t it?)

This writer’s sister has very happy memories of a summer spent working on Sherkin Island for Matt Murphy and his new holiday camp.

“I am trying to remember all I can about that summer of ‘68 in Sherkin. My friend Mags and I were there from the end of May until the end of September, I think. Matt is Mags’ cousin and he asked her if she was interested in working for that summer and to bring a friend. The holiday camp hadn’t been open that long. He was busy much of the time with his late wife, Eileen, running the horse-drawn caravan business back in Banteer then, and his kids were very small. I think we got our bed and board and pocket money of £3 or £4 a week, if I remember rightly. Well paid!

“A lot of the time, it was Mags and myself doing the cooking for school groups (from the UK), usually about 20 students and maybe two teachers. 

We fed them in the morning (a fry-up, or omelets), made sandwiches for lunch, then a cooked dinner in the evening. We used huge pots to cook potatoes for 22 people, and ourselves!

Mostly it was pretty plain food, and sometimes that didn’t suit the students who regularly topped up on whatever goodies were available from the shop.

“Once, I was asked to make an apple pie for some young lads and lassies. I explained that I didn’t have cooking apples that week so, they piped up ‘We’ll slog the apples Miss, if you’ll make the pies!’ They arrived back an hour later (courtesy of some orchard about a mile down the road, I know NOTHING!) with their jumpers turned up and filled with apples. That was a good evening. I think it was one of the group’s birthday and they wanted a treat.

“Morning time, after breakfast, we’d go out and catch the ponies and saddle them up. Half the group would go riding, with Mags or me to lead them. Sometimes Matt might be down or someone else would help. Sherkin is a lovely island, and the groups usually didn’t have much experience of pony trekking, so we had plenty of fun! The weather always seemed to be great that summer.

“The other half of the group would go out in canoes. These were kept at a lovely private beach owned by the O’Connors, (a vet from Millstreet, and good friend of Matt and his family). They had a large house beside this beach not far from Matt’s. It was from here that the O’Connor lads would take their boat (The Rover) out behind the island (a very rocky area!) and into Baltimore. Mags and I often got a trip out if we hadn’t got a group. Canoeing was mainly in and around the bay, which was very safe and not a problem if someone fell in when trying to land or get into the boat! Back then it was more of a joke than anything if somebody got soaked. It was all part of the fun!

“The groups slept in bunkhouses, fairly spartan, while we had the luxury of sleeping at the house. But when those groups were there, it really was all go for us two until probably about 8 or 9 at night. That was when we (we weren’t meant to of course) caught two of the ponies and headed off down the road to the pub, no saddles, riding bareback, sometimes bringing one of the O’Connor boys with us. This was our night out, and a bit of relaxation after looking after those kids all day.

“Coming back late one night, we just about scared the life out of Dr Breathnach (Professor of English at UCC at the time, who had a house on the island) when we rounded a corner at some speed, three of us on two ponies, and he had to jump into the ditch. I think, after the Professor complained to Matt about the ponies (and us!), I was sent back to Banteer to help with the horse-drawn caravan business. 

I guess he thought that my pal and I were trouble when together! But, after a week (I really missed Sherkin) he let me go back.

“Only once, a group didn’t like the accommodation (I think they were from a Welsh school), and left after a day or two. They were the only ones I can think of that weren’t happy there. And I suppose they must have made their grievances known, because a short time later we got a phone call from Matt (yes, we actually had a call phone in the house!) to say that two people from the HSE were coming down to inspect the place! Panic as we tidied up, not sure when they were going to arrive. But, later that day, we got a call from the post office by the pier in Sherkin to alert us: two Health Inspectors had just arrived on the ferry and were walking up to the Centre, a good mile and a half as far as I remember. I’m not sure if they were offered a lift as sometimes happened with tourists... 

But all was well, spotless and neat and clean when they arrived, and I don’t think they found any fault. 

"We were thankful for the early warning though! I believe that this warning, which had come through from Baltimore to the island post office, also happened if the Gardai ever decided to come over to check on closing hours in the pub. (No guards on Sherkin then. It was a very peaceful place...) There was ample time to empty the premises before the ferry got in.”

Isn’t all that straight out of Whisky Galore? The revenue cutter coming into the bay at Todday, identified by the keen-eyed oldest resident who rushes out to the local phone box in his pyjamas and puts a call through to the post office to warn everybody so that the unlawfully commandeered whisky can be hidden as swiftly as possible? Or alternatively, that dreaded call from the airport to let you know that your parents have just arrived back from holiday, and the house is in a devastated condition with a party going at full strength? Quick thinking required in both cases, to put it mildly. (Wonder how that old resident on Todday had the two or three pence handy in his pyjama pocket for the phone box?).

This was all before the Research Station was set up, says my sister.

“That’s another story, and Matt really made did brilliantly to get that going and to achieve all he, and the visiting researchers, did over the years. It really deserved all the recognition and awards it received.”

But, she says, she did visit Sherkin again, twice.

“Once, after graduating from UCC, to do a week’s biology with a group of eight year old girls on (probably) a summer camp. The last time was when myself and two others from Waterford IT (as it was called back in 1981) came there on a Biology Field trip with students. I must admit, I spent half my time counting the 18 and 19 year olds to make sure they didn’t get lost. I worried about them more that the eight year olds of that earlier visit!”

Well, Matt is still on Sherkin, and officially retired although nothing can keep that man from doing anything and everything. The hotel built by his son was a great success for many years, and has now been sold on to a new owner. The holiday accommodation for UK school groups set up by Matt all those years ago continued to be used by visitors to the island for decades. Families with young children liked the safe environment, the space, and the facilities for canoeing and pony riding. There are accounts of families coming back from an early morning walk and discovering a horse with his head in the door, happily consuming the bag of muesli unwisely left on view!

Do you have happy (or otherwise!) memories of working through the summer holidays? Tell us about them. Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com. Or leave a comment on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/echolivecork.