When I started researching my fathers family I had no idea how little we really knew about his early life.

My brother dragged out the box of photos and half scribbled notes he had taken whilst taking Dad back "home" to Maguires Bridge, County Fermanagh,Northern Ireland not long before he died. The realization that we finally came to was that although he was one of ten children and his family had been in that area for about one hundred years, there were no longer any Lynch's back "home".

John Lynch married Rose Flanagan and produced 10 children. After her death John plus Patrick,James,Molly,Edward,Eugene,his son-in-law Peter Doran and young Mary Doran(mother Roseanne had died) left for New Zealand to visit Clare who had been sent to Auckland with Mercy Nuns. They left the farm Corranewey in the care of the neighbours,expecting to return. No-one went back. All married and died in New Zealand except Patrick and James who came and settled in Australia. Rose Lynchs brother Patrick Flanagan also immigrated with his wife and eight children to Sydney.