 Abstract | This Ph D argues in its creative praxis - an 1859 Irish-Australian historical novel - and historical analysis - a critical exegesis that contextualises the creative work - that apocryphal tales purposefully revived, as oral stories or in literary transformations, re-depict and frame collective memories. The exegesis documents previously unpublished primary material, including Irish apocryphal stories, and The Hibernian Father, a play by Irish-Australian convict, Edward Geoghegan. It puts forward new hypotheses: that the Irish hero Cuchulain may have provided a template for the apocryphal story of the Magistrate of Galway, that working-class South East Irish families were marginalised in South Australian historical records, and that Kate Grenville's The Secret River (2006) offers an alternative history of the Hawkesbury River settlement. The mystery of Geoghegan's disappearance is now solved. Using metaphor to link the migrations of Irish and Indigenous Australian subjects of British colonialism with those of bats offers a new inflection.
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