A NINETY-NIGHT SURVIVOR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 9, 1 July 1898, Page 20

A NINETY-NIGHT SURVIVOR.

THE OLDCSl 1 MAN IN QUEENSLAND. The course of time has bjen exceptionally kind to the Grand Old Man of Goodna — Air. John Byrne, and wjII might it be written : How few ot his youthful companions are now inhabitants of this world (say? the Qaecnsland 'J'/n \). Lik> a shock ot corn, when almost all thefi'dd has beci gathered into the £ irner — stands ' Old St. John,' as the Rev. Father Ilor.in delights to call him. Yes ; and what a beautiful consolation it is for Mr. Byrne's relatives to think IliiittliLU' i'alht.1 — vi, luj^liy, Ihuu giaudlathei — is still in pu^e.ssiuu of all his faculties at the remarkable age of 100 years. And his hundiuUli buihday w ,is oelyinatt-d last Fiid.iy, Mr. B^me ha\ing been born on June 10, 171 H. in the Loughs ot the Seven Churches, County Wiuklow. Ireland. Only quite lecently — on May 22, 181)8 — i l Sydney, many of Mr. Byrne's countrymen wi re commemorating the cent -nary of tint historical y -ar, 1 T'.IS. Mr. Byrne was born during tW-e tr uible u ome times in the Emerald Isle, and he states that, eve.i to save his baby-life, his parents hud to hide him under a ha-y&tack on the farm on which they resided. Without any farther reference to that period, it may be stated that Mr. Byrne was io npirativjly an old man when he left the Land ot Emerald Shorn to emigrate to Au^trali i : although, by-the-way. it does one's he irt goo 1 to listen to this long-lived Irishman talking of the Ould Country — a country that he still dearly loves Indeed, while conversing with the veaerable gentleman, last S iturday, lie stated tlvi% it' tlu opportunity were offered him, he would undertake tlu s 'a voyage to have a last glimpse of his native heath. lie bears his age wond rfully well— sli.vve? himself, cuts up his own tobacco, and gets about like a man only half his a.re. his sight being very keen and he has never had occasion to wear spectacles. He still takes the collection at the Catholic Church door, Goodna. Mr. Byrne left Ireland in his .">4th year, accompanied by his wife and family, for Moruton Bay, c-ossing the sea in the sailing vessel America, and, after threa months' most adventurous voyaging, landed in Brisbane in 1812, with, as he states, not a pannikin of water on bo ird and with scarcely a morsel of provisions,