Corcoran Two More Descendants
by Mary Doran, Brisbane, Australia
Dr Michael Joseph Ostwald and his sister, Dr Patricia Mary Ostwald are great-great-grandchildren of Thomas and Letitia Corcoran of Ballindine. Thomas was Principal of Ballindine National School from 1853 to 1880. Their great-grandfather, Austin Corcoran (1850-1917) taught at the Ballindine National School for a period of twenty-one years (1868 to 1889) before emigrating to Queensland, Australia, with his wife Mary and their four children in 1890. Four more children were born in Australia. The second youngest of Austin and Mary's family, Anne, married Fredrick Ostwald, of Brisbane. Fredrick and Anne had two children, Joseph and Mary (featured in the Easter, 1997, issue of the ''Ballindine Post''). Michael and Patricia Ostwald are the children of Dr Joseph Ostwald and his wife, Lois ( formerly Leahy).
Dr Michael
Ostwald
Michael Ostwald was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1967. He was educated at St Pius X College, Adamstown, and at St Francis Xavier College, Hamilton. He attended Newcastle University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Architecture) in 1987 and a Bachelor of Architecture (Hons I and University Medal) in 1989. Throughout this period he worked part-time in architectural practice and qualified as an Architect in 1990. In the following three years he was employed in architectural practices based in Australia, England and the United States of America. Michael's design work has been awarded many national and international prizes, including the N.S.W. Chapter Prize (1989), a Silver Architectural Medal, Australia (1990) and two citations for excellence in Design (1998). His buildings have been published in international journals of art and architecture.
In 1992, Michael left behind the full-time practice of architecture to pursue his long term interests in writing about architectural history and theory. Since that time he has published more than one hundred and fifty works including seven books. His most recent monograph, Disjecta Membra: Architecture and the Loss of the Body, was launched in early 1999 and his next co-authored book (on John Ruskin's Stones of Venice) will be published in 2001. In 1993, on the strength of his early writings, Michael was offered a tenured position at Newcastle University.
Michael is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, N.S.W. where he teaches architectural design. He was appointed Assistant Dean in 1996. While he has been based at Newcastle since 1992, he has accepted visiting positions at universities in Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Thailand and the U.S.A. In 1995 he was appointed a visiting scholar to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and in 1998 a visiting scholar to the Rome Academy and visiting fellow to the Centro Studio Leon Battista Alberti, in Italy. He is a contributing editor to the journals, Architecture Australia, and the Architectural Review and is on the editorial board of the Architectural Theory Review and Nexus: Architecture and Mathematics. Since 1983 he has been awarded four prizes for his academic work including the 1990 Transition international prize for writing in architecture. Michael completed a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in 1998 on the relationship between non-linear mathematics and post-structuralist philosophy.
Michael married Toni Brown (a Manager in the Australian Public Service) in 1997 and they have recently finished renovating their Frank Lloyd Wright influenced ''Modern'' 1930s home. When not working (which is not that often) Michael and Toni pursue their joint interests in art, film, photography, cooking and gardening. Previous, more vigorous, past-times including the construction of replica suits of Medieval plate armour and martial arts training have given way to these more relaxing pursuits. Ironically, despite all of his travels, Michael has never been to Ireland although Toni has visited Ireland on a number of occasions. Michael is looking forward to visiting the homeland of his Corcoran and Leahy ancestors. He also has a long held wish to be in Dublin on ''Bloom's Day''.
Dr Patricia
Ostwald
Patricia Ostwald, usually known as Trish, was born in Kalgoorlie, in the middle of the Western Australian goldfields, in 1964. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science Honours degree from Newcastle University in 1985, specialising in Physics. Trish next commenced a Master of Science degree with Newcastle University's Plasma Physics Research Group. The Group investigates the Earth's Magnetic field both in Australia and in the Antarctic, with a view to understanding the Magnetosphere. Lois, Trish's mother, had always longed to visit Antarctica, but Trish opted for a less adventurous life and instead chose to study small regular variations in the magnetic field closer to home.
Trish obtained measurements from an array of devices across Australia and New Zealand. Some of the devices were placed on farms, so Trish had to bury the devices while trying to explain her research to farmers and local boy scout troops, and fend off cows who discovered quite a taste for the wires attached to the devices. Unfortunately the cows were unimpressed by explanations of the physics - but at least they were friendly, which was a big relief to a city girl like Trish.
She saw a lot of outback Australia during her studies. She obtained permission from the Government to site one of her devices on the edge of the Woomera Rocket range in the middle of the red sand desert of South Australia. It was just before Christmas, and the daytime temperatures were well above 40 degrees C, so she had to bury her equipment before dawn. Six months later, in the middle of winter, her equipment at a sheep station several hours drive west of the town of Bourke (in Australia the saying "back of Bourke" means "beyond civilisation"), stopped transmitting. The station owners apologised that they had forgotten about the equipment and used the field it was buried in for an impromptu game of polo. With snow threatening, she repaired the equipment out in the middle of the field. Her abilities at soldering were so notoriously bad, that the electronics technicians at the University nicknamed her "Sparky", but amazingly the equipment worked.
After finishing her Master of Science Degree, Trish got a job in Medical Physics. She decided that this was an interesting "high tech" indoor occupation which would not involve cows or soldering or digging holes. Instead, her first day at work saw her examining patients' throats while a Specialist explained various aspects of cancer to her. She has learnt a lot about Medical Physics since then, and is now a Senior Radiotherapy Physicist at the Newcastle Mater Hospital. Her job involves improving the accuracy of radiation treatments for cancer patients and she enjoys the fact that her job has an immediate relevance to peoples' lives. She has delivered papers on her research at various International Conferences in places such as San Francisco, Boston and the South of France. She has enjoyed the travel, even though she once had to transport something closely resembling a human skull through customs. Luckily US customs accepted that it was a humanoid phantom, made to look like a real skull for purposes of cancer research.
Last year Trish completed her PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) on the subject of electron radiotherapy, and to her delight, she was able to graduate from the University on the same day as her brother, Michael.
In her spare time Trish likes reading, and she belongs to a Medieval Recreation Society where she enjoys making Medieval and 16th century costumes, learning 16th Century dances, and doing medieval style calligraphy and illumination. Her University colleagues have been known to call her their "medieval medical physicist". She has never travelled to Ireland, but her first stop would be to Trinity College in Dublin to pay her respects to the Book of Kells. She then plans to explore Ireland and to see the places where her ancestors lived, notably Ballindine, from where her great-grandparents emigrated in 1890.
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