Irish Nurse Not Sure If She's Loving The Aussie Sunshine Enough To Room-Share Like An Unmarried Mother In A Magdalene Laundry

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24-year-old, Fiadh (pronounced FEE-AH), says her home country definitely isn't poor enough for her to have to leave for the new world and spend her life living in servants quarters as a domestic labourer.

But in Australia, it feels like history may be repeating itself.

Just without the miserable weather and Catholic guilt of her home country.

After emigrating alongside hundreds of thousands of post-pandemic Irish youth, the Limerick native finds herself spending days lounging on a beach towel at Coogee reading Sally Rooney novels.

The nightlife isn't bad craic either, even if the Irish have to make their own fun in a city that held hostage by noise complaints.

But between Coogee Beach, the Coogee Bay Hotel, and the hospital wards of South Sydney - Fiadh and her friends are living the life they always imagined back in their rainswept hometowns.

Unfortunately, there is one catch.

"The property market like" she says, with a frustrated sigh.

"I'm just after six different rental inspections today"

With absolutely zero interest in buying a place of her own, Fiadh says all she wants is a bedroom of her own that doesn't cost more than half her weekly wage.

"I can see why they need so many of us here" she says.

Fiadh recognises that as a single woman with no dependents who only needs to earn enough to enjoy her youth in the Aussie sunshine - with no expenses other than a biannual holiday to Airlie Beach or Bali - she's one of the few nurses that can make it work in an Aussie city.

"An Australian nurse wouldn't be able afford to live within an hour of any hospital"

But still, she's facing the very real predicament of potentially having to 'room-share' with her fellow 'fallen women'.

"I mean, it's beautiful here. But is so beautiful that ye'd pay $330 a week for a bed. Not a bedroom. A bed" she says.

"The Irish didn't pull themselves out of 800 years of oppression, poverty and religious chauvinism for me step back back into a Magdalene laundry."

"I'd sooner go to Liverpool and find work in a flour mill"