The view from above

OFF the south west tip of the Beara peninsula in West Cork, Dursey Island is known for the cable car connecting it to the mainland.

The cable car was opened in 1969 by Taoiseach Jack Lynch and was the brainchild of a priest who had observed a farmer, Tadgh Rogers, hooking up a homemade cable car to move sheep to Crow Island. The Dursey cable car is a lifeline for residents, farmers and tourists.

Images of cattle travelling on the cable car have long been associated with West Cork.

The cable car came to national prominence last January when Cork County Council banned the transportation of live animals, pending a review. The issue is unresolved and has angered farmers.

Martin Sheehan is a farmer on Dursey and opposes the ban. “If there are no codes to cover the transport of animals, then how can we be breaking any codes?” he asks. “We now have a situation where we can carry six people, weighing 90kg each, but we can’t bring across a single lamb weighing 50kg. A small bit of commonsense would go a long way; like the other farmers on the island, I only need the cable car for a few hours in the year.”

I travelled on the cable car on a typically wet Irish summer’s day, with heavy seas surging through the sound. The wind is force seven with heavy rain blowing in off the Atlantic. “No bother to ye,” says Paddy Sheehan, looking cheerfully out of the window of the control room, at the cable car swaying gently from side to side. “Sure, if it breaks down at all these days, it breaks down at either end. So, ye aren’t likely to get stuck in the middle and have to be rescued.”

Inside, the cable car has windows, simple wooden seats and little else. Although tourists love the concept of this box swinging perilously over the treacherous Atlantic hundreds of feet below, it isn’t an ornament. It serves a practical purpose. It also avoids redundant safety instructions; a notice prohibiting opening of the door mid-flight is hardly necessary. In one corner of the cable car there is a small vial of holy water, from Knock, and a copy of psalm 91. These placements suggest that, notwithstanding its sturdy construction and blemish-free safety record, some passengers want insurance of a more spiritual variety.

Indeed, looking down on wheeling seabirds and white crested waves might not be ideal for people with vertigo. More people come to see the cable car from the landward side than ever choose to travel across on it. The previous cable car, once described by an unimpressed local as a “tin-can hanging from telephone wires”, was more rickety and has now found a new home as a chicken coop.

So what was life on the island like in the past? “Dursey is a Viking word and it may have been used by them as a holding place for captured slaves,” says local historian Penny Durell.

“In 1602, Donal O’Sullivan Bere rose against the English from his stronghold at Dunboy. However, Donal was also in conflict with his cousin, Eoghan O’Sullivan Bere, over the lordship of Beara.

Donal then proceeded to steal his cousin’s wife. Although no one knows if she acquiesced in this matter, she was held hostage on his small stronghold on Dursey Island.

“Outraged at this affront to his honour, Eoghan led a contingent of Carew’s British forces to the island and helped them land. It is said that the English forces slaughtered everyone on the island, including many who had taken shelter from fighting on the mainland.”

In 1841, the island supported 340 people. However, in the decades that followed the population declined. “It is extremely difficult to get here in bad weather across the treacherous sound,” Ms Durell says. “There are stories of priests having to shout the words of the funeral mass from the landward side, or of people coming home from England and remaining stranded on the mainland for the duration of the holiday, unable to see their family. People left for work, the school closed and although the cable car certainly made life easier, it didn’t reverse the decline.”

Life on an island such as Dursey was always likely to create a resourceful and resilient people. “There was good fishing, the land is good and there was plenty of turf on the island,” Martin says. “In my parents’ time, they were often cut off from the mainland for six weeks. But no-one went hungry. A neighbour would give you flour one week, the next week you would repay the favour with tea or milk. It was a very self-sufficient way of life and there was great freedom in it. No door on the island was ever locked.”

The permanent population of the island is small, but there is constant traffic of people who farm or who live here part of the year.

Christian Kostner, from Germany, and his Irish wife are renovating a cottage and living full-time on the island; the first new permanent residents in some time. “Building work on an island is very difficult,” Mr Kostner says. “The council are providing ferries this year, but I understand why the farmers are upset, as we had to wait for five weeks for the weather to be sufficiently settled for the ferry to land. There are easier islands to live on, but part of the attraction of Dursey is that it is so wild.”

Returning from Dursey, we are joined on the cable car by two wet and bedraggled Dutch hikers, named Marijke and Marije, who have decided to run for cover, and a local woman, Anne Finch, who has a holiday home on the island. The extra weight stabilises the car on the way back. As we arrive, a young German visitor approaches Paddy Sheehan at the control room window. “I would like to go to the island of sunshine,” he jokes feebly, huddling under a raincoat.

“I’m afraid not,” says Paddy, keeping an eye on the strengthening winds. “We might get you over, but we might not be able to get you back.” Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has got stranded on the wrong side.

Not long after the cable car opened, it is said that a group of Dursey Islanders were stranded on the mainland. “Oh my God, we are marooned,” one old Dursey woman was heard to wail.