The first was a man called James Dalton, born in Co Limerick in 1834. Dalton's father also James was arrested for kidnapping and transported to Australia.

He served his transportation sentence in Bathurst and like many Irish before and after, decided to stay on in Australia. He called for his youngest son James to escape the horrors of the Irish Famine in 1849. They set up a store at Blackman's Swamp, later renamed Orange. Their timing was impeccable as gold had been found at nearby Ophir starting off a rush. The winners were not the prospectors but the merchants and young James who started his own store on the main street, soon became a wealthy man, with a reputation for sourcing miners' needs.

Dalton took breaks from building his huge store to serve customers. By the late 1850s he was able to court another merchant's daughter and his wealth attracted his elder brother Thomas from America. Their Dalton Bros stores expanded to create Orange's first flour mill. They shipped flour to England where it fetched a premium price and they also handled wool. He later became mayor of Orange and died on St Patrick's Day 1919 aged 84. His store dominates Orange's main street.

The second man was more recent. Jim Stynes was a talented Dublin-born Gaelic footballer who answered an ad to play Aussie Rules for Melbourne. He was the most successful product of The Irish Experiment. In 1988 Melbourne reached its first grand final since 1964; Stynes was Melbourne's best player in a losing team. In 1991 he became the only non-Australian to win the the Brownlow Medal and retired in 1998 with 264 matches and 130 goals. While recognised as one of the finest players in the game, it was his inspiring work off the field that endeared him to the wider public. In 1994 he started the not-for-profit organisation 'Reach For The Stars' which ran programs for young people to promote mental health and wellbeing. In 2009 he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and he sadly died of a brain tumour in 2012 aged 45.