Sri Lankan Romola Sebastianpillai nurtures Irish culture in Darwin-By Conor Byrne Some of the teachers at Rince na hÉireann Darwin Irish Dance Association’s leprechauns class started this young.(ABC Radio Darwin: Conor Byrne) Source:ABC Irish dancing evokes a stereotype of ginger hair, fair freckled skin, and strong Gaelic heritage, but not in one of Darwin’s Irish dancing schools where Sri Lankan migrant Romola Sebastianpillai has been the matriarch for 14 years. Key points: Romola is not who you’d expect to run an Irish dancing school She was voted unanimously as president 14 years ago She thinks she was elected because she wasn’t Irish This, in a small city of three Irish dance schools, and where 7.3 per cent of people claimed Irish ancestry in the 2016 ABS census — the third highest after Australian and English ancestry.   ...

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