What the Clipping Doesn’t Say
This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (#AtoZChallenge), where I’m
exploring historical newspaper clippings—one story at a time—through my series
“Behind the Newsprint.”
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| Sandra is pictured being farewelled by her “backers”. From left, Mr Alan Cozens, and Mr Ron Barber of Rotary, Sandra, Mrs Williamson, and Rotarian Paul McMaster. |
“Sandra Williamson is now
in the Philippines as Cheltenham Rotary Club’s first exchange student.
She left last week for Davao
City where she will study the equivalent of sixth form in a Filipino high
school.
President of the Cheltenham
Rotary Club, Mr Ron Barber, said that later this year a Filipino student will
be hosted and billeted by Rotarians in Cheltenham.
Sandra, a former Cheltenham
High student, said she was thrilled at the prospect of living for a year in the
Philippines.”
They had put advertisements up. It is a neat little story. A
local girl, given an opportunity, heads off on an adventure. It says nothing
about how unlikely that felt at the time, or how close it came to not happening
at all.
The Rotary Club had decided to send an exchange student
overseas. They had put advertisements up around the school—or was it in the
newspaper, I can’t remember. What I do remember is excitedly discussing with my
school friends whether we should apply for the scholarship.
I was from a single-parent, lower-middle-class family; we’d
moved into the area so we could walk to both the primary and high school, a
deliberate choice by my mother who believed it would offer us a better start. One
brother had already gone to live with my grandmother; he needed more attention
than my mother felt she had the time to provide. Overseas travel didn’t just
feel unlikely; it felt like something that belonged to other families.
Applications were due the following week. Two of us decided
to apply.
I don’t remember much about the early stages, just the
waiting room and lots of “kids” waiting their turn. What I do remember is the
final interview. We were given very little notice. It was in the evening, and I
had to convince my mother that my latest harebrained scheme had merit. I
vividly remember being told that kids from families like ours don’t get to win
things like this, that no one wanted to send a child from a single-parent
family to represent their country overseas. That was not said with cruelty, but
with certainty, and that certainty was almost harder to argue against.
Reluctantly, she agreed to drive me; it was too dark to walk.
The interviews were conducted in a house. There were quite a
few teenagers there. We went from room to room alone to be interviewed by
various panels. There was a hushed, nervous excitement everywhere. The questions
consisted of “how would you feel if…,” “what would you do if…,” and so on.
The only one I remember with any clarity was being asked
what people overseas would think if they were to meet someone whose parents
were divorced.
I was furious, though at the time I wouldn’t have called it
that. It felt more like being cornered, as if something ordinary in my life had
suddenly been made into a flaw I was expected to defend. I sat there and looked
back over the table at the men and quietly responded along the lines of: both
my parents loved me and I loved them; the fact that they no longer loved each
other was beyond my control. Even as I said it, I knew I was pushing back
against more than just a question; I was pushing back against an assumption
about where I belonged.
This was my last interview for the night. I was tired, and
so were they. It can’t have been easy, so many interviews in a row after work.
I remember standing up and saying I didn’t have a problem; they had a problem, and
I left. Was it that dramatic? I don’t know, but that is the way I remember it.
Memory, like newsprint, has a way of sharpening some edges and softening
others.
Mum was waiting outside in her beat-up car. There wasn’t
much to tell her. I couldn’t say that I had walked out, after all, she had taken
the time to drive me back and forth without too much complaint.
I was in bed, tired after the adrenaline rush. The phone
rang. It was in the days before mobile phones; the landline sat in the hallway
just outside the bedrooms, no privacy if you were trying to keep things from
those inside.
Then Mum screamed and started jumping up and down, calling
my name. It was midnight. What the hell was going on? The chaos was only just
beginning to ramp up.
“You won!”
I was bewildered. It was midnight. What does a
seventeen-year-old win at midnight? A Rotary exchange, apparently.
“Get dressed, you need to go to the dentist.”
Nothing was making sense. It was dark outside. It was
midnight.
It turned out that the club was running late with their
application; they were pulling out all the stops as they finalised everything
that had to be done. One of the Rotarians—a dentist, and quite possibly one of
the men who had interviewed me—opened his surgery so they could tick off the
requirement that the proposed applicant be up to date with dental work. It was
my first glimpse of how quickly things could be set in motion once a decision
had been made. Mum had also just been told she would need to contribute $1,000
towards my travel—no small amount, and not one she was sure she could manage.
That would be worked out later. For now, at least, the dental work was taken
care of.
The next month or so was a blur. I underwent all sorts of
medical tests, filled out endless paperwork, got recommendations from teachers,
and attended a weekend with other students preparing to be sent
overseas—training on what to do and not do, how to behave, how to represent
something larger than yourself.
I gave two talks at Rotary Club meetings, standing behind a
dais while members ate their meals. Friends wanted to know how I felt about
missing a year of school and whether it might affect my future, whether I would
fall behind. There was an unspoken question beneath it all: whether this
opportunity was worth the risk for someone like me.
And all that happened before I got on a plane to go and live
on the island of Mindanao—something I only later understood was, at the time, a
war zone.
We knew so little about where I was going and what it would
be like.
Mum complained when I got back to Australia the following
year that I hadn’t written home much. But what was I going to say? I didn’t
want to worry her. I wasn’t going to tell her about the high brick walls with
broken glass embedded along the top, about the cinema that was bombed shortly
after my Filipino classmates and I left, or how I almost got a man shot by
yelling out after he snatched my handbag. I didn’t tell her how, when I played
on the university basketball team, the audience would stamp their feet and yell
“import, import,” assuming I was being paid to play.
None of that appears in the newspaper clipping. Nor does the
uncertainty, the anger, or the quiet determination that sat alongside it all.
Those are the parts that have stayed with me, long after the
details have blurred. Not just the experience itself, but the realisation that
the official version—the tidy, confident paragraph—can only ever tell part of
the story. The rest sits elsewhere: in memory, in moments of resistance, and in
all the things that never quite make it into print.
It’s a year I will never forget—not because of where I went,
but because of what I learned about how stories are told, and how much they
leave out.