Three Photographs of Rita Williamson and the Methodist Home Front
This article is part of an ongoing series treating the
photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not simply
illustrations of family stories, but historical evidence capable of testing,
confirming, and sometimes overturning those stories altogether.
What Ivy Wrote on the Back Changed Everything
This is the first in an occasional series treating the
photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not illustrations of
what the family believed, but evidence that can test, confirm, or overturn
those beliefs.
Photograph 1
[T030]
For as long as anyone in the family could remember, this
photograph was labelled "Ivy and Lincoln Todman." The young woman, we
were told, was Ivy Florence Todman. The child beside her was her younger
brother Lincoln James. It seemed straightforward enough — one of those quiet
certainties that get passed down through family collections without anyone
thinking to question them.
Then someone turned the photograph over.
THE INSCRIPTION
On the back of this portrait, written in a careful hand, are
these words:
"To Mrs Bell, Wishing you
a Happy New Year from Ivy Todman. 27/12/1910."
Ivy sent this photograph herself. She signed it herself. She
dated it herself — 27 December 1910, sent as a New Year's card to a family
friend named Mrs Bell.
That date of 27 December 1910 is not a family estimate or a
best guess. It is a fact, written by the subject of the photograph, at the time
she sent it. That single fact forces us to re-examine the identification of the
second child completely.
THE ARITHMETIC PROBLEM
Lincoln James Todman was born on 20 July 1906.
On 27 December 1910, the day Ivy signed and sent this card, Lincoln
was four years and five months old.
Now look again at that child. Really look.
That is not a four-year-old. That is a composed, upright,
school-age child of seven or eight — a child who can hold a studio pose, who
sits with the stillness that only comes a few years into childhood. A
four-and-a-half-year-old has a rounder face, shorter legs, and a different quality
of presence altogether. We have a photograph of Lincoln at nine months old — a
baby held in his mother's arms.
Photograph 2
Lincoln Todman, aged nine months, May 1907, with his mother Martha and sister
Hazel.[T089]
Eighteen months after this photograph was taken, Lincoln
would have been two years old. Three years after it, he would have been four
and a half — the age he was when Ivy signed the card. He could not have looked
like the child in the previous photo. Not even close.
The Todman children — ages on 27 December 1910,
The date Ivy signed and sent photograph 1
|
Name |
Born |
Age on 27 Dec 1910 |
Fits child in Photograph 1? |
|
|
1 |
Martha[i] "Ruby" |
24 Dec
1894 |
16 years |
Adult —
confirmed absent |
|
2 |
Ivy Florence[ii] |
14 Sep
1895 |
15 years |
Confirmed by
inscription |
|
3 |
Walter Victor[iii] |
17 Oct
1897 |
13 years |
Too old,
wrong sex |
|
4 |
Hazel May[iv] |
14 May 1903 |
7 yrs 7 mths |
Fits appearance |
|
5 |
Lincoln James[v] |
20 Jul 1906 |
4 yrs 5 mths |
Too young by 3 years |
|
6 |
Charlotte
Mary[vi][vii] |
16 Aug
1908 |
d. 29 Dec
1908 |
Deceased |
|
7 |
Alma Dudley[viii] |
5 Jan 1910 |
11 months |
Infant — too
young |
THE CLOTHING CLUE
Here is where it gets interesting — because even if you set
aside the arithmetic, the clothing tells its own story.
Look at the child in the first photograph. That child is
wearing a girl's lace-trimmed dress at the collar and cuffs. It is clearly, by
any reading of the period's conventions, a girl's garment.
Now look at this.
Photograph 3 Walter
Victor Todman, aged approximately three to four years, already dressed in a
boy's striped jacket, bow tie, and trousers. [T057]
This is Walter Victor Todman — Lincoln's older brother — at
approximately three or four years of age. He is wearing a striped boy's jacket,
a dark bow tie, and trousers. Proper boy's clothes, at an age younger than
Lincoln was when Ivy sent the card.
Victorian and Edwardian families moved their sons from
dress-like garments into trousers at around four to six years of age; a
transition known as "breeching." The Todman family had already done
it with Walter Victor before he was four. There is simply no world in which the
same family would still have Lincoln in a lace-trimmed dress at four and a
half. The pattern was already set. The older brother had already shown the way.
SO WHO IS IT?
If not Lincoln — then who is the child? Meet Hazel.
Photograph 4 Hazel
May Todman, aged two years and nine months, photographed February 1906. [T037]
Hazel May Todman was born on 14 May 1903, the fourth child
of Walter and Martha Todman. She is known to us from photographs taken when she
was two years and nine months old, and again at four years old.
On 27 December 1910, the day Ivy sent the card to Mrs Bell, Hazel
was seven and a half years old.
Seven and a half. The child beside Ivy is seven or eight.
The dark dress with white lace trim is exactly what a Todman girl wore for a
studio portrait — we have seen it across the entire family collection, that
consistent thread of white lace at the collar marking every special occasion.
The composed, direct expression is entirely consistent with what we see from
Hazel in her other portraits.
Every piece of evidence points the same way. The child is
Hazel, not Lincoln.
WHY DID THE MISTAKE HAPPEN?
This is worth understanding — because it was an entirely
reasonable mistake to make.
Photograph 5 Martha
"Ruby" and Ivy Florence Todman as infants, c. 1896–1897, Yeoman &
Co., Prahran. Ruby is the standing child; Ivy is seated. [T028]
This is Ruby and Ivy as toddlers — photographed at the same
Prahran studio more than a decade earlier, each wearing a large detachable lace
collar that their mother had brought for the occasion. The family made a habit
of dressing their children in their finest for the camera, and that habit never
changed.
Now look at them again, ten years on.
Photograph 63 Martha
"Ruby," Walter Victor, and Ivy Florence Todman, c. 1907. Ruby is on
the left, Walter Victor centre, Ivy on the right. [T055]
The same dark eyes on Ivy. The same defined features on
Ruby. And both girls still wearing elaborate lace collars for the studio, whether
the same treasured pieces or simply the same family tradition, the impulse is
identical. Walter Victor, fair-haired between his sisters, is in a proper boy's
suit and collar — exactly as you would expect a boy of nine or ten to be
dressed in 1907. This is what the Todman children looked like. And the child in
photograph 1 — in a girl's lace-trimmed dress, at seven years old — is dressed
nothing like a boy in this family.
Somewhere down the generations, someone looked at this
portrait, knew it was Ivy, and reached for the most logical candidate for the
child beside her. Ivy and Lincoln were often grouped together in family memory.
Lincoln, when photographed a few years later, had dark hair, a round face, and
the same serious Todman expression — features he shared with the child in Photograph
1, because they were siblings and family resemblance is real.
Photograph 7 Lincoln Todman, aged approximately five to
eight years, with his mother, Martha. [T091]
You can see how the confusion arose. But there is a crucial
difference: Lincoln in this photo is wearing a striped shirt and trousers. The
child in Photograph 1 is wearing a dress. And Lincoln in Photograph 6 is
several years older than Lincoln was when the card was sent.
The inscription on the back was either never noticed or
never understood to have dating consequences. It sat there for over a century,
quietly holding the answer.
WHAT IVY'S CARD TEACHES US
There is a lesson here that applies to every old photograph
in every family collection.
Always photograph both sides.
The front of a portrait shows you faces. The back tells you
who they were, when it was taken, and who they loved enough to send their
portrait to. Ivy Todman, at fifteen years old, chose to send this photograph of
herself and her younger sister to a family friend named Mrs Bell as a New
Year's gift. She signed it with her full name. She dated it precisely. She had
no idea that a century later her signature would resolve a family argument she
never knew was coming.
But it did. And she was right all along.
The photograph is Ivy Florence Todman, aged fifteen, and
Hazel May Todman, aged seven and a half. Prahran, Victoria. December 1910.
[i] Martha
Todman, birth registration 1801/1894, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[ii] Ivy Florence Todman, birth
registration 32737/1895, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry
of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified copy).
[iii] Walter
Victor Todman, birth registration 31247/1897, parents Walter Todman and Martha
Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified
copy).
[iv]
Hazel May Todman, birth registration 13749/1903, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[v] Lincoln
James Todman, birth registration 22199/1906, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[vi] Charlotte
Mary Todman, birth registration 22796/1908, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[vii] Charlotte
Mary Todman, death registration 15394/1908, parents Walter Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria,
Australia (certified copy).
[viii]
Alma Dudley Todman, birth
registration 6626/1909, parents Walter
Todman and Martha Ellis; Registry of
Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, Australia (certified copy).
Two Perth court cases reveal how Martha Ellis’s public character was constructed — and later used against her in colonial Western Australia.
This post is part of “Behind the Newsprint,” a series
that grew out of my April 2025 Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Now, instead of
single clippings, I group multiple historical newspaper items—many never before
examined—around one topic and weave them into a single narrative.
A New Beginning
When Martha Ellis arrived in Western Australia in October
1889, she was a young migrant hoping to begin again. Within eighteen months,
she would appear in court twice — once as a convicted defendant, and once as a
shadowy presence in a case that ended in acquittal.
Those two cases, heard less than a year apart, are linked
not only by timing but by the way Martha herself was constructed in the press.
Before she appeared in court records, however, she left behind another kind of
record.
A Portrait Before the Record
Before Martha Ellis became a name in courtroom testimony,
she sat for a formal studio portrait in Perth. The image shows a young woman
presented with care and composure: her dark hair arranged in the fashionable
high chignon of the 1890s, her high-necked bodice carefully fitted, her gaze
steady and direct. It is not the face of a woman who appears to have much money
to spare, but it is the face of someone who wanted to be seen properly.
Formal studio portrait of Martha Sarah Ellis, taken at J. Latimer’s Hay Street studio, Perth (c. 1890). [T059]
This small rectangle of card survives as a quiet artefact of
respectable colonial femininity in a city on the edge of a gold rush. It is
also a reminder that Martha was not only the woman described in court reports.
She was someone who chose how to appear and left behind a face that still
meets ours directly more than a century later.
That image sits in quiet tension with what followed.
The First Case
In May 1890, Martha Ellis, a young domestic servant, was
charged with assaulting another servant, Ellen Carey. She was charged alongside
Sarah Jackson and John Hayes. The three had gone to Carey’s home, where a
confrontation broke out. Newspapers described it as a “great disturbance,”
involving shouting, scuffling, and violence. Carey suffered a dislocated jaw.
Ellis and Jackson were found guilty and fined 40 shillings
each. The magistrate, Mr J. Cowan, remarked that he would have imposed
imprisonment if a “suitable institution” had existed.
But the legal result is only part of the story.
Reputation at Work
By March 1891, Isabella Miles, the former matron of the Colonial Hospital, was charged with larceny after hospital linen was found in her possession.
At first glance, this case seems to have nothing to do with Martha Ellis. But as the testimony unfolded, Ellis reappeared — not as a defendant, but as a problem. She had been working at the hospital since mid-1890, almost certainly still within the six-month probationary phase of a three-year programme she would never be given the chance to complete.
Witnesses spoke of conflict between Ellis and Miles. The matron had reportedly complained that Ellis struck her. Other nurses described constant disturbances. The earlier pattern of behaviour established in the 1890 assault case reappeared in a new setting.
This is where the story becomes more revealing.
Miles’s defence did not need to prove that Ellis had done anything specific. It only needed to suggest that she might have.
No direct evidence was required. Her reputation did the work. Miles was acquitted.
The Connecting Thread
Both cases were heard by Mr J. Cowan, who served as Acting
Police Magistrate or Police Magistrate during both trials.
In the first case, Martha was the defendant in the dock. Her
character was attacked, and the victim described her as a “bad character.” The
magistrate expressed regret that there was no “suitable institution” to
imprison Ellis and her co-defendant, and instead imposed a fine.
In the second case, Martha was no longer a defendant. By
then, she was working as a nurse at the Colonial Hospital under Matron Isabella
Miles. In Miles’s larceny trial, Ellis’s history of disturbances and personal
conflict became part of the defence’s strategy. The conviction in the 1890 case
weakened her credibility in the 1891 case. Because she had already been
publicly marked as a “bad character,” Miles’s lawyer, Mr Parker, could argue
that Ellis might have planted the hospital linen in the matron’s boxes out of
revenge.
That suggestion relied on the fact that Ellis and Miles were
“never on good terms,” and that the matron was “constantly making complaints”
against her. House Surgeon Arthur Edward Sloman testified that Miles had
complained about Ellis striking her, echoing the physical violence Ellis had
been convicted of in the Ellen Carey case.
A Timeline of Events.
1889
1890
1891
·
January 26, 1891: Martha’s sister, Kate,
gets married in Fremantle.[xi]
What the Newspapers Leave Out
What the newspapers do not tell us is whether Martha Ellis
ever knew she had been used.
In the 1891 trial, Ellis’s name was spoken in a courtroom
she may not even have attended. The newspapers do not list her among those
present. House Surgeon Arthur Edward Sloman, Nurse Catherine Garn, Detective
Gurney, and Nurse Catherine Lapsley are named, but not Martha herself. Instead,
she appears only in the third person: “the nurse Martha Ellis,” “the girl
Ellis.”
Without taking the stand and without any charge against her,
Martha became part of the defence’s argument. Her absence, combined with her
history of conflict, allowed the lawyer to suggest that she might have planted
the linen out of revenge.
Her earlier conviction was treated as proof of a violent
character. Her disagreements with the matron were recast as possible evidence
of sabotage. In effect, she became a ghost witness for the defence.
Closing Reflection
The matron walked free. Martha had already been dismissed
from the hospital. By early 1892, she had left Western Australia entirely,
later marrying Walter Todman in Victoria.
Did she leave because her reputation had made life in Perth
impossible? The record is silent. But the record does show this: once a
person’s character was branded “bad” in the newspapers, that label could be
used by others in ways the subject never controlled.
Martha Ellis did not simply pass through two court cases.
She became the connective tissue between them — whether she wanted to or not.
She may never have become a household scandal, but the
record suggests that her reputation was damaged in a very practical way. A
prior conviction and a reputation for conflict were enough to make her name
useful in court, and once that happened, she lost control over the story others
told about her. In that sense, the harm was real even if it was not loudly
recorded. It is possible that the reputational damage attached to Martha Ellis
in Perth helped push her toward Victoria, though the surviving record does not
prove this.
Martha’s reputation probably did not make work or marriage
impossible, but it may well have made both harder. In a society where a woman’s
character shaped how others judged her, a conviction and a public reputation
for conflict could reduce opportunity, limit trust, and make a fresh start more
appealing.
And yet, set against the surviving portrait, that later
reputation does not quite settle into place.
This post is also part of Sepia Saturday 825 : Portraits,
9th May 2026. Click here to
see how others are sharing their history through photographs.
For those
interested in learning more about Martha Ellis, or Catherine Elizabeth Lapsley see their profiles on WikiTree.
A NURSE'S DAY IN HOSPITAL. (1888, June 16). Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954), p. 7. Retrieved May 8, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32711964 [Explanation: The article describes the standard three-year training model of the period, including a six-month probationary phase; the inference that Martha's tenure placed her within this phase is the author's own.]
Sources:
[i] CHARGES
AGAINST THE LATE MATRON OF THE COLONIAL HOSPITAL. (1891, March 7). Western Mail
(Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954), p. 9. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33064465
[ii] Shipping
Records for the 'Nairnshire', Page 3 Passenger listing, 8 Oct 1889; Passenger
and Crew Lists (State Records Office, Western Australia. [Copy of the original
record provided via email by Tom Reynolds from the State Records Office of
Western Australia on 8 February 2013
[iii] NEWS
AND NOTES. (1890, May 20). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), p. 3.
Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3134319
[iv] TO-DAYS
CITY POLICE NEWS, (1890, May 21). The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA :
1855 - 1901), p. 2. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66930962
[v] ASSAULT
ON A SERVANT GIRL. (1890, May 24). Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954), p.
3. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32731935
[vi] ASSAULT
ON A SERVANT GIRL. (1890, May 20). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 -
1954), p. 3. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3134312
[vii] TO-DAYS
CITY POLICE NEWS, (1890, May 21). The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA :
1855 - 1901), p. 2. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66930962
[viii]
NEWS AND NOTES. (1890, May 20). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954),
p. 3. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3134319
[ix] All
subsequent references to the Matron's trial in this timeline are from: CHARGES
AGAINST THE LATE MATRON OF THE COLONIAL HOSPITAL. (1891, March 7). Western Mail
(Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954), p. 9. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33064465
[x] CHARGES
AGAINST THE LATE MATRON OF THE COLONIAL HOSPITAL. (1891, March 7). Western Mail
(Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954), p. 9. Retrieved May 5, 2026, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33064465
A fifth birthday, a missing family, and what one photograph can prove
This is the first in an occasional series treating the
photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not illustrations of
what the family believed, but evidence that can test, confirm, or overturn
those beliefs
On a dairy farm outside Camperdown, in Victoria’s Western
District, on the evening of 19 May 1949, a half-sister named Judith, eleven
years older, set a table for five and baked a birthday cake because she had
remembered what everyone else had forgotten—or set aside: that her
five-year-old half-sister, Diana, was turning five that day.
The rest of the family—mother, father, half-brother—were
somewhere in town, at some meeting, the details now lost. They did not come.
Photograph: Diana’s
5th birthday. Judith made the cake. 19 May 1949, Camperdown, Victoria,
Australia. [T382]
So, Judith put a paper crown on Diana’s head, stood her
behind the table with its five glasses, its single-layer cake, and its five
candles, and stepped back far enough to get all of it into the frame. Far
enough to make sure the record showed what had been prepared, and for whom, and
that it had not gone to waste.
Diana smiled.
Judith pressed the shutter.
The photograph has survived more than seven decades. The
five glasses are still on the table, still waiting.
Reflection:
Most photographs from this era that have survived in
archives and collections are the ones that were considered worth keeping
because they were good photographs: sharp, well-composed,
formally significant.
This one survived for a different reason. Judith had kept
the photo, pasted into her photograph album. it brought back memories. The
image meant something to her; it was not just a composition but a story, and she
kept it accordingly.
That is a different, and arguably rarer, kind of value.
Technical perfection is reproducible. This moment—this
specific table, this specific child, this specific act of care by one sister
for another on a winter evening in Camperdown—is not.
The blur is the price of admission to something real. It is
a very small price.
The story it carries - a half-sister's love, a table set for
people who didn't come, a five-year-old smiling anyway - is not diminished by a
single pixel of blur. That story is fully present.
In fact, the photograph’s imperfections may tell us more
than a perfect image could. A professional portrait tells you about the
photographer. This photograph tells you about Judith.
She was eleven years older than Diana, but not someone
usually expected to manage the household or care for younger children. Which
makes what we see here feel less like routine and more like a choice.
A sharper image of this scene might feel like evidence: clean,
legible, complete. This one feels like memory: the way moments are actually
held, soft at the edges, with feeling more durable than detail.
The blur is also honest. This was not a staged occasion. It
was a young woman moving quickly, working in low light, on a farm, with
whatever camera the family owned. The imperfection is not a flaw—it is a record
of the conditions under which the photograph was made.
And in that sense, it is evidence—not just of a birthday,
but of who showed up, who did not, and who made sure the moment was recorded
anyway
It also does something quieter, but just as important.
Family memory preserved the event. The photograph fixes its date. Diana was
born on 19 May 1944; she is five here. That places this scene, with reasonable
certainty, on 19 May 1949.
This post is part of SEPIA SATURDAY 824: Celebration, 2nd May 2026. Click here to see how others are sharing their history through
photographs.
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.”
 |
| 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.
