Whispered voices in the hallways of her childhood. A hastily packed suitcase. A masquerade ball that ends abruptly. A mother who will not reveal her past. A daughter's search for the truth.

 

When Bettina Mendl arrived in Sydney in 1939 from Vienna she was on the run. In her homeland of Austria she was wanted by Hitler's SS, and in Australia she was classified an enemy alien. Fearing internment, Bettina fled the city for the vast open spaces of the Australian outback.

Coming soon - Bequest

Some excerpts from A Story Dreamt Long Ago.

Excerpt 1

I came upon her lying quietly, like a shadow, already disappearing into a fold in the earth. I squatted down beside her to stroke her face and look into her soft brown eyes. She nickered - was it out of habit? Or was there something she wanted me to understand. I wanted her to know that what I was about to do was done with love, with deep respect and was a difficult thank-you for the years of service.

Then I realised that I had no idea how to aim and fire a gun.

My father's fear had kept me well away.

Excerpt 2

I groped for clarity as the heat numbed my mind.

I reached for one more piece of paper. There was a single fold across the middle of the page, which had no letterhead and held just two typed lines: "Madame the enclosed documents set out the details you requested", and a signature. It was a name I recognised. - Eduard Schulthess. Yes! I had met him once, when I was fourteen, in Zurich, at the bank. He had been introduced to me as the manager of my mother's accounts. The enclosure he referred to must be somewhere within the mound of papers before me… I was stunned by my sudden recognition of his name on that bland piece of paper, but it seemed impossible that I would be able to find and recognise the enclosure.

Excerpt 3

The next day we shopped for shoes. Bettina and I shared a shoe fetish. We both loved to be either barefoot or luxuriating in the most elegant of shoes. Appropriately, long before I'd owned a pair of 'town shoes', one of the first poems I'd learnt at Tarpoly school was:
     'New shoes, new shoes -
      red and pink and blue shoes.
      Tell me, which would you choose -
      If they let us buy?'

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