The moment I saw an old photo of my mum cradling a baby next to a young man with his arm around her, I realised I never really knew her at all.
It was the day of mum’s funeral and the photo was part of a slide show at her wake at a pub in Brisbane.
The picture looked like a family portrait: mum was wearing a wedding ring.
Problem was the young man standing next to her wasn’t my dad and the baby wasn’t me.
I had no idea who they were. It felt like the foundations of my own family story were falling from under my feet.
The photo was timestamped 1973. Mum would have been just 17.
Who was the young man? Who was the baby? And why did mum take this secret chapter of her life to her grave?
Shaken but determined to get answers, I embarked on a 12-year quest to find out.
Mum grew up in a strict Catholic family, where girls were modest, women were housewives, men were in charge – and sex before marriage was forbidden.
But as a teenager, mum was extroverted, vivacious and yearning to travel the world.
She also fell in love with a young man. Despite the watchful eye of her family, their relationship turned sexual and she fell pregnant.
I questioned family, friends and people from mum’s past for more details. Turns out this is the young man in the photo.
My dad confessed he did know about mum’s first marriage and told me the young man’s name was Michael Davies. He assumed the baby was theirs but didn’t know for sure.
Mum had never wanted to talk about it. Back then, dad said, you didn’t probe.
While she kept her past hidden, mum was well known as the glamorous socials writer for Queensland’s the Courier Mail newspaper in the 1990s.
She was the equivalent of a top influencer of her day – invited to all the most exclusive parties, gifted luxury products and wooed by celebrities.
But alcohol was her poison. Originally, having a glass of champagne in hand was just part of her job as she mingled at parties and entertained at home when my brother and I were young.
Later, it spiralled into addiction. Maybe it was stress, family breakdown or even a genetic predisposition. Or perhaps she was haunted by a traumatic chapter in her past.
My relationship with mum was always tumultuous. As an adult, I tried to get to know her better but if I ever asked about her past, she’d fly off the handle.
Alcohol dependency is heartbreaking. In her final years, mum was a shadow of her former self and battling various health complications.
She died in hospital at the age of 56.
Now with children of my own, I realised I needed to find out more so I could resolve my own issues with her and be the mum I wanted to be.
I needed to find the young man in the photo.
There are a lot of M Davies in the White Pages. I couldn’t find him on Google, Facebook, Instagram nor LinkedIn. Nobody had any other clues.
Meanwhile, I speculated about the photo with anyone who’d listen. What shocked me was that everyone would say they knew someone with a similar story.
By then I’d decided to make a podcast about my journey, which would take me deep into a dark era for women in 1970s Australia, when contraception and abortion were inaccessible and unwed mothers were forced to give away their babies.
I thought we’d hit a roadblock on mum’s story but then my producer called to say she’d located the correct Michael Davies – and he was living in Cairns.
We flew out to meet him. Michael, a warm, laid-back and kind middle-aged man, confirmed he was the young man in the picture.
He remembers mum as a loving, fun and adventurous young woman. “We were just young and in love and yeah, it was cool,” he said.
Michael explained mum had a sudden miscarriage just before their hastily planned wedding.
They went ahead with it because of family expectation. However the young marriage didn’t last and they ended up getting divorced, another stigma for mum’s family.
So who was the baby in the photo?
Michael said it was a young relative from his side of the family.
While the mystery was solved, I still wonder about the impact of this era on mum and how it shaped her life.
She died way too young and never got to see my brother and I get married, nor to meet any of her grandchildren.
I wish I could sit down with her and talk just one more time.
To hear Amelia’s full story, listen to her podcast Secrets We Keep: Shame, Lies and Family wherever you get your podcasts.
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