March 30, 1975 was not only Easter Sunday, but was a day that would resonate with two people for more than 50 years.
On that Easter Sunday an American teenager wrote a letter to an Australian girl. Forward 50 years and they remain close through email and regular Zoom calls.
I was 16 at the time, was growing up in Hazelton and am now retired and living in Carpio. Judy Bridge was 15 and was growing up in Warwick, Queensland. She is now retired and living in Melbourne.
The teenagers connected through a homemaker’s magazine called Women’s Household that was published in Seabrook, N.H. The magazine had a section called “Teensville,” to which Judy submitted her bio along with a photo of her and her Afghan hound.
I answered Judy’s request and we continue to stay in contact to this day. The pen pal connection started with traditional letters, later went to cassette tapes, then phone calls, emails and finally Zoom calls.
In a March 16 Zoom call, Judy read the original letter that I had sent to her. In that letter, I described hobbies, school, the baseball team, a job I had with the city and a disgusting blizzard that had just passed. Judy’s passion at the time was in training her dog.
Over the years we discussed just about any subject you can imagine, including sports, family, community and friends, as well as many of the things unique to Australia.
After Judy married Geoff Fell, who spent a career in the Royal Australian Air Force, she continued to follow my path through college and through my career as a journalist. Judy spent a number of years working for Weight Watchers and often talked about the ebbs and floes of her job.
In her spare time, she knitted a lot and made clothes for joeys (baby kangaroos) that were abandoned after devastating fires that spread through southeastern Australia.
In August 1993, we met in person in Medowie, Queensland. Following a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, I spent three weeks with Judy, Geoff and their son Charles, who was 7 years old at the time.
The Fells rolled out the red carpet and became tour guides. Before I left North Dakota, Judy asked what I would most like to see while in Australia. Kangaroos in the wild was the answer.
Geoff delivered and we saw a mob of kangaroos in a rural area of Queensland. We later went to a zoo where we saw numerous kangaroos sunning themselves.
I was asked to speak to Charles’ class about North Dakota and the United States. Before I did, however, I presented the class with a North Dakota flag and the students sang Advance Australia Fair for their guest, which is the Australian National Anthem.
We visited, traveled, met friends, toured the city of Brisbane, attended an Australian Rules Football game and looked at and talked about the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere.
Also during our travel, we visited the city of Grafton, a community of 17,000 northeast of Sydney that is sometimes called the Jacaranda City. It was something I wanted to do because I had friends in Grafton, North Dakota. While there, I mailed a postcard from Grafton to Grafton, as one of those quirky things people do sometimes.
And now that 50 years have passed, we are talking about a reunion on Australian soil. This time the trip would most likely be three months, rather than three weeks because there is so much to see and do. The culture of Melbourne, the Sydney Opera House, Ayers Rock, known now as Uluru, sprawling ranches in South Australia, the city of Adelaide and yes, rural Australia.
But there is another element here that didn’t exist in 1993, other friends in Australia, as well as New Zealand. One of them is a New Zealand woman who spent time in North Dakota. She embraced the nickname “Kiwi Kate,” the 17 years she lived here. She now lives in a suburb of Auckland and operates a hotel there.
The hope is that all of us can get together, along with other mutual friends Tom and Linda D’Aquino, who live in a Melbourne suburb called Balliang East. Tom is a musician who writes his own music. We were introduced because of our mutual desire for writing.
