The day my mother was buried was the day I realised I never really knew her at all. Thousands of people packed into a traditional funeral service to pay their respects at St Brigid’s Catholic Church, a red-bricked fortress perched on a hill overlooking Brisbane.
For her wake, we moved on to a large city pub where alcohol, nostalgia and stories began to fl ow. It was here I stood watching a slide show my best friend had made of my mum’s life: Her as a little girl, laughing with friends and with our family in the early years. But then a photo I’d never seen before flashed up on the screen. There she was as a teenager, a wedding ring on her finger, a new baby in her arms and a young man standing awkwardly next to her, his hand across her back. It looked like a family portrait.
Bewildered, I leaned over to my friend who put the slide show together and asked her who was in the photo.
“That’s your mum,” she smiled, “with your dad, and you as a baby.”
“No,” I replied, “that’s not my dad, and that’s not me.”
The photo was time stamped August 1973, almost 13 years before I was born. Mum would have been 17. Who was this man? Who was this baby?
My quest to find the truth began. Today I’m 36, and I am a breakfast newsreader for Southern Cross Austereo in Brisbane. Journalism runs in my family. In his 50-year career, my dad, Mark Oberhardt, was well known as a radio presenter and sports and racing writer for Brisbane's newspapers. While my mum, Cecelia, was the glamorous socials editor for The Courier-Mail during the golden years of newspapers in the 1990s.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2023 من Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2023 من Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
PRETTY WOMAN
Dial up the joy with a mood-boosting self-care session done in the privacy of your own home. It’s a blissful way to banish the winter blues.
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
The unseen Rovals
Candid, behind the scenes and neverbefore-seen images of the royal family have been released for a new exhibition.
Great read
In novels and life - there's power in the words left unsaid.
Winter dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of budget-concious recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the cold weather blues away.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE
Auckland author Sacha Jones reveals how dancing led her to develop an eating disorder and why she's now on a mission to educate other women.
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START
Responsible for keeping the likes of Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis in shape, Malin Svensson is on a mission to motivate those in midlife to move more.
