Mum's secret life

When a mystery photo appeared at her mother's funeral, Amelia Oberhardt embarked on a 12-year quest to fight through a veil of shame and find out the truth about her family's past

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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 flow. 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.