Fifield shows she must be regarded as the heiress-apparent to Margot Fonteyn,â reported the Manchester Guardian .
Yet Joanâs favourite ballerina would never reach the heights predicted for her. In âa catalogue of exceptional promise vandalised by impetuous choicesâ, after moving from Sadlerâs Wells to the Covent Garden company, Fifield became one of the five ballerinas immediately below Fonteyn â but when she wasnât invited on the companyâs Australian tour, she handed in her notice. Back in Australia in 1957, she joined the Borovansky Company, precursor to the Australian Ballet, but the Company dissolved within a few years.
âFeeling a failure as a dancer, wife and mother,â the obituary reported, Elaine made an impetuous choice when she met a friendly man called Les on Manly Beach. Les invited her to his coffee and rubber plantation in Papua New Guinea and Elaine accepted. She also accepted his marriage proposal. âAussie Girl Gives Up Fame for Love in Jungle,â the newspapers reported.
The house that Les had promised was primitive. âI had my first misgiving when my stiletto heel went through the floorboard,â Fifield wrote in her autobiography. They had two daughters but in time Fifield became seriously depressed. Then she made the most impetuous decision of all: she attempted suicide. Possibly Fifieldâs failure to kill herself helped her realise she had to return to dance. (Between 1964 and 1966 she was the principal artist with the Australian Ballet and danced with them until 1971, when she retired to live in Perth.)
Elaine Fifield was living in Papua New Guinea when Stow went to the Trobriand Islands in 1959 as a trainee anthropologist. While in Papua New Guinea Stow contracted malaria and had to be invalided back to Australia. Though another version says that he again became suicidal, like his doomed character Alistair Cawdor in Visitants , and â as he had been the first time â was discovered, one stormy night, just in time to be rescued.
These are unusual parallels: a sojourn in Papua New Guinea that ends in a suicide attempt; a child prodigy who doesnât fulfil his/her promise, an Australian artist with international recognition who has been forgotten on home soil. Stow was born in Western Australia; Fifield died in Western Australia â was there something in both of them that shied away from success? Is there something in the Australian character that feels uncomfortable with too much attention?
Shyness is one of those characteristics that is considered these days as a handicap. Being shy belongs to another era. Restraint, shyness, frugality; I wonder if these qualities, so characteristic of Stow and my mother, will ever find their way back into our culture.
11
Another letter arrived in response to âMy Mother and Mickâ, from a former colleague of my motherâs who had no connection with Stow at all.
I knew your mother Joan when we both nursed in the Bundaberg Hospital in 1950. I grew to know, and to like her very much, and we shared a holiday together at Heron Island before I returned to Victoria. We corresponded for some time when Joan was in Western Australia, and we then lost touch, but I never forgot her or ceased wondering what had happened to her.
Lorraine Bell (née Osborne)
This was the first Iâd ever heard of my mother going to Queensland, let alone working there!
On my next trip to Melbourne, I visited Lorraine and her husband in their modest, red brick house that had resisted renovation and updating since, it seemed, the mid-1940s. Over a small mountain of home-baked scones, Lorraine showed me the black-and-white photos from a holiday she and Joan had shared with a few other nursing colleagues on Heron Island, off the coast of Queensland, long before it was developed into a resort. The photos showed my mother, aged twenty-seven, with abundant, wavy, blond hair, wearing neat-fitting,
Yet Joanâs favourite ballerina would never reach the heights predicted for her. In âa catalogue of exceptional promise vandalised by impetuous choicesâ, after moving from Sadlerâs Wells to the Covent Garden company, Fifield became one of the five ballerinas immediately below Fonteyn â but when she wasnât invited on the companyâs Australian tour, she handed in her notice. Back in Australia in 1957, she joined the Borovansky Company, precursor to the Australian Ballet, but the Company dissolved within a few years.
âFeeling a failure as a dancer, wife and mother,â the obituary reported, Elaine made an impetuous choice when she met a friendly man called Les on Manly Beach. Les invited her to his coffee and rubber plantation in Papua New Guinea and Elaine accepted. She also accepted his marriage proposal. âAussie Girl Gives Up Fame for Love in Jungle,â the newspapers reported.
The house that Les had promised was primitive. âI had my first misgiving when my stiletto heel went through the floorboard,â Fifield wrote in her autobiography. They had two daughters but in time Fifield became seriously depressed. Then she made the most impetuous decision of all: she attempted suicide. Possibly Fifieldâs failure to kill herself helped her realise she had to return to dance. (Between 1964 and 1966 she was the principal artist with the Australian Ballet and danced with them until 1971, when she retired to live in Perth.)
Elaine Fifield was living in Papua New Guinea when Stow went to the Trobriand Islands in 1959 as a trainee anthropologist. While in Papua New Guinea Stow contracted malaria and had to be invalided back to Australia. Though another version says that he again became suicidal, like his doomed character Alistair Cawdor in Visitants , and â as he had been the first time â was discovered, one stormy night, just in time to be rescued.
These are unusual parallels: a sojourn in Papua New Guinea that ends in a suicide attempt; a child prodigy who doesnât fulfil his/her promise, an Australian artist with international recognition who has been forgotten on home soil. Stow was born in Western Australia; Fifield died in Western Australia â was there something in both of them that shied away from success? Is there something in the Australian character that feels uncomfortable with too much attention?
Shyness is one of those characteristics that is considered these days as a handicap. Being shy belongs to another era. Restraint, shyness, frugality; I wonder if these qualities, so characteristic of Stow and my mother, will ever find their way back into our culture.
11
Another letter arrived in response to âMy Mother and Mickâ, from a former colleague of my motherâs who had no connection with Stow at all.
I knew your mother Joan when we both nursed in the Bundaberg Hospital in 1950. I grew to know, and to like her very much, and we shared a holiday together at Heron Island before I returned to Victoria. We corresponded for some time when Joan was in Western Australia, and we then lost touch, but I never forgot her or ceased wondering what had happened to her.
Lorraine Bell (née Osborne)
This was the first Iâd ever heard of my mother going to Queensland, let alone working there!
On my next trip to Melbourne, I visited Lorraine and her husband in their modest, red brick house that had resisted renovation and updating since, it seemed, the mid-1940s. Over a small mountain of home-baked scones, Lorraine showed me the black-and-white photos from a holiday she and Joan had shared with a few other nursing colleagues on Heron Island, off the coast of Queensland, long before it was developed into a resort. The photos showed my mother, aged twenty-seven, with abundant, wavy, blond hair, wearing neat-fitting,
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