Recollections of an Indian Official 1928-1949 (ePub)

Alexandra was born to Roger and Margaret Bell at the Vellore Hospital in India on 16 March 1947, just months before Independence. She fondly remembers her Indian ayah, Mariam Thomas of Travancore who was with the family until their move to Australia in November 1952. Alex recalls travelling with her parents on Indian trains to return Mariam to the arms of her family and visiting the Casey family in Sambalpur where she caught malaria.
After leaving India at the age of 18 months, Alexandra (Alex) had an exciting early childhood in Brunei and recalls cruising on rivers in the government launch Juanita, encountering Dayaks at the villages on the way. There was a period in Singapore before the family enthusiastically made the adjustment to a Tasmanian semi-rural lifestyle without servants. The family went to England for 15 months when Alex was 9 and she attended a school in Wimbledon for this time. In 1959, the year after returning to Tasmania, Alex was heartbroken to lose her adored father.
Alex had always known of the existence of her father’s memoirs, but the task of transcribing his handwriting, particularly with difficult Indian names and words was daunting. When she tentatively asked her daughter Mae what she thought about tackling it the enthusiasm of Mae’s response was immensely encouraging.
Mae Tanner was born in 1982 while her parents were living in Tullah, Tasmania and was educated in Hobart until she won a national scholarship to ANU (Australian National University). Mae achieved First Class Honours in Law. She has worked as a lawyer in Samoa and Myanmar (Burma) following the family tendency to independently explore far horizons. She has expressed enormous interest in the reminiscences of a grandfather she never met and applied herself to the task with great diligence.

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