Maria Spackman Exposed: I am Your Girl Reporter

Sally Baxter, Girl Reporter is a fictional character whose persona I adopted when I had the bright idea five years ago of starting a blog. My name is Maria Spackman and it’s time to come out from behind the curtain and say g’day.

Your humble Girl Reporter created the blog with no greater intention than to have a go. I wondered how far I could take it on a budget of no money and minimal time [Answer: Quite far, actually].

The online persona was all the rage in 2012 and the question of my identity irrelevant. So off I went, setting up a free blog and associated Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Content was the key, of course, and a need to come up with some was the reason I turned down Memory Lane a few months into my blogging journey and unearthed a funny little story about my dad, Jack Spackman and the time he explained cricket to Hunter S. Thompson.

It made his granddaughters laugh. They knew Sally’s secret identity and that was sufficient. They were also mightily impressed with their degrees of separation from Thompson and it was a delight to update it with Dad’s true name:

When Spackman beat Gonzo in a gentlemen’s sporting bet 

The Big Baxter, as I called Dad in those early posts – most of them since updated, to give the Old Man his proper due – was soon in danger of becoming a figure of fun.

As I began to redress the balance with some of the undoubtedly important things he did for journalism in Hong Kong, his fictionalised identity was adding insult to unintended injury.

I felt this most keenly as the telling of the China Mail story progressed and it was in March this year, as I neared that storyline’s conclusion, when I took to referring to Dad and the rest of our family by their true names.

After the siege: China Mail job hunt tough for some

The notable exception of Your Girl Reporter was now glaring. I floated the idea with a few people of losing the Baxter identity altogether. To a person they responded with, “But I LOVE Sally!” And they were speaking as friends. It was an excuse to leave the decision for another day. After months of uneasy compromise, the day’s arrived.

I’m a former journalist with experience in Hong Kong and Britain, now earning my crust in sunny Brisbane, Australia in media relations. In my spare time, I’m Your Girl Reporter, covering the past, present and future of journalism and anything else that takes my fancy. It’s mostly fun.

Regular viewers – and I’m overwhelmed by the number of you who stick with me on my whimsical path – will know that Your Girl Reporter strives to serve up a varied menu of solid, medium-sized reads. Think of me as part of your in-flight entertainment, with something to suit a wide range of tastes and appetites.

I imagine you, Reader, as someone who is looking to fill in an idle few minutes. To that end, each post is written to stand on its own, something you can read on your way to work. At the same time, they thread together, bound by a number of narratives which separate and come together to form a longer, more in-depth read.

Each year I’ve strived to add a new section. Last year I introduced my clumsy Adventures in Gardening. And each year I’ve filed fortnightly contributions in a regular rotation to each one.

There is music at Radio Baxter, my Observations on journalism, politics and social issues, even a little bit of culture in the Art and Literature tab. And of course there are the Spackman Files stories, as well as the ongoing Adventures of a Girl Reporter.

This year was different, with most of my attention turned to a narrower theme.

For the first time I had deadlines. And I was falling behind in my narrative, just when the intertwining threads of our family story and Hong Kong’s history were knotting together in a number of places.

The self-imposed restrictions of my blogging routine demanded the story be broken up into 1000-1500 word chunks, each of which could stand alone. And there was still much to tell.

The 50^th anniversary of my family’s arrival in Hong Kong on board the SS Chusan fell in February. In May 1967, just months later, the Summer of Discontent began with a wave of violence.

Hong Kong 1967: So you say you want a revolution

In between those two significant events I needed to introduce two women who travelled with us on the Chusan all those many years ago. The first was my grandmother, Doris Estelle Spackman, and the second was my Extraordinary Aunt, Joan Byrne, whose own story forms this year’s new section.

It was a delight to recall Grandma, Jack’s mother, and her indomitable spirit, as well as my first memories of the place I still call home, in Your Girl Reporter’s personal favourite of the year:

Hong Kong 1967: Snapshots of my grandmother

Joan, my father’s cousin and my honorary aunty, was on her own journey and so far we’ve followed her through Asia, Cold War Europe and finally to London.

My Extraordinary Aunt

Joan’s recollections of Hong Kong in the 1960s, where she taught English to kids from all walks of life, including its very poorest, provided an important social context to the events of 1967, and I was proud to include them in two posts:

My Extraordinary Aunt: In the shadow of Lion Rock

My Extraordinary Aunt: College Days in 1960s Hong Kong

As befits an extraordinary woman, her story grew and there is still more to tell. Joan has also provided an opportunity to explore my father’s childhood, in search of what inspired an orphan boy growing up in poverty to leave Australia for first, Hong Kong and then, San Francisco, travelling light as his fancy took him each time.

Jack and his three brothers had spent most of their early summers at the Byrne place. Their mother’s sister was Joan’s mum and Dad spoke often to me of Uncle Bill and Aunty May, and ‘Father’ – the name the Byrne kids gave to their grandfather William, known to everyone else as WJ.

Joan’s generosity has helped me make a good start on the Australian chapter of the family story. It was a pleasure to introduce her father and her grandfather this year.

Dad’s childhood spent clinging to the sheep’s back

My Extraordinary Aunt: London and a promise kept

On 1 July there was another milestone – the 20^th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. This was the hardest date of all to mark in the calendar, as it had followed so close on the heels of the death, in June 1997, of my sister Alin. I recalled them both, in the most difficult post of the year.

Absent from duty for the 1997 Hong Kong handover

Another rich seam for the blog opened up with the arrival from California of the first part of the Spackman Files: a vast collection of photographs, letters and newspaper cuttings carefully preserved by my stepmother Liu Ling.

It was clearly a year to focus on family matters. My father’s account of an evening with Chris Patten just a few years before the handover formed the basis of:

A pressing date for Hong Kong’s last governor

Dad’s personal reflection on the role of journalism in helping to raise awareness of prostate cancer was an unexpected gemstone in a rather unpromising pot of poo, and his message is one for every month of the year:

A Movember motion to get yourselves checked lads

And an old magazine feature which turned up among the Spackman Files prompted another of my personal favourites of the year, recounting your 4-year-old Girl Reporter’s first job – as Assistant Tongs Operator in my father’s home darkroom:

Dodging rats in the dark for photographic magic

With all that going on, there was barely room in the schedule for anything else. I managed to file just one Observation, my now regular Lunar New Year forecast of Australian politics, inspired by Chinese astrology. You’re welcome.

All the cocks a’crowing, each on their own dunghill

The trouble with opinions of course is that everyone’s got one. I will return to my Observations in 2018 but they will remain occasional – you don’t need my running commentary on every issue of the day. It’s safe to assume I’m generally appalled.

I will however preserve my Lunar New Year tradition, with my political predictions for the Year of the Dog due in February 2018.

Next year there are fewer deadlines and I look forward to returning to a more varied menu. There’s one more filing to come from Your Girl Reporter – a festive offering due on Christmas Eve – and then I’ll be taking a summer break.

‘Sally Baxter’ will fade gradually over time, but her inspiration won’t. Your Girl Reporter will continue filing, with more to come in 2018 from my Extraordinary Aunt, more from the Spackman Files, and more Adventures of Your Girl Reporter – past, present and future. Join me. It’ll be fun.

© Maria Spackman 2017