A word (or two) from Marc

Belle and I met in 1979 and we married in 1981. I can't remember exactly when Belle first told me that she had an identical twin sister who she had been separated from but I know I have always been very interested in finding Dorothy since I first knew of her existence.

After we went through all the official channels and got nowhere, Belle basically gave up all hope of ever finding her sister but I always sensed that there was something missing in her life and although she didn't say much about it, I felt that she needed to find her sister.

I knew that the best chance of locating Dorothy was the internet and every time I got the chance, I did a search for Dorothy. Nothing turned up until December 2007 but again that lead, although promising, led nowhere. It did give me hope that Dorothy was still alive and it also gave me a place to start searching as the email I found came from Selangor.

It was not until August 2008 that we finally had proof that Dorothy was living in Shah Alam and ABCTV helped by making the final contact on our behalf. I made a series of diary entries when we located Dorothy and they best explain what we went through at the time.

The diary entries are all listed below in order of date entry: (I have excluded the run of the mill diary entries and only left the comments relating to finding Dorothy here.)

August 1st 2008 (Friday)

Today turned out to be quite an emotional day for both of us. We went into town as usual and after filling up our water container we dropped into the local library and I started to search for the new information that we now knew was somewhere on the internet regarding Belle’s identical twin.

It didn’t take too long before I found the photograph of Dorothy that was in an article in a Malaysian newspaper (The Star) on the 19th of last month. (Just one day after our 27th wedding anniversary as it turns out).

It is difficult to put into words how I felt when I first looked at the photo of someone who looks just like Belle in every way but is in fact an entirely different person with a completely different life. Emotion overcame me and tears quickly welled into my eyes. Although this is one of the happiest moments of our lives there is also the very sad thought that these identical twins have been separated for almost 50 years! Why didn’t the two adoptive families at least stay in contact so the girls could have had some idea about each other’s lives? This is something I just can’t fathom, separating identical twins seems to me to be an awful thing to do.

I tried unsuccessfully to email the newspaper in Malaysia, but no matter what I tried the emails just kept on being rejected. To be this close to finally getting Belle and her sister re-united and not being able to send a simple email just about made me blow a gasket.

While we were shopping in Karratha I had the idea of going to the local ABC office to see if they could help and if they were interested in doing a story about the search and hopefully soon to be reunion.

I have to digress somewhat at this point to discuss our attempts to find Dorothy over the years.

Belle has known that Dorothy was ‘out there somewhere’ since about the age of seven but life goes on and nothing really happened until Belle got to the age of about 30. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t done anything about looking for Dorothy and we finally sat down and decided to spend some time and money conducting a search.

Belle and Dorothy were adopted by separate families with the adoption being finalised in August 1959 (according to records). Belle knew that she and Dorothy had attended kindergarten together but at the age of just 4, they had no idea they were identical twins.

Our search began when we contacted the authorities in Malaysia and obtained a copy of Belle’s and Dorothy’s birth and adoption certificates. We now knew that Dorothy’s surname was Loader and we had her adoptive parents names as well.

From there we contacted the Red Cross, Jigsaw and other agencies that are supposed to be able to assist but we got nowhere. Later we tried TV shows like Ray Martin, I even emailed Oprah I was that desperate, but the result was always the same.

With the advent of the internet we put messages up on adoption and people-search websites, but still we had no luck. We realised that by this time Dorothy was probably married and her surname had changed.

Years passed but we never gave up hope. Every opportunity we got we checked for ‘Dorothy Loader’ on the net but it was not until December 2007 that the name finally popped up.

Someone called Dorothy Loader had posted a message on a website called Ask Virtual Malaysia in 2003! So long ago and I had never found the message before. I immediately tried to send a message to the website asking if they still had her email address or any other contact information but I could not get anything to work on the site with regard to sending them a message. I then sent messages to Malaysian TV stations, newspapers etc. pleading for help in getting in contact with this Dorothy Loader. I was as sure as I had ever been about anything that this was the right person – she was in the right place – Selangor, Malaysia – the twins were born in Malaysia, she had the right name and she was asking about Chinese culture and Dorothy like Belle is ethnically Chinese. The only odd thing was that when she left this message she used her maiden name, was this the right person after all?

I ground my teeth in frustration waiting for someone in Malaysia to get back to me. I must have spent endless hours scanning various sites for any other mention of her name but everything I tried came to nothing.

Months went by and nothing happened. Belle has some of her adoptive family still in Singapore, so in July 2008 I asked her to write to them and see if they could find out anything about the website concerned and as it happened another website suddenly popped up with the name Dorothy Loader on it. THIS TIME THERE WAS A PHOTOGRAPH!

Absolutely no doubt now that after all this time we had finally found her. Now all we have to do is make contact.

When we got onto the net this morning we quickly found the site but there were no contact details on the website for Dorothy, so I attempted to send an email to the newspaper, guess what? It bounced!

I tried again, and again, and again but nothing. I tried different offices of the newspaper and same result. Every email I sent came back undelivered. This was all too much. To be so close and yet so far was more than either of us could stand.

We called in to the Karratha office of the ABC to see if they could help and if they were interested in covering the story. We spoke to Kirstyn March who was both very interested and wonderfully helpful. She passed the message on to an ABC show called ‘Can We Help’, that does wonderful work re-uniting people who have lost touch.

They called back very quickly and Sian (From ‘Can We Help’) has now started making the first tentative steps to making the reunion a reality.

This is an amazing event in our lives. We were both in tears as we drove the 40 kilometres from Karratha to our campsite at Cleaverville and the emotional roller coaster is still racing for both of us.

Even though we both knew that Dorothy was somewhere in the world, is wasn’t until we looked at the photograph of her that she finally became real.

Now comes the time of frustration as we wait for the first contact, and the time of doubts and stress as we wonder what her reaction is going to be. Belle has a million and one questions racing through her head and I am pretty much the same. We have led a rather unusual life at times and recently things have not being going our way at all, so could this be some kind of new beginning for us? A way to put a very difficult time in our lives behind us and start again? I have to say that I sincerely hope so.

One thing is sure, if Dorothy wants to meet Belle we will spend every last cent we have to make it happen. We have precious little left after we lost our home but this is probably one of the most important things we will ever do and I have promised Belle that no matter what, if Dorothy wants to make contact, then I will get her to meet her sister in person.

August 2nd 2008 (Saturday)

Emotions continue to well up inside both of us as we struggle to deal with the enormity of the situation we are facing. Looking at all this from the outside it would be so easy to just say, ‘well isn’t it wonderful that after all this time that Dorothy has at last been found’, but there is so much more to this than the joy of finding her.

Last night we lay in each other’s arms with tears running down our cheeks. Belle said ‘This is crazy, it’s not like anyone has died’ but that is almost the feeling.

I know that my tears were for two little identical twin girls who were torn apart and never had the chance to grow up together and share the memories that they should have had. More than half a lifetime of lost experiences, of things they should have shared together growing up, it is so inconsolably sad.

I am also experiencing a surprising amount of anger directed at the respective adoptive parents who were too insensitive to see that identical twins should never have been allowed to lose contact. A letter occasionally between the families to keep the girls in touch until they were old enough to make up their own minds about making contact would have been the very least that could have been done.

The fact that this opportunity was denied to them seems to me to be a very cruel callous act.

Belle, being the incredibly loving and forgiving person that she is, does not feel the same way, but I have to wonder, if the initial contact with Dorothy does not go smoothly, will she eventually start to feel the same way I do?

We know too that if we are experiencing all this when we have known for a long time that Dorothy was out there somewhere, that when we do make contact, Dorothy will undoubtedly go through pretty much the same feelings.

Our thoughts are very much with her at the moment as she lives her life blissfully unaware of what is about to descend on her.

Although I find it hard to believe that by this time, she has not found out she was adopted, we both worry that if that is the case, that she may have a very much harder time coming to grips with all this. Although she is still a complete stranger to us, she is Belle’s flesh and blood and we do not want to hurt her.

My biggest concern right at this point is that we are already at a very low ebb in our lives anyway. Things have gone very badly for us over the past couple of years and try as we might we just haven’t been able to see any light at the end of the tunnel. If Dorothy was to reject contact I think that could well be the final blow that extinguishes hope from our lives forever.

Even so we have come too far now to turn back.

With all this going round and round in my head I only managed 4 hours sleep last night.

August 5th 2008 (Tuesday)

It is amazing how one simple event can trigger such an outflow of feelings and emotions. Since we saw Dorothy’s photo on Friday, Belle and I have been talking about all sorts of things that have happened over the course of our lives.

Belle has one particularly dark period in her life when she was under the care of a married adoptive sister that she has never managed to get over, I am aware of the details but that is a story for her to tell in her own time and in her own way when she is ready. The huge mix of emotions have brought this and other events in her life into focus again and we have been just been sitting and talking for hours and hours.

August 6th 2008 (Wednesday)

Belle and I have been talking almost non-stop about everything connected with our lives. Last night we hardly slept a wink and we are quite worn out. We talked and talked, we shared some secrets that even after almost 29 years together we had never shared before and we held each other tight all night long. Now there are no more secrets and we love each other all the more for it.

Finally the news we have been waiting for. Sian from ‘Can We Help’ rang to tell us that they have made contact with Dorothy and she is eager to meet Belle. She did know that she had a twin named Rosabelle so thankfully our fears on that score have been put to rest.

Not long after the first call Sian rang back and now we have a rough time-table of about a month before everything should be in place and we will actually get to meet Dorothy for the very first time. We don’t quite know yet if we will be going to Malaysia or Dorothy will be coming to W.A. but I expect it is more likely to be the latter.

Everything is almost taking on a dream-like quality, it seems unreal. As we are about 1700 kilometres north of Perth at the moment, we are going to have to make our way back down the coast a little quicker than we had planned and we won’t be stopping at Bush Bay this year but WHO CARES?!?

August 8th 2008 (Friday)

It has been a week now since some kind of renewal started in our lives. Although finding Belle’s twin sister was the trigger for everything that we have gone through in the last seven days we have found that our love for each other has been completely rejuvenated.

Belle and I have always had a very strong relationship and are still very much in love, but I think we had reached a kind of plateau where we were both happy with each other and comfortable in our relationship but the kind of intensity that existed in the first few years had faded somewhat.

The events of the past week have changed all that and we are now back to the way we were when we first met without all the insecurities of a new relationship.

There is nothing more thrilling than to find that after nearly 29 years we are still both not just still in love but completely infatuated with each other all over again. This has probably been the most emotionally satisfying and deeply fulfilling week in both our lives, we hope it just goes on and on and on…..

August 9th 2008 (Saturday)

And still our emotions keep pouring out. I can’t believe that after more than 27 years of marriage we are falling in love all over again. This is all just too wonderful for words.

I have never really talked much about our relationship in this journal as for a long time it was part of the westernbelle.com website that we had on the internet and some things were just too personal to share with others but now the website has been wound up and the journal has still continued as a personal recollection of our lives, I think it is about time for me to go back in time and tell the story of how we met.

Belle is 17 months older than me but in an odd circumstance when she came out to Australia from Singapore, she dropped back a year in high school and ended up being a year behind me instead of a year in front which would ordinarily have been the case.

I started university at WAIT (now Curtin) in 1978 but it wasn’t until the following year that Belle started. We were both living in the same student accommodation at flat 6, Rotary House on campus but in the previous year I had, had a disastrous relationship with an Asian girl who was studying medical technology. I was very broken up about it and when Belle moved into the same flat I was staying in 1979, although I was initially attracted to her, I deliberately kept my distance as I didn’t want to get burned a second time. (Of course Belle is ethnically Chinese and was also studying medical technology so I went on the ‘once bitten, twice shy’ rule.)

We really didn’t have much to do with each other even though we lived just metres apart, one on each side of the main hall that runs the length of the flat.

I don’t know exactly when I first started to find myself thinking more about her, but I do know she brought herself to my attention in a way that we would both remember for the rest of our lives.

The student accommodation had a series of individual dormitories for the ‘inmates’ but there was a common room and a shared kitchen. Back in those days I was somewhat more of a cook – more by necessity than design – but I could make rather good cakes with coffee flavoured butter icing. I used to leave the cake on the counter in the kitchen and one day I noticed some of the cake had gone missing but there was a little note attached that said : ‘Dear Marc, I stole a piece of your cake. It sat there looking at me. Rosabelle’.

I was touched, it was such a sweet thing to happen and this was the trigger that got me to stop avoiding her and from there we started to talk just a little more. I was by this time more or less over the emotional pounding I had gone through the year before and I wanted to get to know Belle better. It wasn’t until November 11th 1979 that I knew I was starting to fall deeply in love with her.

A friend of mine (Tom Little) was having a birthday party and somehow Belle and I ended up sitting together down by the lake just talking the day away. I had always been very awkward with girls before, I never knew quite what to say and to that point in my life (and bear in mind I was 19 years old then) I had never even so much as kissed a girl on the lips – I was so very shy and innocent. For some reason I just felt comfortable with Belle, there was none of the awkwardness that I felt with other girls and I started to realise that I had been such a fool for deliberately keeping out of her way for so long.

We talked all day and I remember that evening, when we were visiting Tom in his parent’s flat, I think it was Tom’s mum or it may have been his sister (after talking to Belle about this I am now reliably informed that it was Tom’s aunt) who said something like : ‘Is that your lady’ in reference to Belle who was sitting beside me. My reply was : ‘Not yet but I hope she will be.’ I put my arm round her and someone took the following photo:

I couldn’t sleep much that night and felt I had to write something to Belle to tell her exactly how I was feeling so I did just that and Belle remembers waking and expecting to find a note pinned to her door. She woke up and went to the bathroom but there wasn’t a note, but by the time she returned to her room – there it was.

That’s the way it all started we have never looked back from that point onward.

Neither of our families were too thrilled about our relationship but just three weeks after this picture was taken we knew we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. We did wait a while before we actually got married which was on July 18th 1981 but it was November 11th 1979 that I knew I was hopelessly in love with her and there was no turning back.

Now nearly 29 years on I am experiencing all those wonderful powerful emotions all over again and it all seems too good to be true.

I could not have picked a more wonderful person to share my life with. Through all our troubles Belle has always been beside me and I just can’t imagine my life without her. She is sometimes naive, always bubbly, sweet, loving, kind and despite all she has been through, she still has an innocent soul. She is in fact one of the few truly good people I have ever met. How on Earth I ever managed to be lucky enough for her to love me never ceases to amaze me.

August 12th 2008 (Tuesday)

Our final week at Cleaverville for the year has officially started and as usual we have some problems developing with the car. We have known for a while that the brakes need doing but now we are getting unpleasant burning smells that can only originate in the clutch. We have to be extra gentle with the car and hope we can make it to Carnarvon as repairing it here will be completely prohibitive. (Karratha is such a rip off joint for that sort of thing.)

This means our plans of getting all the way down to Perth have had to be shelved, but thankfully when we rang Sian this morning, she said that from her end there would be no problem as the ABC could either fly or bus us to Perth – having done one long haul bus trip I have to say that I REALLY hope it will be fly, not bus, down.

August 29th 2008 (Friday)

We picked the car up this morning and are now just over $1500 poorer. The extra money was for the leaking brake cylinders that were found on the rear wheels. Never mind, we have to keep the car in good working order as we are completely reliant on it.

The ABC seems like it is dragging its heels a bit, as every time we ring to see how things are going everything is still going to happen in about a month’s time, and we have been ringing for several weeks now. We are getting to the point where we just want to make contact with Dorothy and not be kept waiting any longer. I don’t think the people at the ABC have any real concept of how stressful this is becoming or how important it is to us. We are both finding it difficult to sleep and things are getting much too difficult. We have now decided that we want to make first contact by phone now and not wait for the face to face stuff. It really isn’t fair of the ABC to just keep stringing us along and denying us the all important breakthrough that we have been waiting for, for so long.

September 3rd 2008 (Wednesday)

From a high of thinking the ABC was about to fly us out next week to the low of finding out that it is now all being pushed back to the end of September and that they are now talking about bringing Dorothy out here again instead of us going to Malaysia.

When they told us a few days ago that we would soon be flying out to Malaysia, we thought that they finally had recognised the importance of all this to us and that they were finally taking things seriously. Now we are right down in the dumps again and Belle is even questioning just how interested Dorothy is to see her.

We are at the point now of wishing we hadn’t involved the ABC in the first place and are seriously thinking of pulling out of the whole business and just getting ourselves over to Malaysia. The costs involved would be a bit over $5000 if we want to stay there 4 weeks, which we could just about handle but then it becomes a matter of when do we go?

Apparently Dorothy only has leave over Ramadan, September 27th-October 5th or about those dates but us going then would make it even more expensive as here, it is school holiday time.

We don’t want the first meeting to be over here, we have decided that since we were the ones to find Dorothy and not the other way round then we should be the ones to fly out and this is one thing we are now not going to compromise on. If that means we have to pay the whole cost ourselves then so be it.

We simply don’t want the first meeting to be in a crappy sterile hotel room. The ABC just does not seem to understand that it is not just the first meeting that is important but how that meeting is handled and what kind of environment it takes place in. Even though they seem to be trying to help in their own way they just can’t seem to grasp how important it is to us that this first meeting is done properly.

We lost our home so have nothing to show Dorothy but she has a home and a life in Malaysia that Belle wants to find out about. If Dorothy were to come here we would have no car, no way of taking her round, we would be out of our environment and she would be out of hers. The whole thing is stressful enough without meeting in an uncomfortable setting. Why can’t anyone else understand this? Perhaps they simply think we are after a free trip but that isn’t the case at all – we will pay to get ourselves there to make sure things are done the way we want them to be so although it will be hard for us to spend all that money it isn’t an issue when it comes to Belle’s first contact with Dorothy.

If the ABC no longer wants to be involved then we will probably give up all idea of getting there this year and will try to arrange to go next February which will be Belle & Dorothy’s 50th birthday.

At the moment we feel totally drained and exhausted. What should have been a very happy time has now been completely spoiled by the mishandling of the situation by the ABC. Belle very rarely gets over stressed, in fact in the whole time I have known her I have only seen her get VERY VERY angry on two occasions but this afternoon she got that way again.

She got so mad she even said she wished that we (actually I got the blame) hadn’t found Dorothy in the first place, not that she meant it but she was just so fed up and frustrated with everything.

Everything has taken far too long to get sorted out and we are both heartily fed up with being mucked around. All Belle wants is to contact Dorothy and be able to speak to her but still we are being forced to jump through hoops for a simple phone call – this is all just too much.

Even the first phone contact, that would have been exciting, has now had the shine completely rubbed away.

Why the hell can’t anything in our lives be simple and straight forward????

September 4th 2008 (Wednesday)

What an awful day, we had no choice but to pull out of the whole situation with the ABC as they can’t find enough money to get a crew to Malaysia and can’t offer anything but a first meeting in Perth. That just isn’t the way we want to handle this and so we had to tell them that we would take over and do everything ourselves.

They did offer to fly us to Perth and then pay half of our fares next year but they don’t seem to get the fact that to us this isn’t just about money. We have precious little of it, but if it means spending most of what we have to do this properly then that is a better option for us than going about it in a way we are unhappy with.

Words can’t express how devastating this has been. Just a few days ago we were all set to go to Malaysia and now everything has collapsed in a huge heap. It was an incredibly heartless thing to do, to tell us we were going next week and then pull it all away from us.

The whole experience has been irrevocably ruined by all this. I just can’t see any way of putting the shattered pieces back together again.

Now we have no choice but to wait until next year, let’s just hope nothing bad happens meanwhile.

Later…..

The ABC has finally coughed up the contact details we have been waiting so long to get. Belle has now sent the first email to Dorothy which was as follows:

‘Dearest Dorothy,

By now you may have received an email from the ABC. The reason I didn’t want you to come to Perth was because we would have such a short time together before you had to fly back home again and I was very afraid that we may still be strangers to each other. The setting for our first meeting would be so sterile, contained within 4 walls. It’s taken us nearly 50 years to find you and I have to honestly say that I had given up hope. If it were not for my dear husband Marc (who never gave up the search) we may not have found each other at all. They say identical twins have a kind of ESP that passes between each other no matter the distance and not long ago I felt a dreadful fear that you felt that I didn’t want to see you. That is far from the truth. I cried so much when I saw your photo in the Malaysian article and I cried a lot that night. I don’t know how it was for you being adopted but once I found you it made me assess my own adopted life and how I have been treated in the past by my adoptive family. It seems now that I have found you, my adoptive family are keeping me at arms length and I can’t understand why. My husband and I are really the only family we’ve got so finding you has been WOW!!!! I want our first contact to be truly special. The ABC when they were thinking of flying us to Malaysia instead, even mentioned taking you and I back to our [birth] place in Bukit Besi. It was such a disappointment for us when they changed their plans yet again because I would have loved to have come home with their help. So you see I am so afraid you may not like me if we met here that it would destroy any future meeting. Please email me to let me know how you are feeling. I can’t help loving you because you are myself. I hope you feel the same way about me.

Love always,

Rosabelle ….xxxx….’

Now we just have to wait and see what happens.

September 7th 2008 (Sunday)

The email Belle got back from Dorothy has given us some hope that she may come down to Perth and then (crosses fingers and toes) we may be able to fly back with her. That would be a dream come true for Belle (and I) actually flying back to Malaysia with Dorothy would be an amazing thing to be able to do.

The biggest issue we have to resolve at the moment is getting our passports sorted out.

We are waiting (somewhat impatiently) for Monday morning so we can find out what the ABC thinks of Dorothy’s proposal and whether they are going to keep going as they said they would.

September 9th 2008 (Tuesday)

On the positive side we did get an email from Adam today saying that the ABC are now working on a detailed itinerary so we do have that to focus on.

To keep my mind off everything I have been trying to keep busy by putting together a series of discs about our travels to leave with Dorothy so that she can at least see some of what Belle’s life has been like for the past 11 years.

We are still a bit stressed about what Dorothy may think of our life style but we are what we are and we are good people, so we just cross our fingers and hope that none of that will mater in the end. Belle is quite sad that we can’t offer her sister somewhere to stay here when she does decide that she wants to come for a longer visit, but things do change and by that time perhaps our lives may have taken a new path. Personally I think it would be really interesting to be able to get Dorothy and her husband down here and do some ‘on the road’ stuff with us so they can see how Belle’s life has been for the last 10 years.

2 weeks 4 days (from my current calculations) to D-Day and time is just dragging.

September 15th 2008 (Monday)

Believe it or not we still don’t know what on Earth is going on with the ABC and we are getting heartily sick of the whole process.

As we don’t even know if we are going to meet Dorothy, even that seems to be fading into just another forlorn hope.

Our lives are currently at the lowest ebb they have ever been.

September 16th 2008 (Tuesday)

We have finally got word from the ABC that the story IS going ahead, it certainly took long enough to get to this point. The next major concern is getting our passports sorted out and that is where we could really come unstuck.

The British Consulate have told me that I can get a temporary passport issued the same day that I front up with the correct documentation (which I do have) but the snag is the return entry visa to Australia. I have decided that if it comes to it and I can’t get one in time, then I will go anyway and sort it out while I am in Malaysia – to hell with it!

Belle has to get her Australian passport re-issued but at least if she can get that she will have no further problems.

The next snag – why is there ALWAYS a next snag ? – is that the ABC want me to book and pay for my ticket to Malaysia! This is simply stupid. I have no problem paying for it but as they are booking Belle’s and Dorothy’s tickets, the very least they could do is tentatively book mine as well so we are sure we are all together on the same flight and in the same seating. Words fail me!

Here we are just a week away from the day we are supposed to fly to Perth and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is confirmed.

The big shock of the day was the price we were quoted for my air fare to Malaysia and back. We checked a week or so ago and were given a figure of about $1000 and this was what we were budgeting on. Today we were quoted a figure of $2080!! I found that very difficult to live with and spat the dummy in a big way. I was so annoyed I was close to giving up again but thinking about how disappointed this would have made Belle and Dorothy I just had to swallow the bad news and resign myself to spending the money.

Dorothy sent Belle a few more photos and Belle gets quite emotional looking at them. I have to admit that it is rather odd to look at someone who isn’t Belle but looks just like her. When identical twins grow up together, they and everyone around them just accepts the fact there here are two people who look exactly like each other but when identicals are separated and then re-united it is a peculiar experience. From what we can gather, Dorothy probably has one or more children, if that is so then it will be quite weird for them to have someone arrive who looks like ‘mum’ but isn’t. The whole situation is both very interesting but rather strange at the same time.

September 17th 2008 (Wednesday)

Still no confirmation of anything from the ABC, 1 week to go and we are hardly any better informed of what is going on than we were two months ago. We are now being told that we will have the final itinerary tomorrow but I have basically given up hope of them ever keeping to anything they tell us.

At least now we have managed to contact another travel agent (RAC) and have been given a much more reasonable air fare price of $1450 return. Although it is more than we expected it is a hell of a lot better than over $2000. Problem is, the ABC are now changing the flight on us again! Aaargh!!

The ABC has now said that they have managed to get Dorothy on a better flight that arrives in Perth at 3pm on the 27th instead of nearly midnight. The snag was that they were then suggesting that we then fly back a day early on the 29th instead of the 30th. That would be very unfair to Dorothy who has never been overseas before. To fly in, do the filming for the ABC, have just one day in Perth, a SUNDAY at that, then fly out the next day would be a really lousy experience for her.

Even though we won’t have our own transport available we could still hop a train to Fremantle and show her as much as we can of where we have spent most of our lives. Even though the ABC said that it would allow us to get a hotel room at their expense on our way back, I have the sneaking suspicion that they were just being cheap, as doing it that way would save them paying one extra night for Dorothy in a hotel here. We don’t care about getting a hotel room on the way back through Perth, we will just go to the domestic terminal and wait overnight for our flight the next day. Better to do that than have Dorothy miss out on a full day in Perth.

September 18th 2008 (Thursday)

There are times in my life when I really do wonder if the whole world is trying to tell me something. As the ABC has been rather awkward about booking the flights and would not assist us by even making a tentative booking for my flight. Two days ago Belle decided to cover all the bases by making a tentative booking on the Malaysian Air flight just in case the ABC decided not go proceed with the SIA flight, so I was basically holding seats on both flights just in case the original ABC itinerary changed.

Yesterday we got a call first thing in the morning saying that, yes, the SIA flight was the one the ABC had decided to go with and so we cancelled the tentative booking on the MA flight. Next thing we know we get a call from the ABC telling us that they have NOW changed their minds and they are going to go with a different flight. At that stage we didn’t know what flight, or airline the new booking was with and it was not until this morning that we found that they had now moved to the MA flight that I had originally been booked on and then cancelled when they said they were still going with SIA!!!!!

Two days ago we were given a price of over $2000 for the SIA flight and so Belle called RAC travel yesterday and got a price of $1450 as I have already mentioned above. We also started looking at travel insurance as being away for two months could leave us exposed to extra expenses if we fall ill etc. The RAC quoted a figure of $509… expensive but well, essential, so that is what we were going to go with.

This morning when we FINALLY got the confirmed bookings for Belle and Dorothy from the ABC we tried to get in contact with RAC travel and get my booking confirmed on the same flight. First we got no reply then when we got through there was only one person in the office and they would call us back! Meanwhile we are sweating blood thinking that all the seats could be booked and I would not be able to get on the same aircraft as Belle – this would have put the mockers on the whole thing.

Belle decided to go back to Travel World in Carnarvon to see what they could do, as waiting for the RAC was taking too long. First thing we discovered was that the RAC had given us the wrong quote on insurance and if we had gone ahead with it we would not have been covered for the right region of the world. Next we found out that the insurance for Malaysia would cost $775 not $509. Thankfully Travel World discounted this and brought it down to $620.

After sorting out the insurance we then managed to confirm a booking for me on the right flight for $1278.50. So after all this time and a hail storm of hassles, all the bookings are finally in place and once we sort out the passport and visa stuff we will be set to go.

We have been through some pretty bad stress in our lives but I have to say that the last two weeks rate as probably the most unpleasant and stressful we have ever had, worse even than losing the house. We have to hope now that it all turns out to be worth it.

The cost of us getting to Malaysia with the ABC subsidising our trip we are currently estimating at $3478.50. The money itself hasn’t been the major issue and even though we didn’t have a lot to begin with, I would have spent whatever it took to get Belle re-united with her sister. The thing we could have really done without has been all the stress, which in great part has been caused by the ABC either not giving us the information we needed, such as Dorothy’s contact information, or not getting their end of things sorted out before telling us what was going to happen. I have lost track of the number of times they have told us something only to change their minds and then tell us something completely different.

Their organisation of this has been very hap-hazard. Although we know there have been other external factors causing problems, that was not something the ABC should have taken any notice of.

As things stand now, we fly down to Perth next Wednesday, run around and sort the passports, visas, international driving license etc. out on the Thursday, do some interviews with the ABC on Friday and then on Saturday, Dorothy flies in and the ABC conclude their filming.

We then have two days to show Dorothy around Perth before we all fly back together on the following Tuesday and we are then in Malaysia until November 30th.

September 21st 2008 (Sunday)

Well everything is now finally booked and paid for (except the passports etc.) but with our usual unwavering ability to get stuffed around it was not possible to get a booking covering 24-30 September in the same hotel so now we have to stay two nights in one hotel (Kings) and then transfer to another (Goodearth).

Strange to think that after all this time, come next Sunday Belle and Dorothy will finally be together. LESS THAN A WEEK NOW!

One recurring question that goes through my mind is; when identical twins are separated and go off to lead completely un-connected lives, would things still have worked out the same way if they had swapped places in the beginning, or would personality differences mean that each life would have been completely different to the way it turned out? The old ‘nature Vs. nurture’ argument that can never be answered but never-the-less is interesting to ponder on.

I am fairly sure I know how Belle will react when she sees Dorothy for the first time, what I am not so sure of is how I will react. Belle and I are so close emotionally that we tend to feel each other’s emotions almost as if they were our own, so I know that the re-union will probably have a dramatic effect on me too.

September 23rd 2008 (Tuesday)

Well after all the stress and hassles we are on the ‘threshold of a dream’ to steal the title of a Moody Blues song. Nothing left to do now but wait for the last few hours to tick away. I can’t say I am overjoyed to be flying, in fact I hate flying, but Belle loves it. It doesn’t matter how many times I fly, I still get the jitters.

September 24th 2008 (Wednesday)

The flight from Carnarvon was about an hour late taking off but somehow it managed to make up a bit of time on the trip to Perth and we only arrived half an hour late.

The descent was quite rough (Perth airport is usually a bit of a rough ride in) and the smaller plane was knocked about a bit which made some of the less experienced flyers have a few moments of panic.

We were met at the airport by the ABC and taken to the hotel. This certainly made for a nice stress free arrival in Perth. The hotel we picked for the first 2 nights (Kings) turned out to be a bit of a ‘dive’ but it is only two nights so no big deal and we have certainly stayed at worse hotels before.

Tomorrow is ‘run around day’ as the passports and visas get organised but tonight we can just sit back and relax.

Dinner was a burger at HJ’s, anything to save money at this stage as we will need to be a bit more free with spending once Dorothy arrives. We managed to find a shop to pick up some cereal and milk for brekky but the room we are in has no plates etc. so we had to ask for them to be sent up. Somehow the request got jumbled and all we have to eat breakfast with is one tea spoon – oh well it will take a bit longer to eat that’s all.

September 25th 2008 (Thursday)

Today was ‘full on’ with trips to Australian Passports, British Consulate, Immigration and the RAC for Belle’s international license in the afternoon. I am quite sure that if the ABC hadn’t been involved in all this today that we would never have been able to arrange the travel documents in time. It is amazing how co-operative various Government authorities can be when there is a film crew sitting in the office.

The day turned out to be a bit more expensive than we had budgeted for as my re-entry visa was $240 instead of around $150 that we had expected. (Last time we went overseas in 2001 it cost just $70!!)

The filming side of things takes a long time as in order to get a number of different angles and differing shots there are lots and lots of re-takes. The filming part of the day took about 4 hours and in the afternoon we got to have a look inside the sanctum of the ABC and then did a bit of grocery shopping so that we won’t starve when we get to the new hotel tomorrow. (The new hotel is quite a bit further away from the main area of town than the hotel we are in now.)

Hopefully the next room will be in better shape than the one we are in at the Kings. This one has broken light bulbs, the fridge door won’t close properly and the walls seem to be rather thin as we can hear the TV from next door almost as clearly as we can hear our own. Carpets are stained, the wardrobe door is stuffed, things like guest soaps aren’t replaced daily, bathroom ceiling paint is peeling off and the view is of a car park wall – lovely NOT!

On the positive side I have to admit that the hotel is very conveniently located and very close to the centre of Perth. An ironing board and iron are provided in the room and the bed at least is comfortable. If I was going to stay in Perth for any reason other than the ABC story I would certainly choose not to stay at the Kings again.

The day starts at 9am again tomorrow as the ABC pick us, our bags and our food up and run us around to do more filming, get Belle’s passport and then in the afternoon conduct a more formal interview at the hotel.

All in all this is an interesting experience and Belle was quite chuffed with being the centre of attention for the day. Finally the stress of the past few weeks is starting to fade into the background, and despite being quite tired we are starting to enjoy ourselves.

Of course the whole thing comes together on Saturday when Dorothy arrives.

We know so little about Dorothy at the moment but from the few emails she has exchanged with Belle I get the sense that they really are very much alike. My prediction is that the minute they see each other they will instantly bond and that from that moment on they will become emotionally inseparable.

I think that despite the long separation and the fact that they have lived different lives in different countries, their basic characters will be as similar as their appearance.

September 26th 2008 (Friday)

Wow what a day! The film crew picked us up from the Kings Hotel at 9am and took us off to South Perth to do some outside filming. After a short lunch break the interview session with Belle was done at the new hotel room (thankfully a much better hotel room) and this went on until around 6pm.

Belle doesn’t really feel that the interview managed to capture what she has been feeling. The hectic nature of the past couple of days has overshadowed the enormity of her upcoming re-union with Dorothy and it has taken the edge off her emotions somewhat. She is worried that she will come across as being too controlled and un-emotional about everything, but I think that the meeting with Dorothy tomorrow will set the record straight about how emotional all this is.

It is quite amazing just how much work goes into producing a bit of footage no more than 10 minutes in length.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that on arrival we found that the original producer (Adam) has been replaced by a new producer (Darren). This is something that we have come to be extremely grateful for. Darren is forward thinking, well organised, efficient and best of all compassionate and helpful. These were the qualities we sorely needed when this was all starting to get organised by phone and we now feel that everything is being handled professionally and in a way that we feel comfortable with. To be honest we both wish that Darren had been handling this story right from the outset.

Our cameraman (Carl) is great. We enjoy his sense of humour and he obviously knows his job inside out. We have had two different sound men on the story so far but as soundmen are always the unseen and unappreciated ones, we won’t spoil things for them by changing that state of affairs now 

Tomorrow of course is the big day. We get picked up at around 11:30am when Dorothy should already be an hour into her flight. The plan seems to be to complete some filming with us and then at around 3pm everything reaches the climax that we have all been working towards for so long.

Being a bit of a worrier I am now starting to be concerned about what the future holds. Belle has this wonderful chance to get to know her sister for the first time in her life but in just a few short weeks we will be back in Australia again and the two girls will be separated for who knows how long.

Dorothy is obviously very settled in her life in Malaysia and has all her family and friends there. We on the other hand are still on the road and have no ties to bind us. It would be wonderful if some way could be found for the girls to both live in the same country but with our limited resources and capabilities these days, I have no idea how this could ever possibly come about.

It would be tragic indeed if these few short weeks turned out to be the only time Belle and Dorothy ever get to have together. I think when the time comes for them to say goodbye in Malaysia it will be very a painful experience.

September 27th 2008 (Saturday)

The film crew came back to the hotel to do some final interview and ‘getting ready’ shots and then we were off to the airport. The tension and expectation grew and grew and finally we were told that Dorothy’s flight had landed.

After almost 50 years apart, Dorothy walked through the arrival doors and was finally back together with Belle.

The initial reaction of one sister to the other was quite funny, as neither sister could really see much resemblance with the other but everyone around them knew instantly that they were identical twins.

My predictions about how similar the twins were turned out not to go anywhere near far enough. It is almost impossible to believe that after a lifetime apart and living in totally different cultures these two girls are alike in almost EVERY way. From everything to their favourite colour (blue) to their likes and dislikes, the way they eat, and even the way they think they are the same.

The film crew were just as surprised and when they took each sister aside to ask them a few questions they found that the answers they got were the same from each girl. The Nature Vs Nurture argument has come down decidedly in favour of nature in this case.

The surprise for me was not that I was able to easily relate to Dorothy, after all she is just like Belle, but that Dorothy seemed to be pretty much at ease with me. On the way to Kings Park from the airport Belle started feeling ill (as she does from time to time, especially if she gets stressed) and by the time she got back to the hotel all she was able to do was to flake out in Dorothy’s room leaving Dorothy and I to get acquainted.

From my point of view it was easy, here was the identical twin of the woman I love most in the world and I didn’t have a second’s difficulty in relating to her or feeling comfortable in her presence. Dorothy on the other hand was sitting alone in a hotel room with a complete stranger but she didn’t seem the least bit phased by the situation. We sat and talked and I cooked dinner while Belle recovered and then the two girls talked and talked and talked. I would rate today as one of the happiest of our lives.

All the hassles and problems we have had over the past couple of months have now faded into the background and all our focus is now on the two girls getting to know each other at last.

I have waited years to see this!

September 28th 2008 (Sunday)

Today we took Dorothy around Perth to do a bit of shopping and to see a few of the sights. Belle and her sister are staying together tonight (and probably tomorrow night as well) to talk ‘girl talk’ without me around.

While I thought Belle had gone through some tough times in her life we have found that Dorothy has had a much more difficult time. We hope that re-uniting her with Belle will change things for the better for her. At least she now knows that she has two people in her life who will always be there for her and who will stand by her if she ever needs us.

September 29th 2008 (Monday)

Belle and Dorothy were supposed to get some sleep last night but it turned out that they just talked and talked and talked all night. Belle came back down about 6:30am and went straight to bed.

Today we took Dorothy down to Fremantle so that she could see a little more of the metro area in the very short time she is here. Although it was a public holiday the Royal Show was on, so trains were very regular and we didn’t have to wait long.

It was a rather long tiring day but we still managed to stay up past midnight. I am very glad that Belle has had this time to spend with Dorothy without any other distractions. I think it has allowed them to really start bonding very strongly.

September 30th 2008 (Tuesday)

We fly out this afternoon and it is sad the Dorothy didn’t have more time to spend in Perth. We have decided that it will be easier for us to help her come down to Australia and spend time with Belle in the future as it will be cheaper than both of us going up to Malaysia all the time. Even though we only have the caravan we can sort things out so that the girls sleep inside and I can sleep in the tent outside. We have just enough seating in the car for three people so when she does come down we can spend time showing her some of W.A.

October 1st 2008 (Wednesday)

The flight to KL was very smooth and we landed almost on schedule. The apartment Dorothy has made available to us is very nice. It has meant that we have a lot of extra time in Malaysia than would have been possible if we stayed in a hotel and we are so very grateful that she could help in this way.

Unfortunately the two apartments are quite some distance apart and with our lack of night driving skills, the time Belle can spend with her sister once Dorothy goes back to work looks like it will be fairly limited. Meanwhile we are spending as much time with her as possible and I just love to watch these two girls getting closer and closer to each other every day. I know now that my decision to never give up the search was the right one.

October 2nd 2008 (Thursday)

A hectic day running around to various places. The lifestyle in Malaysia is certainly a vast change from the way we are used to living in Australia. Here, apart from working the main activity is eating, in fact it seems to be a national obsession. 5 to 6 meals a day is about normal but we just aren’t used to it.

The other difference is the time of day for going to bed. Our usual is 9-10pm but here 1-2am! seems to be usual.

October 3rd 2008 (Friday)

Sadly Dorothy has to return to work this Monday and we won’t be able to see her as much. We have arranged a rental car for around $18 a day and expect to see that on Monday, so we will be able to get around and with luck will be able to navigate as far as Dorothy’s apartment and get to see her at least a couple of times during the week. The girls have so much to catch up on and we will never be able to afford to come to Malaysia again so it is vital that they spend as much time together as possible now but we also have to bear in mind that once Dorothy goes back to work she won’t want us under her feet all the time.

October 4th 2008 (Saturday)

Today we went out with Dorothy and her family to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. The meal was very good and far cheaper than anything back home in Perth.

I am still getting a thrill just watching the two girls together. Even just going shopping together they are enjoying something that has been missing from their lives for so long and I can see it on their faces. I feel very privileged to be here and just observe them as they begin to grow closer together. Normally I avoid going shopping like the plague but now I am happy to just tag along and watch the two girls together.

The highlight of the day was seeing Dorothy really smile for the first time since we met her. Like Belle, her smile lights up her face and it is so sad to think that she has had very little to smile about in her life. We may be short of money but we have never been short of love so Belle and I feel that despite the outside influences that have tried to drag us down over the past couple of months, compared to what Dorothy has been through in her life, we are truly blessed.

We think we have solved the problem of not being able to see Dorothy during the week by taking a room in a reasonably cheap hotel (70-80RM a night) for 2-3 nights a week. This means only a short drive from Dorothy’s home at night and Belle won’t be missing out so badly.

It is hard to believe that it was just a week ago that the twins were re-united. They have bonded so quickly that it seems as though they have known each other for years, what a joy it is for me to see them together at last.

October 9th 2008 (Thursday)

The hotel were stayed in last night (Royal Comfort Hotel) was a bit seedy but it wasn’t too bad. The air conditioner worked well but I still didn’t get a decent night’s sleep. I think I am too worried about Dorothy’s domestic situation and things keep running through my head. Come Friday we will have to have a talk to her about how she feels and make some suggestions about how to improve things. All we want is to see her happy.

We made our way back to Sungai Buloh by about 11am and managed to follow Dorothy’s map without any problems. One big difference between the two girls is the mapping skills. Belle just can’t deal with maps at all.

October 10th 2008 (Friday)

Belle and I went to see Dorothy at her work this afternoon and her colleagues put on a very nice lunch. It was interesting to see where Dorothy works and it seems as though the people she works with are a pleasant happy bunch.

Dorothy then took us to the library and with luck we will be able to find our way back there at some stage to borrow some books to read or DVDs to watch. From there we headed back to Sungai Buloh for the night.

After dinner some rather deep discussions ensued (until around 3am!) and we now think we have a plan for the future that involves things getting better for everyone. We will cross our fingers and work hard to those ends.

October 11th 2008 (Saturday)

Up to the town of Sungai Buloh today for lunch and to get some more money out of the bank. The Aussie dollar has dropped in value – curses we should have changed more money sooner – and we lost 50c Malaysian on each dollar we converted.

Dorothy had to attend a wedding reception tonight and at first we wondered if she would make it as the weather closed in and a huge thunder storm rolled in. Eventually it cleared and we drove her back to Shah Alam and then waited for her before coming back to SB. Poor Dorothy was ill (like Belle she gets sick when she is stressed out) but still we managed to ‘burn the midnight oil’ again and by 3am we crawled off to bed.

Late nights, thunder storms and eating out are becoming the three major impressions I have developed of Malaysia since we have been here.

October 12th 2008 (Sunday)

I have sent an email to Mara Pritchard at Australian Immigration asking what can be done about helping Dorothy to immigrate. We are very hopeful at this point and are now focusing firmly on a future where the two girls will be living in the same country.

As the girls get better acquainted we are finding some differences but we now use the ‘ying and yang’ as an analogy because where one skill that the other lacks each seem to balance each other out in different areas. This is difficult to explain on paper but it sort of goes like this:

Belle has a life filled with love but has very little money, Dorothy is reasonably well off but so far has not managed to have the love that she desires. Where one lacks something, the other seems to have it and vice-versa. The main differences between the two girls seem to be due to purely environmental things like work. Dorothy has much better computer and tech related skills than Belle because her work involves using computers etc. Why Belle has such a poor sense of direction is difficult to explain because Dorothy has exactly the opposite.

It has been nice to see some positive changes in Dorothy since we first met her. She was rather stiff and wooden when Belle first started to hug her but now she is the one who is initiating the hugs with her sister. The poor girl has been so starved of affection for so long that she really needed Belle to come along and break down the wall that she has built around herself. I have always said that Belle is so affectionate that she could get a rock to hug her back!

The main thing that has come out of this meeting between Belle and Dorothy is that they obviously were in desperate need of each other but until they met neither knew just how deep seated that need really was. I don’t think I will ever grow tired of seeing them together and I have witnessed some very touching and beautiful moments between them. If only we can find a way for them to be together from now on.
 

October 18th 2008 (Saturday)

Another delightful day watching the twins growing ever closer together. Where Dorothy was once a bit hesitant to hug Belle, now she is initiating the hugs and we can tell that this is a bit of a turning point in how she views life. We can only hope that she will continue to remove the emotional walls that she has been building around herself and she will eventually find real happiness in her life.

Belle cooked one of our favourite dishes for dinner (Belle’s own recipe for prawn & sun dried tomato pasta) so that Dorothy could at last taste some of her culinary delights and once more bedtime was sometime around 2:30am.

October 19th 2008 (Sunday)

A relatively quiet day with lunch at Sungai Buloh town and then back to the flat where the girls decided to play ‘make up’. Watching them together it is impossible to see them as nearly 50 years old, they are just two wonderful sweet young girls having fun and doing the things that have been missing for so long in their lives.

I took quite a few photos and when we looked through them together on the computer we found quite a few where it was almost impossible to work out which twin was which. I have known Belle for 29 years and if I had not taken the shots myself, even I could not tell who is who.
 

I know I’ve said it before but I really do feel so privileged to be able to watch them and to share in the absolute delight they seem to find in each others company. Dorothy is starting to smile more now and when they both smile at the same time it is just like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on a dull drizzly day.

With the end of the weekend Dorothy had to head home again ready for work tomorrow and the fascinating tableau I have been watching all weekend came to a close until next week. How we will cope when we have to fly home I just don’t know…. I can no longer imagine a life where the two girls have to remain separated.

November 2nd 2008 (Sunday)

Another weekend has slipped away from us before we even knew it was gone and now we are facing the downhill run to the end of our time in Malaysia. We only managed to see Dorothy from Saturday afternoon and through most of Sunday this weekend which really is less than we would like but we have to remember that she has a life going on that involves much more than just us, so we just have to be patient and enjoy the short time we get to spend together.

Dorothy jokingly said as I walked down with her to her car that we would probably be glad that she was going home at last and I said that each time she had to go we were sad but that just doesn’t cover how we feel.

Before we met Dorothy, Belle and I made up 100% of everything we cared about, now we have found her we now only make up 66%, Dorothy is the one who now makes us complete and without her around something is always missing. The apartment is not the same without her here and she is the main topic of our conversations during the week. Our lives have changed forever. One thing we never really thought about was just how quickly a bond would form between us and how painful each separation will be.

She spoke to us for the first time today with tears in her eyes about how our leaving at the end of the month affects her but I don’t think she realises yet that although Belle and I may have each other, without her we are also now alone. A vital part of our lives is missing when we are not together. I said to Belle when Dorothy had gone today that the three of us together just seems so right. I already get choked up thinking about how hard leaving for Aus will be and I know the last night here will bring little but tears. Until then we need to stay strong and positive and basically have as much fun together as we can.

Before we go I hope we can put in place a solid plan and a timetable for Dorothy to come out and see us next year, I think we are all going to need something like that to cling to, to keep us going. She is thinking about next September but that seems much too far away at the moment. We shall have to see how things go and how much money we have available when we get home. Personally I am hoping that her Company will be able to give her some leave without pay so that she can double the time she can come over for and we can easily give her enough money to cover any lost wages. Flying down for just a week would be awful – far too short and difficult for us to show her around much.

The next few weekends are planned out already, with next weekend earmarked for a trip to Malacca, the following weekend to KL on Saturday and then seeing Dorothy’s work mates for lunch on Sunday. The weekend after we have Saturday free and then meet Dorothy’s church friends on Sunday. The final weekend we will be down at the budget hotel on Saturday and then – the most awful day, leaving on Sunday….I can hardly bear to think about that. Never mind, we still have much to share together and sad thoughts need to be put aside for now.

As the time ticks away every second we spend with her is more precious than gold and if I can I am going to find excuses to get a couple of extra nights down at the budget hotel. The girls both worry about spending money but money means nothing in all this, in fact it is for times like this that we have money in the first place. What on Earth is the point of money if it can’t give you a bit of extra time with those you love? A week up here on our own, well 5 days really, seems too long and I know we will regret it if we don’t make the effort to be with her.

November 3rd 2008 (Monday)

After just over a month in Malaysia we have had a chance to reflect on life back in Australia and how that differs from what people have over here. We grumble a lot about things at home but compared with life in Malaysia we live in paradise!

There is no decent medical system in Malaysia, if you get sick and can’t pay then basically you are left to die. People are exploited by their employers (converting from Australian dollars to Ringgit we actually get more on a pension than Richard does working almost all week!) there is no national pride in the country and everything is dirty and poorly maintained. There seem to be no set standards when it comes to buildings and the discrimination against the smaller ethnic groups is not only evident, it is supported by the government. There are few nice parks and places for people to relax and the only thing Malaysia has going for it is the cheap food.

Australia by comparison really is a ‘land of milk and honey’.

Back to yesterday’s topic again…. Belle sometimes has the ability to say some quite profound things that on reflection are also very disturbing. She did it again when she was thinking about Dorothy and spoke about how Dorothy will feel after we go home and she comes up to Sungai Buloh for the first time as finds the place empty. I now can’t get the thought out of my head and I can’t help putting myself in Dorothy’s place and thinking about how she will feel.

Dorothy puts on a hard face for the world but I have seen behind the mask and I know she is as soft as Belle inside. It was with these thoughts running through my head that I woke this morning with tears in my eyes. I had to struggle to keep Belle from seeing how I was feeling as I didn’t want her to start thinking more about it as well.

November 5th 2008 (Wednesday)

A lovely cool morning courtesy of the rain means that we may stay in today instead of heading down to Shah Alam as planned. With little to do, it is time to do some pondering and record a few thoughts, facts and observations.

The first subject to write about is one that has dominated our thoughts and hearts since August 1st – Dorothy. So far I haven’t sat down and recorded much of her story so now is as good a time as any to do so.

Like Belle, the memories of her early years are a bit faded but she does remember more than Belle and apparently the two families were neighbours. The girls not only lived next door to each other during that time but they were playmates. When the families moved Belle’s went to Singapore and Dorothy’s eventually ended up in Penang.

Dorothy was adopted to be a companion and playmate for another ‘adopted’ girl named Ann. Ann (if I remember correctly what Dorothy told us) was actually the child of her adoptive mother’s sister who was unwanted by the aunt and taken in by Dorothy’s mum. There is no mention of her mother ever having a child of her own but Ann was a blood relative while Dorothy was not.

Dorothy’s adoptive father was English not Australian as we had been led to believe. While he was still in the picture her life seems to have been a relatively stable and happy one. When she was nine years old her father went to England leaving the family virtually destitute. I suspect there is more to this particular part of the story than Dorothy remembers or was told but the years have effectively covered over the past.

Dorothy and her family were then forced into a life of hardship and uncertainty. The stability of her childhood evaporated as the family moved from place to place without ever finding security. She did not have the chance to enter higher education and had to find work in her late teens. Her father did make a brief re-appearance (I think she said she was about 13 at the time) but was very ill and died just 10 days after re-locating the family.

As we had suspected, Dorothy was not originally told that she was adopted. Her adoptive mother was Chinese so unlike Belle there was no obvious difference in the racial makeup to tell her any different. Her sister Ann seems to have found out about the adoption before Dorothy did and her attitude completely changed at this time.

Dorothy’s sister Ann (now married and living in England) seems to have been jealous of Dorothy and as Ann was actually a blood relative she started to treat Dorothy very poorly after she discovered Dorothy was not related by blood.

Dorothy found out she was adopted by accident when she was 16 and I can’t imagine how much of a shock this must have been to her. Having grown up all your life thinking you were your mother’s real child and then finding out you were not, is something that can leave deep emotional scars. Belle was lucky in a way because she knew from an early age that she was different to her adoptive family, no one actually had to tell her she was adopted as it was obvious.

Being adopted means that your birth parents have already abandoned you and this on its own can cause great distress. Add this to discovering at the tender age of 16 that you are not who you thought you were and things get even more complicated. I know Belle has a lot of insecurities buried deep inside her and I can’t help but feel that Dorothy must be the same.

Although Dorothy speaks a number of languages and is more closely associated with the culture here, she is still regarded as something of an outsider. Belle falls very much into the western culture and can only speak English but even though Dorothy had a much more Asian upbringing and lifestyle she still gets called ‘banana’ by the locals. Why banana? Because a banana is yellow on the outside and white on the inside. So like Belle, she is neither western nor fully Asian and has had to make a place for herself somewhere between the two cultures.

I feel sorry for both girls in this respect as they have no real roots. Although I don’t think about it much, if someone asks me what I am, I always identify myself as being English. Even though I have spent 39 of my 48 years in Australia I will always identify myself with the country of my birth and the history and culture associated with it. Neither of the girls (especially Belle) really have a cultural identity to hold on to. This is just one of the many insecurities in their lives.

When, at the age of 24, Dorothy chose to get married, she seems to have selected her partner on the grounds of his ability to provide for a family rather than any notion of being in love. Belle on the other hand married purely for love, she must have as I had nothing else to offer at the time and I don’t have much more to offer even now! We were both broke, we had dropped out of university (Belle only went back to complete her degree much later when we were both working) and were unemployed. Even so I remember the early part of our marriage as being one of the happiest. We lived in a small rented one roomed flat and had two push bikes that we used to go shopping on. We had virtually nothing but each other but that was all we ever wanted so we had everything our hearts desired.

From what I can see it is love that is most important thing in life as it is possible to be poor and happy and equally possible to have money and be miserable. (Mind you I wouldn’t complain if we were rich and happy!)

It seems to be the lack of deep emotional love that is missing from Dorothy’s life and knowing Belle as I do, I believe that the root of all Dorothy’s sadness comes from this lack of a close personal bond and the genuine affection that flows from such a thing. Like Belle she needs the security of a deep and abiding love and not just love but friendship. Belle and I have always been in love but we are also best friends and soul mates. Hopefully we will be able to share some of that with Dorothy and she will find, at least in part, some of what has been missing from her life.

Dorothy has had 4 children in all but two did not survive. Again a huge cause for insecurity in her life. The final blow to her emotions came when her mother died. Dorothy obviously loved her mother dearly and I don’t think she has ever managed to get over the tragic circumstances of her death. She blames herself even though she has no reason to do so. She has never had anyone to love or to love her like her mother and the lack of affection in her marriage meant that she had no emotional support when her mother died. This single fact makes me so sad that we could not have found her earlier. If only we could have been there for her when she so desperately needed someone close to give her the love and support she needed I think her life would have been much happier.

The future is a very uncertain creature but I think we have at least managed to bring hope into her life, something that she has not had for far too long.

November 9th 2008 (Sunday)

(after a weekend away at Malacca)

When we got to Sri Muda we found the hotel was booked out and after looking at another (much more seedy version) nearby and deciding against stopping there, Dorothy said that she wanted to come back to Sungai Buloh with us.  I could also see that Dorothy wanted to do all she could to keep the weekend going and not to have it end too soon. We felt exactly the same way so after some token resistance we gracefully surrendered to the idea and Dorothy drove us up.

Sadly time eventually caught up with us and quite late in the night we had to say goodbye and a truly magic weekend was over. Time really is slipping away from us now far too quickly.

I think Dorothy has had more fun in the short time we have been here, than she has had in a very long time and it is wonderful to see her laughing, relaxing and enjoying herself. She has a sense of humour that in some ways is a little closer to my own than Belle’s and she isn’t averse to giving me a ‘bit of stick’ occasionally. I am very happy that she feels comfortable enough to do this as in Australia it is quite normal to tease people you are very close to. Of course I don’t let her get away with it scot free and I am just as happy to tease her a bit in return.

November 11th 2008 (Tuesday)

Even though there are still 18 days left before we have to go home we are starting to feel the terrible impact of how leaving will make us feel. In the last few weeks we have grown closer and closer to Dorothy. I always thought that when the time came for us to go it was going to be very sad but I completely under-estimated just how devastating it really is going to be. Last night Belle and I were sitting on the sofa and we both just burst into tears and put our arms round each other trying in vain to find some sort of comfort.

Dorothy may have had a tough life but she is an absolutely wonderful person and we are both completely captivated by her. The thought of more than a few days going by without seeing her is unbearable and our emotions are becoming more and more difficult to control. Dorothy has had to be a lot tougher mentally than us and I know she is struggling to keep everything under control but when the dam wall breaks I think there will be a huge flood of emotions from her, I just hope she doesn’t wait until we have gone to allow that to happen – we will need to be together when it does.

We are starting to do more about getting Dorothy permission to come and live in Australia. At least if we can get some sort of positive answer to that before we go, there will be something to hold on to. Belle is writing directly to the Minister for Immigration pleading for special consideration because of the unique circumstances and also sending a letter to Darren asking for whatever support the ABC can give.

Finding and meeting Dorothy has been the single most powerful and emotional experience of our lives. In just a few short weeks we have come to love her more than mere words can express, she is now part of us and we cannot let her go.

November 15th 2008 (Saturday)

The subject of getting Dorothy to migrate to Australia is rarely far from the surface these days but I know she is still struggling with the whole idea of having to walk away from 24 years of marriage. I think she realises deep inside that there is nothing left for her here and that her best option is to make a break but I also know just how difficult that will be for her. There is still the forlorn hope that R. will eventually wake up and give her what she needs but sadly this has gone on too long and while Dorothy seems to have done everything humanly possible to keep the marriage alive, R. has never responded and there really isn’t any sign that he ever will.

November 16th 2008 (Sunday)

This morning when I woke the two girls were fast asleep next to each other and for a while I just sat up and watched them sleeping. I find some of these moments so touching and beautiful. Something so simple and innocent but also something they have been denied for all these years; the closeness, the togetherness that they have needed for so long.

Later I managed to film an interview style session with both Belle and Dorothy and to my surprise it was Dorothy who provided the most emotional moments. She has had to be so brave, so strong, in a life that, until now, refused to give her the love she needed. I am so pleased that she trusts us enough to allow her vulnerable side to show from time to time but she really does need to let herself go more often as it is unhealthy to continually bottle all your emotions up inside. She still seems to view crying as being weak but it really isn’t al all. I think allowing yourself to show your true feelings to those you care about is in itself, an act of courage.

We went down to Sri Muda to meet some of Dorothy’s friends from church where she had the opportunity to ‘show Belle off’. I can see how much she loves the fact that she now has Belle in her life and she takes great delight in introducing Belle to the people she has known for so long.

Back at Sungai Buloh, Dorothy cooked dinner and for the first time we got to see how she ‘stacks up’ as a cook. Dinner was delicious so Belle obviously now has some competition in the culinary stakes.

Once again the weekend came to an end around 10pm and the apartment seemed that much more empty once Dorothy had gone. It is so sad to think that next weekend is the last full one we will spend together up here. We just have to get Dorothy out to Australia, we will wither and die without her. Not even two weeks left here now……….All we need is to get some official word that says Dorothy can come and live in Australia, at least once we have that then we really have something to live for and to work towards.

November 19th 2008 (Wednesday)

The ‘fix it’ man finally turned up this week after suffering the tragedy of a broken drill last week. An extra fan and light were installed and although the work was ok as far as Malaysian standards are concerned it would be unthinkable in Australia. Here it is quite acceptable to run conduits along ceilings and walls to get power to new areas. In Australia ALL wiring and plumbing is hidden from view.

The job didn’t get finished so he is due back tomorrow to install a washing machine and a couple of power points.

I am very out of sorts today, maybe it’s the flu, maybe it’s thoughts of having to go home and leave Dorothy on her own here, maybe it’s the lack of progress in getting an answer from Immigration, maybe it’s all the above. All I know is I am a very grumpy bum today. Belle and I were quite niggly with each other.

November 20th 2008 (Thursday)

With all this time on my hands I have little to do but sit and ponder why things turn out the way they do. Why didn’t we find Dorothy before this? What is so special about this point in time? Looking at the way things have turned out there are all sorts of co-incidences that came together over the years to make this time possible.

If we had found Dorothy way back in 1989 when we first started searching I wonder how differently things would have turned out. Even if she had been more into computers in 1999 and had looked for herself on the web, I think everything would have been completely different. In all the years between 1999 and 2008 she never looked up her own name on the net, you have to wonder why…

Now Belle and I are in a position where we are basically free to do more or less what we please (within budgetary constraints) and we have been able to spend much more time in Malaysia than we could have at any other point. Even that would not have been possible if Dorothy hadn’t decided to buy a second apartment. Dorothy had also reached the stage where she felt cut off from her family, she was alone and desperate almost not caring if she lived or died. Putting all the life lines and co-incidences together tends to lead to the conclusion that something different has to happen in all our lives now. Why life has to be so difficult I just don’t know. We are at a cross road, which direction will life take us this time?

Everything in our lives now hangs in the balance. All our dreams and wishes for the future are more or less in the hands of other people. This is so emotionally draining and frustrating. Add to that the fact that in 10 days we will be on the way home…. I would give just about anything not to have to go.

Dorothy, of course, is firmly of the opinion that her God is behind all this, and given the number of things that had to come together in order for us just to find her, it is tempting for most people to see a plan of sorts behind it. Unfortunately all I see is just a series of related and unrelated events that happened in a way to allow us to find ourselves here. Strangely enough I actually envy Dorothy her ability to believe in a God. I never will have that belief but I can see how it helps to make sense of a very cruel and unfathomable world.

I also have to ask myself why, when Belle had given up, did I keep looking for Dorothy? In my mind at least, it was to find the missing part of Belle. Like Dorothy, we had also reached a point in our lives when we were drifting aimlessly. We had no goals, no purpose, no meaning, we were like ghosts drifting through the world with no real family and nowhere to call home.

The minute we found Dorothy everything in our lives began to change, even how Belle and I related to each other was profoundly influenced. Then when we finally got to meet her and found she was in a similar position there was finally some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

If Dorothy had been happily married we would simply have met, she and Belle would have formed a bond of sorts and we would have gone home, back to a life of drifting around without meaning.

The way things actually have turned out so far is very strange. All three of us needed each other in different ways and it is hard to believe just how well we get on together. I don’t expect everything to always be as smooth as it has been so far but I also don’t think the bonds that have formed will ever be broken.
 

November 21st 2008 (Friday)

If nothing has happened re-immigration by the end of March then we will be looking at moving north again. Assuming that happens then it will be August before we head south and if Dorothy has not been able to come over between January and March, we expect she will be planning to come over to see the spring wildflowers. (It really would be much better if she could come while we are in the south west corner which is a great place to explore. It really would be amazing if the girls could be together for their 50th birthday!)

If she has been over and things are still dragging then I think we will seriously consider coming back to Malaysia (assuming that is still possible both financially and accommodation wise) once we are back near Perth. Well that is the thoughts for next year at the moment, plans usually change rapidly as things move in their own direction but there has to be some sort of basic plan to start with.

At some point during the afternoon Belle commented that it would be good if Dorothy came up to SB straight from work and brought the tiffin carrier with her instead of going back to SA. Well weird or not Dorothy turned up much earlier than expected having come straight here from work and guess what, she had the tiffin carrier with her! I am really starting to wonder if there is some sort of telepathy going on between the twins. Now I am more intrigued than ever to do some ESP testing and see if any sort of link can be empirically proven.

November 22nd 2008 (Saturday)

Today the three of us mostly mooched around Shah Alam central and had lunch at the same Japanese restaurant we went to on October 4th. How long ago the first meal there seems and how quickly the time has passed. This time next week it will just about all be over…. I just can’t even start to think about that now so I have to stop writing.

We tried to do a sort of ESP test using cards with pictures that neither twin had seen before. Although it was hardly conclusive and no cards were picked in the correct sequence, it was worthy of note that Belle correctly picked 4 of the 8 pictures correctly and Dorothy got 2 out of 8. Even though none were in the right sequence, since neither twin had seen the images prior to the test it is interesting that so many cards got identified when I really didn’t expect any to be correct.

November 23rd 2008 (Sunday)

We went down to Central to pick up a few things and even just being there and thinking that it could be the last time we are there together started me off again. It got to the point where I just had to walk outside for a while to recover as I didn’t want the girls to see how it was affecting me.

By this time next week we will be flying over Australia. If only I could be sure that we would all be together again. Life can be very unpredictable and we don’t know from one day to the next what is going to happen, there is no guarantee that we will ever see each other again and I am just not coping at all well now. I am trying very hard for Dorothy and Belle’s sakes not to let the emotions show but holding it all inside is almost physically painful.

Just a few precious hours left today then Thursday night, Friday and Saturday.

In the end Dorothy decided to stay the night and go to work from Sungai Buloh in the morning. This gave the girls the chance to play ‘dress-up’ and I was lucky enough to get some lovely pictures.

Dorothy cooked dinner for us and it was the best meal we have had since we came to Malaysia. She really is an excellent cook. Not only that, she did the whole meal, soup, fish, chicken and potato, beans, cauliflower and prawns on just one burner!

To this point in time, the girls have managed to spend 36 (out of a possible total of 59) days either together either as full days or at least a few hours. I think now they are completely inseparable emotionally and it was just wonderful that we had the opportunity for things to have worked out this way. By the time we have to go we will add 3 more days making 39 in all, not enough to compensate for all the missing years but enough to really find out how we all feel about each other.

This has been a wonderful beginning and now we can make plans for a future where the girls can be together.

I still can’t explain exactly why our lives have taken this turn and I don’t know where it is going to lead us. I have stopped trying to work out things that I don’t understand and I am just going to accept things as they are. Like Dorothy I am just going to have faith that these things are going on for a reason.

November 25th 2008 (Tuesday)

This time next week we will be waking up in Carnarvon… hard to accept that at the moment. Just two months ago we were still waiting to meet Dorothy for the first time, it seems like a lifetime now and in some ways it is. What a strange journey we started on when we first saw her photo in The Star. I really can’t remember a time in our lives when we have been happier than the past two months. Everything just seems to have fallen into place at last.

Dorothy too has changed since we first met. Some things that she was struggling to accept she has finally ‘seen the light’ on and I think her mind is more at peace with regard to that. The problems with R. that had taken over her mind and almost obsessed her have, at least partially, receded into the background. Even though there may be some tough times to get through, I can see she is almost a different person to the one we first saw in Perth. It has been so wonderful to see her happy. I think for the first time in ages she is getting back to being her real self again.

At least when we get home we have a lot to do that will help keep our minds occupied. Dorothy has her work and in no time Christmas and New Year will be upon us, then with luck we go down to Cowaramup to look after the house and before we know it Dorothy will be with us again (crosses fingers).

The worst part today is seeing all the suitcases starting to fill up. Belle has to leave some things here and so do I as the light coloured shirts would quickly get ruined if I wore them in Aus. Even so we are struggling to get everything else packed away.

We have decided not to bother going down to KL again this trip, our minds are just too occupied with other things to bother about sight seeing or shopping.

As the time to go approaches I can feel the emotions starting to build up. I am NOT going to enjoy going home. I am starting to get quite despondent, how can life be so complicated and cruel?

One thing I have noticed that is quite peculiar. Originally when I looked at Belle and Dorothy all I could see were the similarities between them, now all I can see are the differences. In fact I am now almost unable to see them as identical twins. I am not at all sure why this has come about. They do say that as identicals grow older they become less and less similar but how does that fit with the fact that originally I saw them as being very similar? Perhaps it is due more to the fact that I am now viewing them as separate individuals and my mind is not willing to see them as being so similar. I know they have both never seen each other as looking the same.

November 26th 2008 (Wednesday)

It is almost impossible to believe that just 2 months ago we were on the eve of meeting Dorothy for the first time. Somehow it all seems unreal, how can all this have happened in two short months? If someone had told me back then what was going to happen I would have laughed at them! Not one of us could have predicted back then that our lives would have been changed in so many wonderful and interesting ways.

I wonder what was going on in Dorothy’s mind at 8:06pm on September 26th? What did she think Belle and I would be like? Nothing like the crazy people we turned out to be I bet. I am sure she could never have even guessed back then what an odd pair she would find herself stuck with.

Looking back at the journal entries I made before we met Dorothy I did predict that she would be a lot like Belle, I just didn’t know how right I was!

We have shared such marvelous times together in the last few weeks and not only have I been so wonderfully privileged to be an observer, I have also been taken in as ‘one of the girls’ a rare thing indeed for any man to get that level of acceptance. The delight I have felt in watching the girls together has been matched by the delight in watching Dorothy start to shine from the inside again. A light has been switched on inside her that had all but gone out and it shows in her face and her every action when the three of us are together. Last weekend she was positively glowing.

She is an absolute joy to be around and each weekend we have both looked forward eagerly for her face to appear. The days without her have been lack-lustre and rather empty but now we have to face not just days but entire weeks without seeing her, not a nice thought.

Her sense of humour, her quirky little phrases, her laugh and that lovely smile that she had kept hidden for too long, all these things Belle and I have become so accustomed to we will now have to do without, how much more empty life will be.

November 30th 2008 (Sunday)

As I type this I am sitting outside gate C4 at KLIA waiting to board our flight home. Leaving Dorothy this morning was every bit as painful as I expected it to be. Belle was the one who didn’t break down and cry at the hotel but she did once we were in the taxi on the way to the airport.

By the time we were due to fly back to Australia, Belle and Dorothy had bonded completely. It was almost as if they had spent their entire lives together. Leaving Malaysia and saying goodbye to Dorothy was perhaps one of the most traumatic events in our entire lives. Thankfully Dorothy had already decided to come out to Australia again in January and spend three weeks holiday with us. This did eventuate and she arrived on January 25th.

By now we knew that there was no way the girls could separate again and we had to make plans for making an application for Dorothy to live permanently in Australia. This is where we hit quite a weird hic-up.

As the girls had both been adopted by different families their legal ties to each other had been separated and there was no way to make a valid application for Dorothy to immigrate to Australia. This was taken up by the Sunday Times newspaper and by  Channel 7 which shot a story on the issue. In the end there was nothing for it but to make an application that we had already been told was going to be rejected at a cost of $2105. The next step, that took many more weeks, was to make an application for a review of the rejection at a further cost of $1400. Then once this process has all been exhausted we make a direct appeal to the Immigration Minister in the hope that he will recognise the special significance of this case and will grant Dorothy permanent residency. In January all this was still very much in the future.

When it came close to the time for Dorothy to Return to Malaysia and for the girls to say goodbye once more it just became impossible to do. The pain and heartbreak of such a parting would have been too much to bear. Dorothy stayed on for a few weeks while we sorted things out in Australia and we flew back with her again on April 7th. She spent the next 6 weeks winding up some issues in Malaysia and then we flew back to Australia together on May 20th.

Since January 25th the girls have been together on a 24/7 basis. We have made the application to the Dept. of Immigration and have also made the application for review which we also expect to be rejected. Our only hope is that Minister Chris Evans will give the girls the gift they most want in the world - the chance to spend what remains of their lives together.

I have no doubt about the fact that the girls could not separate again without experiencing severe mental trauma. They have an innate need to be with each other and this is our most heartfelt wish for the future.