Summary

Card from Sylvia Boyes to Lindsay Motherwell, dated 5 August 1969. The front features a picture of a front door, similar to other cards sent. Sylvia has written on both pages, detailing the stress of giving notice at her work, receiving documents and plane tickets from him, as well as minor social disasters, Sylvia talks about the fact that she will see him soon, that they will be a 'novelty' as a mixed-race couple, and about a friend's baby. Lindsay had sailed ahead to London, with Sylvia to follow by plane so that they could get married.

Sylvia Boyes (a South African-born orphan) and Lindsay Motherwell (a Melbourne-born drummer) met in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967 through their theatre connections. They fell in love but due to apartheid laws were forced to leave South Africa to marry in London. They subsequently relocated permanently to Melbourne in 1970.

Physical Description

Card with a picture of a front door on front, writing on both pages,

Significance

Statement of Historical Significance:
This collection provides a significant opportunity to represent political and personal freedom as a motivation for migrating to Australia within the international context of both apartheid in South Africa and the end of the White Australia policy in Australia. The personal narrative is well documented and the objects provide a material way to follow the lives of both Lindsay and Sylvia, both separately and where they coincide in South Africa and onwards together to Melbourne. While this is ultimately a love story, it plays out through the collection against the backdrop of apartheid South Africa, sixties London and an increasingly multicultural Australia.

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