Summary

Two page letter from Sylvia Boyes to Lindsay Motherwell, dated 19 September 1969. It is the last letter sylvia wrote before she flew to London to be with Lindsay. She tells him all about her passport dramas and the difficulties of finally leaving. She is nervous about being allowed into Britain as the South African papers say that the British are not letting 'coloured' people enter the country. She is also nervous about all the forms and immigration questions. 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

Two page letter

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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