Summary

Certificate for crossing the equator on the 29 April 1970. Lindsay and Sylvia met in South Africa, married in London and then migrated to Australia to start their lives together.

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

Certificate written entirely in Latin, and decorated to look like an old scroll. There is also a large image of a Sitmar Line ship central to the certificate. At top is an image of the god Neptune riding a sea-horse above a colour image of one of the Sitmar Line cruise ships.

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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