by David Murray
April 2012
Linda Ebeling was at home in Camden, New South Wales, as she read a late-night text message from her sister that made her chest tighten: ‘Are you still awake? Allison from Brisbane is missing.’
Linda phoned back straight away. It was all over the news, her sister said. Linda and her husband, Stephen, went to their computer and clicked onto The Courier-Mail. There was a prominent story about Allison’s disappearance.
Over the following weeks, Ebeling saw Allison’s face on TV every day. At first she hoped Allison might appear at her doorstep. In the back of her mind she thought her friend might be running from something and need a safe haven.
While Ebeling waited for a knock on her door that would never come, she went to her jewellery box, where for 26 years she had kept the pink ring and matching bangle she and Allison bought together in Denmark. She knew Allison had kept hers too.
For the first time in all those years, Ebeling slipped on the cheap ring and bangle. It made her feel closer to Allison. She didn’t take them off again for months.
May 2012
Krista Reeves reached for the light switch in the cold, dark storage room under her grandmother’s house at Alderley, in Brisbane’s north. Inara Svalbe had sent her daughter to see if one of Allison Baden-Clay’s dresses from the AYBC was among a selection of outfits she’d stored away.
Allison had been found dead two days earlier and Svalbe hoped to find something to give her grieving parents from her ballet days. As Krista’s hand reached for the light switch, there was a clatter in the room. Fearful she had disturbed a snake, she groped frantically for the light.
Flicking it on, Krista saw a yellow dress had fallen to the ground. Funny, yellow was Allison’s favourite colour. She picked it up to hang it back on the rack and glanced at the name, faded but still visible, on the inside label: A. Dickie. There were 12 matching yellow dresses hanging in the storeroom – one for each dancer in the AYBC performance. Allison’s had fallen to the floor.
First love
Maybe I am still harbouring regrets about getting married and did I make the right decision? Was I ready to give of myself and share or was I still self-centred. I didn’t want to go overseas – I wanted to change my career – to be FAMOUS!
Allison’s private journal
Late 1990
When Allison June Dickie stepped off the high-speed catamaran onto the jetty at Heron Island, the world was full of possibilities. She was 22 years old, beautiful and had an Arts degree majoring in psychology from the University of Queensland. The girl from blue-collar Redbank had studied Japanese while at university and was newly returned from a year teaching English in Japan. At school and on her travels she had picked up varying degrees of French, German, Danish and Swiss-German. With these skills, she breezed into a job at Heron’s tourist resort.
The 72-kilometre journey from the Queensland mining port of Gladstone to Heron by boat takes two hours over choppy waters. The island is but a speck in the ocean – 800 metres long by 300 metres wide – formed by a build-up of sediment on the southern Great Barrier Reef over thousands of years. Captain Cook in 1770 and Matthew Flinders in 1802 both missed the island, but Francis Blackwood anchored HMS Fly off its shores in 1843 while surveying the reef. It remained uninhabited – the domain of the occasional birdwatcher and guano miner – until the opening of a turtle soup factory in the 1920s. Magnificent green turtles, 150 kilograms in weight and a metre long, lumbered onto the island to lay their eggs, only to be butchered, boiled and canned.
That was a bygone era. Since the 1930s, when Captain Christian Poulsen converted the cannery into a resort, the turtles have been a star attraction rather than a menu item. Arriving on the powdery white beaches from November, they nest at the same location where they hatched themselves. Resort guests can watch them burrowing above the high-tide line and see their shiny black hatchlings scamper from the sand to the sea. In the cooler months in the middle of the year, humpback whales on their annual northern migration pass the Heron jetty.
When Allison disembarked at the jetty, excitable Japanese tourists were alongside her, lugging bags that bulged with cameras and film. Her intention was to work at the Heron resort for a couple of months to save money and put her Japanese to good use.
Ian Drayton was a scuba-diving instructor who had kicked around in Heron’s waters for two years. The freedom of his job was a world away from his regimented former career in the Australian Army. Before Heron, Drayton was a corporal in the 152 Signal Squadron at Perth’s Campbell Barracks. The posting embedded him with the elite Special Air Service Regiment, whose motto is Who Dares Wins. Signallers serve side by side with Special Forces soldiers on their small patrols, providing specialist communications support.
Often, ‘siggies’ try out for full SAS selection. Drayton hurt his knee playing rugby for the army, which ruled out his chance at a beret. With peace breaking out during his six-and-a-half years in the military, he learnt to scuba dive and became a civilian instructor in his spare time. When he left the army, the reef drew him to Heron.
The warm waters around the coral cay teemed with hundreds of species of fish, manta rays, reef sharks and colourful coral. By day, Drayton’s laid-back island life was filled with voyages into the ocean. By night, he had good company in the close-knit group of island staff.
Falling in love was not on Allison’s itinerary when she left the mainland. She had high hopes of a successful career when she returned home, preferably on a stage somewhere. Drayton too was not looking to bring anyone into his life, but Allison immediately caught his attention. She had soft green eyes and long auburn hair. It might seem a peculiar thing for Drayton to have noticed, but Allison also had beautiful calves. The former ballerina always stood with one foot pointed behind the other, never flat-footed. It was like she was always ready to dance. Drayton soon fell head over heels and the pair began an island romance.
With no formal qualifications of his own and limited travel experience, he admired the achievements of the resort’s newest recruit. He was also taken by her quirky nature. When it came to how the world worked, Allison could be as lumbering as the olive green turtles that waddled onto the island’s beaches. Her naive comments about life were an endless source of amusement for her island friends. Eventually she would always end up laughing at herself too. She was easygoing, laid-back, happy.
As the relationship blossomed, Allison changed her plans and extended her stay on the island. She took up scuba diving, while Drayton started learning Japanese. Finally, she felt she could put off her life plans no longer and it was time to leave. Drayton wasn’t going to let her walk out of his life. He gave up the island’s best job and followed Allison south. They cemented their relationship by moving in together.
Their first home was a cheap, rented two-bedroom unit in Brisbane’s western suburbs. Allison took a job in the city as a sales agent for Flight Centre, the travel firm founded by Queensland entrepreneur Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner.
The rise of the empire-building Turner is the stuff of legend. Raised on an apple orchard near Stanthorpe, on the border with New South Wales, Turner worked as a vet before leaving the country to go backpacking. Still in his 20s, he and two mates bought a double-decker bus, started a tour company, Top Deck Travel, and led expeditions to Europe, North Africa and Asia. The business grew to a fleet of dozens of buses, and Turner was on the road to riches. In Australia, he switched his focus to air travel and started Flight Centre with a single store in Sydney in 1982. The Flight Centre Travel Group eventually grew to more than 2500 stores in 11 countries, employing more than 15,000 staff. The company was a perfect fit for Allison, with her love of travel and languages.
Drayton, meanwhile, was unsure what to do with his life after his sudden decision to follow his new flame to Brisbane. He turned to a profession where his lack of formal qualifications, training and experience didn’t matter: real estate. An army friend had a couple of real estate agencies and hired him as an agen
t in Redbank Plains, near Allison’s childhood home.
Allison’s parents, meanwhile, kept a watchful eye over their daughter. When Allison had gone to Heron, Priscilla and Geoff Dickie weren’t expecting her to return with a boyfriend in tow. It was an even bigger deal for the family when Allison made one of the first major, independent decisions of her life and moved in with Drayton. They didn’t rent for long, buying a house together at Malinda Street in the Ipswich suburb of Camira for $95,000 in March 1991. It was a large, brick, two-storey family home with a double garage and big yard, in anticipation of a life together.
Sometime around Allison’s birthday, Drayton took the plunge. He’d booked a stretch limousine as a surprise. It arrived at their house and the chauffeur whisked the lovebirds off to a little restaurant in Chapel Hill, where Drayton had a table reserved for dinner. Weeks before, he had secretly picked out a diamond engagement ring, taking one of Allison’s other rings to the jewellery store to get her size right. At the restaurant, over candlelight, he handed her the ring and proposed. Allison, who had no inkling of his plans until he popped the question, was overwhelmed. In tears, she accepted on the spot.
Family and friends celebrated the engagement at a party at the Ipswich home of her aunt and uncle, Julie and Don Moore, sharing beer and wine and plates of homemade food under a hired marquee.
Allison’s best friend, Kerry-Anne Cummings, couldn’t join them as she was living in London. Soon after, Allison and Drayton went and stayed with her at her Wimbledon flat, then the three of them spent a week on the road in Ireland. Allison took Drayton on to Denmark to visit the host family from her exchange trip at the end of school.
When travel agents were offered cheap fares to New Guinea, Allison and Drayton snapped them up. So did Allison’s friend Linda from the Denmark exchange, who had followed her into a job at Flight Centre, and her boyfriend, Stephen Ebeling, who later became her husband. The four of them went on the holiday together, with Drayton leading the way on a scuba-diving trip over submerged plane wrecks and entertaining the group with tales about the SAS. Drayton, with his love of the outdoors, was a man’s man. He and Stephen, a builder, got on like a house on fire.
Wise with their money, Allison and Drayton bought a second house together, at Serly Court in Bellbird Park, for $80,500 in October 1992, and rented it out. Financially, they were set up for a secure future. A wedding, family and long and happy life together seemed just over the horizon.
Second thoughts
The Miss Australia Awards was an event living on borrowed time when Allison Dickie entered in 1993. Organisers, desperate to keep up with the times, had changed its name from the Miss Australia Quest the previous year. Along with the name change, entrants could swap swimwear for business attire. The Miss Australia crown – made of silver, blue velvet and 800 pearls – had been ditched too, after 30 years of being balanced precariously on the heads of tearful winners. The satin sash and gleaming sceptre were also out.
In its heyday, the quest was broadcast live on TV with celebrity hosts such as Barry Crocker, Daryl Somers, Maggie Tabberer and Richard Wilkins. Winners made newspaper front pages and met royalty, presidents and popes. But despite raising tens of millions for the Australian Cerebral Palsy Association, a growing number felt the pageant was doing little for the cause of women’s rights. Allison was following in the footsteps of her mum. When Priscilla had entered Miss Redcliffe back in the day as a petite teenager, her mother, Lily, got her to walk with books balanced on her head to improve her posture. Priscilla won, making the final of the then-exceedingly popular Sunday Mail Sun Girl Quest. A crowd of 10,000 cheered on the 16 finalists as they took to the podium in their swimsuits at Sutton’s Beach, Redcliffe, for the Australia Day weekend of January 1960. The overall winner, Beryl, 17, from Gympie, took home a new car and was granted a television screen test.
Several decades later, Allison entered Miss Brisbane as a fun way to get back on stage for the first time since her ballet days, and to raise money for charity. The fundraising consumed most of Allison’s spare time, but her efforts were rewarded. At a gala event at the Mayfair Crest Hotel on Roma Street on Friday 22 October 1993, Allison was named Miss Brisbane. Her mum was still working as a school librarian and had a young student with cerebral palsy. Accepting the award, Allison told the crowd she was absolutely thrilled. Her win made the news. ‘Allison’s fluent in compassion,’ read one headline, picking up on her command of six languages. For a fleeting moment, she was the star she felt destined to be.
Six weeks later, Allison was back at the Mayfair Crest for the next stage, the Miss Queensland awards. The motto for the night was ‘much more than a pretty face’, in case anyone missed the message that this was more than a mere beauty pageant. In a field of 12, Allison lost out to a 23-year-old radiographer, but she’d had her moment in the sun. The awards limped on for a few more years before finally ending in 2000.
For Allison, the excitement of becoming Miss Brisbane was dampened by the deterioration of her relationship. Drayton was in the audience for her win but was no fan of the awards. He couldn’t really fathom why Allison would want to enter.
Perhaps Allison reacted to his lack of support, or perhaps she was in two minds about whether the life mapped out in front of her was what she wanted, but she started having second thoughts. Although they were engaged, Allison and Drayton never got around to planning a wedding. In hindsight, Drayton knew it was a mistake to leave things open-ended. It made it too easy for Allison to leave. There were no blazing rows. They simply drifted apart.
Allison was the one who said it was over, and moved out. Drayton, devastated, quit real estate and went back to the Great Barrier Reef to nurse his wounds, this time to Lizard Island in Queensland’s far north, where he returned to work as a dive instructor. Allison took one of their houses, and Drayton the other.
Allison set about moving on. She started a relationship with a dentist, who whisked her off on a European vacation. While they were away, her new lover abruptly abandoned her at a London train station. Standing alone on the platform, Allison didn’t have a clue why he had run off. The answer came soon enough, but by bizarre coincidence. Instead of cutting short her holiday, Allison hooked up with her London-based best friend Kerry-Anne Cummings and continued her trip. The two friends were walking down a street in Prague when their jaws hit the floor – the runaway dentist was strolling towards them with another woman on his arm. Allison and Kerry-Anne could not stop laughing. He would forever be known as ‘Dickhead Dan’ the dentist.
Returning to Brisbane, Allison renewed contact with Drayton. Soon she was travelling 1600 kilometres from Brisbane to Lizard Island to visit him for a week, with Kerry-Anne in tow. Allison and Drayton fell back into each other’s arms. Drayton thought it would be for good. But Allison was still unsure. She had kept it from Drayton, but someone new had come into her life.
The decision
Allison was rising up the ranks at Flight Centre. She’d been promoted to run an office at Ipswich before being elevated again to state human resources manager. Her new role was based on the second floor of a building in George Street in Brisbane’s CBD. There, in 1995, she caught the eye of Gerard Baden-Clay, team manager of the company’s new 24-hour call centre in the same building. Gerard was boyishly handsome with soft, almost feminine, features. He had been raised to have impeccable manners and to be polite and courteous.
Gerard oversaw a handful of staff who ensured clients could call at any hour to book flights, tours or accommodation. Allison was above him, literally. His desk, on the first floor, was directly below hers, and she outranked him in the company’s pecking order.
They met when Allison was having trouble with her computer. Gerard, who majored in accounting at university but had an interest in computers, came to her rescue.
At first, Gerard tried to set Allison up with a friend of his, Ian Walton. Gerard had met Walton when both were working at accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick, and now they were at Flight
Centre together. Walton had expressed an interest in the company’s sweet and beautiful HR boss. So one night, when they were all in Cairns for a managers’ conference, Gerard organised a dinner and made sure Allison and Walton sat opposite one another.
Sparks flew that night, but not between Allison and Walton. Gerard, sitting nearby, had watched on enviously as the pair tested the water for a possible romance. He’d set up this meeting but now he wanted Allison for himself.
When the self-appointed matchmaker checked in later with his two colleagues, each was complimentary about the other but said they weren’t really suited. Gerard seized the chance to walk Allison home on that balmy Far North Queensland evening. As Allison reached the top step before her hotel room door, he moved in closer. They kissed.
Allison invited Gerard to her family’s annual Christmas gathering. Every year, her many uncles, aunts and cousins gathered at a family member’s house. The happy, noisy get-togethers, void of airs and graces, could be intimidating for newcomers. The way to enjoy them was to give back as much as you got in the friendly banter and inevitable digs.
Gerard didn’t get off to the best start with Allison’s family. As about 50 of her relatives bustled around, Allison’s new boyfriend retreated into a bedroom to work. She made excuses for him, saying he had a lot on at work and was always on call in the new 24-hour division. Gerard had set the tone for his interactions with Allison’s family. He found the functions overwhelming, but left an impression he considered himself above them. Allison didn’t feel that way. She found Gerard charming and she liked that he was hardworking and ambitious. Gerard treated her like a princess, and cast himself as her prince.
