MY DAUGHTER PACKED A LIFETIME INTO 21 YEARS
It’s every parent’s fear – the unexpected knock on the door when your child is away travelling the world alone. For Rosie Ayliffe, that knock brought the news that her daughter, Mia, had been attacked and killed in an Australian hostel. Now, one year on,
My daughter Mia lived big. As a child she was wise beyond her years, as a teenager she was full of dreams and as a young adult she was hungry for adventure. It was why she took herself off on a solo trip around the world. But, tragically, that is where her journey ended. Today, a year after Mia was killed, I’m left wondering if some part of her knew her time on earth would be short – that there was a reason she packed a lifetime’s worth of experiences into her 21 years.
I suppose Mia was always destined to travel – she had a father whose heritage hailed from Jamaica and China, and a mother who was a travel writer for many years. Though her father and I separated when Mia was young, I kept the door open to his family and made sure she understood where she came from. We moved to Derbyshire and, if she had been any other child, I’d have worried about her settling in. But from the moment she walked through the school gates, she was surrounded by girls who wanted to be friends. It was
I so admired this beautiful, outgoing, principled young woman
[continued from previous page] the Mia effect – people just wanted to be around her.
I so admired this beautiful, outgoing, principled young woman. As she grew older, she began to talk passionately about the places she wanted to visit. I suppose I expected her to follow the well-trodden routes around Europe, but Mia dreamed bigger. She had her heart set on Australia.
She talked of travelling with friends, but for one reason or another they dropped out, and Mia questioned whether she was capable of going alone. Though I felt anxious about letting my only child go, I’d raised her to know she could do anything she put her mind to, and I wasn’t about to tell her she couldn’t go. I trusted her judgement and let her arrange currency, visas and itineraries. She saved up enough money to fund herself for a year and, in September 2015, she was ready to go. I dropped her off at the railway station, told her I loved her and wished her a good trip.
In the months that followed, I lived vicariously through Mia as she visited Morocco, Turkey, India and Thailand. Through regular calls and Skyping, she told me endless stories. I could tell she was having the time of her life. Still, when she arrived in Australia, I breathed a sigh of relief. She settled in Queensland, got a flat with friends and a job as a waitress. Her pictures told of sun-drenched days on the beach and good times. It was obvious she was deliriously happy.
One day she told me she was going to spend 88 days doing farm work in the Australian outback. It’s something people have to do in order to extend their working visa to a second year. Mia told me she would be going with friends, and I assumed the system would be well regulated. But before long, alarm bells began to ring.
Mia was tasked with picking up rocks from a field so they didn’t damage the farm equipment, and it meant spending long days under the hot sun. I was shocked to hear she’d had no safety training, and the more she told me about this system, the more outraged I felt. She described her accommodation as being like a prison, and told me how one person had even had his passport confiscated so he couldn’t leave.
Some 15,000 miles away, all I could do was comfort her, but something in her voice told me she was afraid. I started waking up in the night to check my phone, and felt anxious when I didn’t hear from her. But nothing could have prepared me for that evening last August when two policemen arrived at my door.
They told me Mia had been fatally injured, and in a series of frantic phone calls to the Foreign Office, I began to piece together what had happened. Mia had been dragged from her bed and stabbed by a man staying in the same hostel; another man had come to her defence and been seriously injured.
Grief works in strange ways. I spent the hours that followed focusing on what I needed to do: I had to book a flight, I had to break the news to family and friends. I was so deeply in denial that it wasn’t until I sat down on the plane that the deep despair set in. I wept, and I continued to weep for the entire flight.
In the days that followed, the grief continued to filter in; it was like a drip feed, responding to what my weary mind could handle. I viewed Mia’s body – to me a shell, empty of her spirit – and I was devastated to learn that Tom Jackson, the man who had tried to defend Mia, had succumbed to his injuries. But through the fog of grief were bittersweet moments that gave me in a glimpse into the life Mia had enjoyed. Meeting the strangers who had become some of her most cherished friends, I felt the love she gave them being reflected back at me. I felt Mia on my shoulder during her multi-faith funeral, which included reflections of the Buddhist beliefs she had held dear during her final years. Walking along the beach that had been hers, I could almost see her running barefoot across the sand, her hair blowing in the breeze, a laugh leaving her lips. In the months since, I have been overwhelmed by the messages I’ve received from all corners of the globe – men, women and children whose lives Mia touched in some small way. These stories sustain me; they remind me that her love didn’t just fill my world – it filled the whole world.
She might be gone, but she hasn’t left me. There are the little things – I feel her critical eye on my outfit as I get dressed, sometimes approving, often not. I feel her in the sunshine, filling the world with her lightness and warmth. Perhaps, most importantly, I feel her sitting on my shoulder, my moral compass, helping me feel my way through this strange new world.
It is she who has lit the fire in my fighting spirit, encouraging me to shout about the injustices that exist in the Australian visa system. Given that the 88 days of farm work are a legal requirement, you would expect the farms to be registered and certified. But young people are expected to find employment themselves and, as a result, are falling victim to sub-standard safety practices and even predators. Mia didn’t die because of the system, but she was passionately against it, and so it’s my job to take up the cause. I’m working with Tom Jackson’s family and Mia’s friends to campaign for a regulated system.
As I prepare to mark the first anniversary of Mia’s death, I do so as an expert in grief. I have a strong support network, and I try to focus on celebrating the life Mia had rather than mourning the future she lost. Though I have lived through every mother’s worst nightmare, I refuse to go down the path of ‘what if’ – I know it will only destroy me. The strongest feeling of all is that perhaps this was Mia’s fate; perhaps her time was always going to be short. Perhaps that’s why she burned so bright.