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The Search For Molly Mallone started a long time ago, with a Molly I knew as a
soldier stationed in Australia. She was a school teacher who I dated while my unit
was camped in the town's botanical gardens. Life in the Army meant moving around,
and soon I shipped out to New Guinea to join the battle. I stayed in touch with
Molly for a while, but we lost touch as the war went on. I have always had fond
memories about this girl in particular, and always have wondered what happened to
her. I called her Molly Mallone because I used to tease her, by singing this poem
to her:
'In Dubin's fair city,
Where the girls are so pretty,
Was there where I first
met Miss Molly Mallone'
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Fifty years later, I returned to Australia to revisit some of the place I served.
While I was there, I searched for Molly. I talked with older people and with
teachers who might have remembered her. I even placed an advertisements in the
local newspaper asking for information about her whereabouts. Unfortunately, the
Molly I knew never turned up.
Returning to the places I served in Australia and New Guinea was quite an experience, and really got me thinking. All sorts of memories were rekindled for me. I began working on a story, biographical in some ways, about the life she had after I knew her. As I imagined how the rest of her life developed, she became real to me again.
I talked to soldiers, got papers and books from New Guinea and began researching what life would have been like for Molly. Of course, I could not tell Molly's story without telling that of her parents and their roots. So, in the end, the story really spans three generations of the pre and post war society of Australia and New Guinea.
