An Easter person: Liz O’Neill - Edmund Campion

Our epitaphs are written in the memories of our friends. The outpouring of grief at the death of Liz O’Neill, in 2007, validated this old saying. A diplomatic press officer, Liz died with other Australians when an Indonesian airlines plane crashed as it came in to land. She was a few days short of her 38th birthday.

Her funeral, in the Jesuit church in Kings Cross, St Canice’s, was crowded with friends whose presence there told the story of her life. A long pew, for example, seated former classmates at the Sacré Coeur school, Kincoppal-Rose Bay. They remembered her as a bright student who had starred academically and who was passionate about the viola.

Diplomats, led by the head of the department and with the local MP representing the Minister, remembered her service in the Tokyo and Jakarta embassies. They recalled how the Minister would halt meetings: ‘Quiet, I want to hear what Liz thinks on this’. Also, there was her gutsy attempt to speak the local language, with a strong Australian accent.

Journalists remembered her as someone who went out of her way to make their work easier. When the Jakarta embassy was bombed, in 2004, she had got between local police and an Australian journalist they were manhandling, telling them the journalist was just doing his job and the police should get on with theirs. But she was no patsy for intrusive journalists—after the Bali bombings, in October 2002, she had protected the dignity of the dead and wounded. Her work there won her an Order of Australia Medal, which was on display at the funeral.

Others remembered the commitment to social justice she had absorbed from her parents; her mother, who worked with the down-and-outs at St Canice’s and supported Uniya, the Jesuit social justice unit; and her father, a former army officer, who became a leading Catholic justice and peace advocate. Once, when her mother was filling a bag with secondhand clothes for the poor, five-year-old Liz questioned her. ‘Why would they want these old clothes, mum? Why don’t we buy them some new ones?’

So after university she linked up with the Jesuit Refugee Service and went to Hong Kong, working on a JRS project with Vietnamese refugees. After this experience she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She joined our diplomatic service, which sent her to trouble spots like Bougainville, East Timor and Bali. She was always herself, never a mere official. Thus she tried to find alternative ways to make a living for the fishermen of eastern Indonesia who poached in Australian waters.

Hers was a worthy life but journalist friends remembered how she had enjoyed it, never acting like a do-gooder. She liked cocktails and buffet brunch in good hotels and, on leave in Sydney, catching up with friends in smart restaurants. She dressed well in tailored suits. Longtime friends remembered the fun she had had with a band she founded, called the Boiled Lolly Seduction. On her finger there was a big daisy-shaped diamond ring that she enjoyed flashing.

For in 2001 she had met journalist Wayne Adams. They married two years later and a few years after that had a daughter, Lucinda. She took marriage very seriously, said her friend Father Peter Hoskin sj, who presided at her funeral as he had presided at her wedding: ‘She knew her life was more complete because of Wayne’s love and trust’. Her friends knew how much she treasured Lucinda—for many of them, the hardest moment of the funeral came at the end, when in Wayne’s arms the nine-months-old Lucinda reached out and patted her mother’s coffin.

Among the many tributes to Liz, the most unusual came from Father Frank Brennan sj. Writing about Easter in the Sydney Morning Herald, he ended with these words:

When I was flying home from Papua, a Garuda flight attendant sat down next to me. I told her that I was sad because my friend Liz O’Neill, the Jakarta embassy official, was one of the five Australians who had died in the tragic plane accident at Yogyakarta two days before. She then told me that she too had lost a friend who had been a steward on that fateful flight which claimed 22 lives.

We held hands briefly. It was an Easter moment. Liz would have smiled; Liz, whose human touch constantly broke through barriers and brought people together in the midst of tragedy; Liz, the daughter and sister schooled in faith, the wife and mother nurtured in love, the friend and diplomat dedicated to creating good relations between neighbours, between Australia and Indonesia, especially in the midst of tragedy. She is now an Easter person.