She was the soul of discretion. You can imagine that’d be annoying to a pesky, nosy journalist wanting to find out news about the organisation she worked for almost her entire career, but Maggie White had a way of keeping that bit at a distance and yet drawing you close to her way of being.
As long as I knew Maggie, she’d always been Miss Tourism Australia in Asia. Of course before that, she was known for her stellar role in being part of the team behind the Sydney Olympics but she never really bragged a lot about it.
The few times we talked about it, you could tell she was proud of what the event did for tourism, and what tourism did for the nation, but it was expressed privately and humbly.
During her years in Asia – she was based in Kuala Lumpur and then moved to Singapore, she carried her role of representing Australia with that same sense of quiet pride and dignity.
Maggie White: At one with nature in Danum Valley, Sabah.
She loved Australia. She loved what she did. She loved the local people with whom she worked with in-market. Over our walks and dinners together, she spoke of them with respect.
Maggie had that rare quality of being able to balance the demands of headquarters with the needs of local markets, not that it didn’t frustrate her at times but she dealt with it with equanimity. She had a healthy grasp of life’s priorities – what was truly important, what was not.
What was important to her was people. Family, friends, colleagues, business partners.
One of the things I admired about Maggie was her ability to get close to the local travel trade who saw her as one of them. There will be many who will miss her. They missed her when she left Tourism Australia to return to her home and family life in Melbourne and Ballarat, where she was raised. Certainly her departure left a gap in Tourism Australia’s presence and engagement in the Asian market.
She took a personal interest in their issues and worked hard to build the bridge between them and Australia. She had one sole purpose – to help them sell more of Australia to their customers.
Her desire to get under the skin of places she visited, and lived in, was reflected in her decision to live in Geylang in Singapore. While her compatriots chose River Valley or Bukit Timah or Orchard, she chose the red light district neighbourhood because she wanted to get the real feel of Singapore.
We used to joke about that. “A White girl in a red light district,” I would tease her. She’d give me that smile of hers that always spoke more than she did.
She was curious, always wanting to learn about what’s new. She was an early attendee of WIT and in the early years, when we had few delegates, her smile was the one I looked to when I was on stage, needing encouragement and energy to do what I had to do.
Maggie at WIT in 2008, soaking it all in.
Her curiosity also made her one of life’s most passionate travellers. She loved trekking. The feel of feet on ground. She said that grounded her. Each year, she organised trips to the most off-the-beaten-track places for her friends. She trekked everywhere – Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, India, Sabah.
I was lucky enough to join her in Danum Valley, Sabah, one year. She was the most prepared traveller I know, I the least-prepared. She had leech proof socks, walking sticks, raincoat. I had to borrow her gear because I had nothing. She was generous that way. In the end, it was her who ended up with the leech up her trousers. I heard her shriek from the bathroom. We had a good laugh about that.
We sat at a waterfall and dipped our feet into a pool where little fish would bite at our soles. We giggled through it, it was so tickly.
She even had a raincoat for her camera gear. She was an avid photographer and I was always nagging her to organise them, publish them and call the book, “White and Restless.” We had a good laugh about that too.
Those laughs are gone – Maggie left us early this week – but they will resonate in my heart forever. As they will with her family, friends and colleagues and all those who loved the one and only Maggie White.
