Mary Bellingham
Cairo, 1915. Private James Bellingham met Mary Levi (Mustacki) in a crowded café. Their nuptials were among the first of many inter-cultural marriages born from the unlikely connections of war.
The couple came from vastly different worlds. James was born at Greenmount near Toowoomba in 1892, the son of an Australian father and a Scottish mother. Raised Anglican, he had worked as a bushman before enlisting with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) at the outbreak of war.
Mary was born in Cairo in 1897, but had a far more enigmatic past. Ostensibly the daughter of a Romaniote Jewish hawker, Solomin Levi, a newspaper article hints at a more dramatic history: Mary and her mother, Recketta, may have escaped from a harem.
In September 1914, James embarked for Egypt aboard the HMAT Omrah (A5) with the 5th Company Army Service Corps, 1st Light Horse Brigade Train, entering Maadi camp at the edge of the desert. Like most Australians stationed near Cairo, James would have been an avid tourist — visiting the pyramids, and exploring the bustling bazaars and cafés of the city.
One imagines Mary’s first impressions of the Queenslander were positive - clean shaven, khaki uniform, and slouch hat with an emu feather - James would have made a striking if not somewhat unusual figure.
In July 1915, James and Mary were married before His Majesty’s Consul in Cairo, under the provisions of the Foreign Marriage Act 1892 (UK). Mary signed her name with an X marking her consent. Their witnesses were Lieutenant Harold Maunder, the bridegroom’s superior officer, and Davide Levi, likely a brother or relative of the bride.
James and Mary were among the first inter-cultural marriages in Egypt. Two months previously, Private Philip Cawthan had married Emilia Spoura, a Polish shop assistant, at St Mark’s Church in Choubra. Over the following years, Egypt became a backdrop for further war marriages involving Armenian, Egyptian, French, Greek, Italian, and Syrian brides.
For James and Mary, life together began in Cairo. Their eldest daughter, Isabella Bellingham, was born in 1916. The family were separated by war shortly after when James transferred to England for service with the 9th Australian Infantry Battalion in France. In the interim, Mary and Isabella lived at the Slade Block in Kasr-el-Nil Barracks.
James returned to Australia aboard the HT Malta on submarine guard duty in late 1918. The following year he secured a free passage for Mary and Isabella to join him in Queensland. At Port Said, Mary embarked for a strange new land with her three-year-old daughter on the HT Windhuk in July 1919.
Reunited, the Bellinghams settled in Eumundi in the Sunshine Coast Region, later re-locating to Brisbane. They went on to have five more children. During the Second World War, James served in the Citizen Military Forces. In 1946, the family visited relatives in Egypt, only to be repatriated the following year as distressed Australians.
Like many veterans, James suffered lasting health issues due to his war service and relied on the meagre support of the Department of Repatriation. After his death in 1970, Mary sought a war widow’s pension, but her claim was rejected. She moved in with her daughter and spent her later years quietly.
Mary passed away in Brisbane in 1987 — more than seventy years after that fateful meeting in Cairo.
Photograph: Courtesy of Daryll Bellingham