Georgie and I met at a kick-boxing club in London in 2004. We sparred together in a few beginner classes, just hitting soft pads. Although I didn’t pay her too much attention initially, I immediately recognised she was tall, elegant and very good looking.
It wasn’t until the club’s Christmas drinks that things kicked off between us. We started talking and couldn’t stop. We’d both travelled and worked in Latin America, and also loved horses – Georgie had volunteered with a horse-riding business for tourists in Ecuador. The sparks were flying all over the place.
A friend of mine was deejaying at a gay club nearby so we headed there and continued chatting, dancing and flirting. About 2am we found an all-night cafe and talkeduntil daybreak, then went our separate ways. But we planned to meet again.
On my way to our third date, my housemate called saying we’d been burgled. I had to return home and call the police. When I explained this to Georgie she suggested coming to mine instead. When the police finally arrived, many hours later, I introduced myself as one of the occupants. One of the constables asked Georgie who she was. There was this awkward silence – on date three was she my girlfriend? I think we went with “friend”. But she didn’t go home that night.
Things moved quickly from there. One morning in early spring we took a bike ride through a nearby park that had little speed bumps. Like us, our bikes were very different – mine was a lightweight touring bike and hers a hard-tail mountain bike.
I was riding just ahead of her but when I looked back I saw her doing this funky bunny hop over the speed hump. I can picture the jacket she was wearing – dark grey, heavy canvas – and her focus as she flicked her bike over the hump. It was that joie de vivre that delighted me. Her embarrassment when she realised I’d seen was also so very her – wanting to be cool, but so much more than that. This was someone who couldn’t contain her enthusiasm. It crystallised what I loved about her.
After a couple of years of living together in London we moved to Melbourne. She loved the city and fitted right into some sports and footy clubs here. But she found it hard to get work for her niche in sports community development. So she went back to the UK for work and our relationship became long-distance.
Nearly a year later, in 2009, she found out she had breast cancer. She was only 32. Within a fortnight, I gave up my job and moved to the UK to be with her. She absolutely knew I would upend my life to support her at a time it really mattered.
She did recover well initially. A couple of years later we made it back to Australia and this time we both found work that suited us. We also took many great trips – camping in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, cycling trips all over including from Cairns to Cape York.
But a couple of years later she was diagnosed again, and a bit later the cancer metastasised. At the tail-end of 2019 her doctor advised her that she may only have six months to live. It was time for her to head home to the UK and I went with her. It coincided with Covid lockdowns, so we got to spend a tremendous amount of time together in a small town near her family.
Georgie seemed to be improving but then she started to get breathless and her specialists couldn’t work out why. She was in hospital for scans when she had a brain haemorrhage and lapsed into unconsciousness. Two days later, in July 2020, after some intensely moving times in ICU with her family, she died.
I feel so much gratitude for the time we spent together. Just three days before the brain haemorrhage she had cycled to see her GP – so fitting, being active was so important to her. It was her irrepressible energy I loved, and I am a better person for having known her.