Warning: This post deals with suicide and may be triggering for some readers.
At the age of just 18, a young, blonde, German woman named Tanja Ebert made a trek halfway across the world to Australia, a land far removed – and far away – from her own.
She had found herself embarking on what has come to be a universal kind of rite of passage, a bridge between adolescence and adulthood, a first world method of navigating exactly who you are, and the kind of person you’re looking to become.
But as Ebert landed in Australia as a teenager, she fell – almost immediately – into adulthood and simultaneously in love. As News Corp reports, she was working in a local pub to fund her travels; his name was Michael Burdon, he was 18 years her senior, and he was a farmer from the far corners of the land far away. She found herself in Mannahill, almost 360km north-east of Adelaide, a tiny, isolated, squint-and-you’ll-miss-it dot on a map of our country, nestled in the top right-hand corner of South Australia.
Mannahill wasn’t, and isn’t, the kind of place you’re likely to find someone like Tanja Ebert. Ebert, who no doubt crossed the seas bustling with the energy characteristic of a teenager with a backpack on both shoulders and adventure and opportunity written into the blueprint of the year in front of her.
Mannahill, a settlement town, is home to little over 60 people. Burdon, the one who “courted” her for some time, worked on his family’s isolated 400 sq km sheep station. The property sits between endless stretches of empty no-mans land, with visitors needing to travel about 22km on a dusty, red, private road as a means of reaching the homestead.