Among Agnes Breuer’s remaining papers is a small, lined notebook. At one end are rough pencil sketches of ladies’ suits and dresses, their style dating them to about the 1930s. Turning the notebook the other way up, in the back one finds pages of text, at first in ink, then in pencil. In this small notebook, Agnes had copied the passages from Sleeman’s White China (in ink) and then (in pencil) the text of the World article from 21 September 1932. It seems unlikely that Sleeman and Agnes ever met through their connection to William Liu, yet Sleeman’s words, his explanation, his justification of those dramatic and heartbreaking events in her life could well have provided her with a feeling of reassurance and comfort.

Agnes and her son, William junior, were marked by the events of 1932; the events existed, mostly unacknowledged and unspoken, in the background of their lives. Agnes’s efforts to be reunited with her husband, William, continued for almost a year.^[58] She went on to have other relationships and, after finally gaining a divorce in 1964, married again. William remained in China and kept in contact with Agnes and their son over the passing years; in 1935, while living in Hong Kong, he had made unsuccessful efforts to gain custody of William junior.^[59] Over time, his heartfelt letters to Agnes shifted to cards and photos addressed to his son; the last contact Agnes had from him was in December 1950.^[60] Their son never told his own family of his father’s Chinese background, and it wasn’t until after his death that they began to unravel some of the mysteries of his early life.

Was Sleeman right in saying that Agnes’s troubles were nothing more than common ‘domestic infelicity’? Reading the sensational press reports, together with Agnes’s heartfelt letters to the government, the formal memos and informal comments scribbled in margins of government documents, it is hard to imagine that it was quite as straightforward as that. Agnes Breuer pursued a relationship outside the bounds of what was considered acceptable to white Australia—an imagined community that struggled with the idea and the reality of love that crossed racial and national borders. Her journey to China was made because of her love for her husband, but it was also a journey in which that love was tested by cultural difference and the expectations and prejudices of the two very different communities she and her husband were part of. Exploring her story in detail opens possibilities for considering how and why those who lived interracial and transnational lives could find themselves at odds with the communities and nations they called home.