When fate calls

Australia might have been on the other side of the world and a long way from home for Donna Wall, but her heart told her it was where she belonged. By Kelly Baker.

As a child Donna Wall drifted to sleep at night often listening to feather-soft drops of rain on the roof of her family’s home in Ireland. While the rain pattered down, Donna dreamed of a country where the sun always shone and the light sparkled so brightly you had to squint to see. She didn’t know why exactly, but this vast, dry continent had captured her heart and at just seven years old she knew it was where she was meant to be.

Today, Donna sits in the dining room of the townhouse where she lives in the southern Sydney suburb of Miranda.

At age 22 she’s nothing like the little girl who spent nights dreaming about Australia. Now she’s a grown woman who believes in destiny. For one thing, she’s 100 per cent clear on why Australia was calling to her all those years ago. “It was fate,” she says, tucking a strand of her long, straight hair behind her ear. “Fate brought me here so I could meet him.”

The man in question is 25-year-old Bryant Donlan, an Aussie with work-worn hands and a heart as big as a Mack truck. “Our meeting was just so random,” says Donna. “There we were in the middle of this huge country, but we found one another all the same. There was definitely a little magic involved.”

Donna and Bryant met three years ago in the farming town of Molong, in the hills of the Macquarie Range, in rural New South Wales. Theirs is a true romance, but it’s one that almost never eventuated.

When Donna arrived in Australia in 2004 she was a 19-year-old backpacker looking for a taste of adventure and determined to see as much of her dream country as possible. Understandably, Molong, home to roughly 1,700 people, was not high on her list of must-see destinations. Still, this was to be a working holiday, so after just one week in Sydney she headed to this outback town where she had heard there was work. To say her first impressions weren’t good would be an understatement. “On the first night I stayed by the vineyard where I was going to be working and it was a disaster,” says Donna with a laugh. “I hated it… it was in the middle of nowhere, there were mosquitoes, spiders, snakes... I thought, ‘First thing in the morning I’m outta here’.”

But the next day Donna began working in the vineyard alongside her older brother Tom, who had travelled to Australia with her, and soon she was enjoying herself. Besides, she knew the work would be for a brief period and that soon she and Tom would be heading to Melbourne. The siblings planned to travel in the campervan they had bought while still in Sydney, but a week after they arrived in Molong their plans went awry – the van had broken down.

“Luckily there was a mechanic’s workshop directly across the road from the caravan park where we were staying,” says Donna, “so Tom went over there and asked if someone could fix it.”

Donna didn’t say anything to her brother, but secretly she hoped a particular mechanic would be the one to repair the van. She knew nothing about him, but for some inexplicable reason he had caught her eye, and more importantly, her imagination. “I had to walk past the garage to get to the supermarket and this guy was always outside working on the cars,” she says. “I had noticed him… definitely. Actually, I was always looking at him. I had wanted to say hello but never had the courage.”

That man was Bryant, and to Donna’s delight he worked on the campervan. To repay him for his work, Tom invited him to drop by for a drink, which Bryant accepted. The following night Bryant came around again… and the night after that and the night after that.

Bryant, it turned out was as taken with Donna as she was with him. The only problem was neither was willing to make the first move. Donna was smitten and in the worst kind of way, but she was fighting her feelings as hard as she could. “Within a few days I was falling for him, but I kept reminding myself I was only in Australia for twelve months and I didn’t want to be getting involved with anyone,” she says. “But the more time we spent together, the more chemistry there was. There was just a spark between us; everyone noticed it.”

Bryant was feeling the attraction, too, but he was unsure of whether to do anything about it. For one thing, he had come to consider Tom a friend and he didn’t want to upset him. And he wasn’t certain Donna was interested. For a while the pair danced around one another, but then, about a week after meeting, Donna and Bryant were sitting in a car waiting for the lights to change when their eyes met. The kiss that followed lasted so long that drivers in the cars behind them honked their horns. It was a kiss that changed lives and turned worlds upside down, a kiss that made Donna reassess everything she thought she knew about herself.

“I fell for him instantly,” she says, a little sheepishly. “From then on, I knew we had to be together. It wasn’t what I’d planned, but it felt right. I figured if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”

Three weeks later, however, Donna and Bryant’s magical romance was at risk. The work had finished at the vineyard, the campervan was packed and Melbourne beckoned. Tom was ready to move on and he refused to leave his sister behind. Donna begged and pleaded, but Tom was having none of it. “He said to me, ‘You’ve been waiting your whole life to come to Australia. You’re not staying here and wasting your time in this little town with some guy you’ve only just met’,” says Donna. “He told me, ‘You’ve only been here a couple of weeks. You’ve got to move on and do what you came here to do, which is see the country’.”

Donna knew Tom was right, but when it came time to leave she felt as though she was being torn in two. An exasperated Tom literally pulled her away from Bryant and put her into the van. “As we drove away Bryant was waving to me, and I was crying so hard,” remembers Donna. “I couldn’t stop, I cried for hours. I was surprised by my feelings. We had spent only about a month together at that stage, but I knew we had something.”

In the coming weeks Donna travelled and Bryant continued with his regular life, but the pair spoke on the phone every evening. A month passed when Donna and Tom decided to head to Sydney for a weekend. Donna immediately called Bryant and suggested he come. Bryant agreed. Donna was thrilled, yet also deeply anxious. “I worried it wouldn’t feel the same,” she says, “we’d spent as much time apart as we had together. But once I saw him I knew nothing had changed. My feelings were the same and I could tell his were, too. It didn’t make sense, but that’s just how it was.”

Bryant remembers the moment they saw one another again as though it were yesterday. “I had been worried that she would move on and forget about me,” he says. “But once we saw each other it was as if we’d never been apart.”

The pair spent the next 48 hours wining and dining their way around Sydney and by the end of the weekend, their feelings had intensified, with Bryant declaring he had fallen in love.

“When he told me he loved me I was delighted,” smiles Donna. “We hadn’t known each other for long, but it felt very real. I kept asking other people, ‘what does it feel like to be in love’ and everything I heard was telling me this was the real thing.”

The weekend came to an end all too quickly and once again it was time to go their separate ways. But this time Donna wasn’t prepared to wait and within two days of arriving in Melbourne she was back on a bus and headed for Molong. Her brother thought she was making a mistake, but Donna wasn’t listening.  “I had one thing on my mind and that was Bryant,” she says.

The pair spent the next week side by side and then Donna was off again. Bryant announced he would finish up his mechanic’s apprenticeship and then they could travel Australia together. “I only had three more months to go,” he explains. “I thought I’d work, save some money and then go and meet her, but I couldn’t stick it out.” Two weeks after Donna left and 10 weeks before his apprenticeship was complete, Bryant quit his job and travelled to Melbourne to be with the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. “I didn’t want to do it, but Donna was only in Australia for twelve months and time was slipping by,” says Bryant. “I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her… somehow I knew I really had to give this relationship a chance.”

Donna and Bryant began travelling together. They covered much of rural New South Wales, before heading to the Gold Coast. There, in a bid to make quick cash, they began cleaning hotel rooms before taking on tiling work. “It wasn’t the most romantic thing,” says Donna, “but we made it fun.”

“And you need to learn to be able to work together,” interjects Bryant. “If you can do that, you can do anything.”

The days turned into weeks and Donna’s 12-month stay was coming to an end. Desperate to stay together, the pair decided Bryant would travel to Ireland with Donna. “I didn’t know anything about foreign people or places,” says Bryant frankly. “Before Donna and her brother came to Molong I’d never even met an Irish person. I’d never been anywhere, never been on a plane, but I wanted to be with Donna, so that was that.”

About 12 months after they first met, Donna and Bryant headed to Donna’s home in County Meath, Ireland. They moved in with Donna’s family, who, in true Irish style, opened their home and hearts to Bryant.

During the coming year the couple enjoyed all that Ireland had to offer, but their priority was securing Donna a visa that would allow her to live in Australia for good. When it came through, there were wild celebrations. But in November 2005, when it was finally time to relocate to her dream country, Donna had second thoughts. “I was so excited that it was all coming true, but when I looked at my dad and saw he was crying it really hit me just how far I was going,” she says. “It was tough, but still, I knew we were doing the right thing.”

After a brief stay in Bangkok, Thailand, Donna and Bryant arrived in Australia and set up home in Miranda. Today Bryant is working as a tyre fitter while Donna has begun a nail and beauty course at a local college. They say they’re in no rush to get married and have children but life couldn’t be better.

Sure, they’ve had tough moments and Donna deeply misses her family, friends and beloved Ireland, but she’s with the man of her dreams and to her, that’s what matters.

“And to think I met him on the other side of the world, in a town where no-one ever goes… there was something special going on. I guess I had the luck of the Irish on my side.”

 

Words: Kelly Baker. Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & Make-up: Jay Jay Rauwenhoff.