by Sue Williams
‘The third place . . . Miss Israel, Hanna Urdan. And coming second . . . Miss Norway, Ingeborg Sorenson.’ The two other finalists look tense. They’re both stunning, and Belinda can’t tell which of them will win. But she begins to relax. This contest has been a whirlwind of excitement but now it’s nearly over and she can return to Australia with her head held high, having come in sixth or seventh. It has been an incredible adventure, but she’s looking forward to getting back. She never dreamt she’d get this far. Looking at all the other women in this pageant, she really didn’t deserve to be in the final 15, let alone in the final seven.
A couple of days before she’d left Australia, her hairdresser had taken her to task. ‘Green, you’ve got shit hair. Let’s cut it!’ he’d said, before chopping off her long surfy-chick mane of blonde hair and fashioning it into a pageboy style to frame her face and high cheekbones. In the sea of big bouffant-haired competitors in this 73-strong contest, she feels this has now proved her main advantage. It has helped her stand out from the crowd, and allowed her to get this far. ‘I was noticed and that’s the first thing – just being noticed,’ she says.
The auditorium has again grown quiet. There’s a drum roll. She steals a look at the other two women beside her to catch their reaction. And, at last, the moment everyone’s been waiting for. The compere pauses for effect. ‘The winner of Miss World 1972 is . . .’ Another drum roll sounds. ‘The winner is: Miss Australia, Belinda Green!’ She can’t believe her ears. It’s only when she sees everyone else looking at her that she realises she must have heard right.
Her knees feel weak with the shock and she bends down, her hands fluttering up to her face. She hears a scream, and realises it’s hers. The other two women start clapping and finally it dawns on her that she now has to walk over to the centre of the stage to be crowned. ‘It was such an adrenalin rush and then everything went jet black and there was one spotlight just on me,’ she says. ‘I had to walk down and back, and I was trembling so much.’
She’s guided to the throne, the crown is placed on that glossy pageboy hair, the winner’s blue cape is draped around her shoulders and she’s handed the gleaming sceptre. She can’t stop smiling. This can’t really be happening . . .
Back in Nelson Bay in New South Wales, her mum, Gwen, has just started her morning shift cleaning motel rooms. A phone call comes through from the US TV network NBC asking for a comment about her daughter just being crowned the new Miss World. She laughs. ‘Knock it off, boys!’ she says, sure they’re pulling her leg. Later, when everyone’s finally found out it’s not a joke, the motel puts up a sign: Mrs World Works Here.
The road to that Miss World title hadn’t exactly been smooth. Born Lynette Green in Sydney’s Blacktown, the third of four children, Belinda contracted rheumatic fever at the age of five and spent a year being treated in Camperdown Children’s Hospital. When she was allowed back home, she relapsed more or less straight away, and had to be sent back, eventually ending up in a convalescent home.
It’s not that her family life was particularly easy, either. Originally her dad, Ossie, worked as a fireman on the steam trains at Blacktown, but in 1960, when she hit eight, her mum Gwen left him for another man. Worse, she took the two middle children, Belinda – who, back then, was known as Lyn – and her older sister, Julie, away from their dad to live with her and her new man, Stan, in the country. They lived in a temporary camp set up for construction workers building the Burrendong Dam, 72 kilometres south-east of Dubbo. Her older brother, Ronnie, and younger sister, Jenny, stayed with their dad in the city.
‘I think that was the saddest day of my life,’ says Belinda. ‘As Mum drove away with the two of us in the car, Dad had Jenny in his arms and was holding Ronnie’s hand, and he just fell to his knees, sobbing, “Don’t leave me, Gwennie! Don’t leave me!” I’d never seen my dad cry before, and I didn’t really understand what was happening. Nothing was ever explained to us. Mum just told us that our new surname was “Holliday”, but we didn’t even know how to spell it. She then just pretended she and Stan were married. It wasn’t a very stable childhood at all. It was very erratic.’
For young Belinda it was all very hard. She still saw her dad but, since he was always the big hugger and cuddler of the family, she missed him terribly. Her mum worked hard and was a good provider, but was never affectionate. She’d had a hard childhood herself and just didn’t know how to be, she told her daughter many years later. But Belinda also pined for her brother. After spending so much time in hospital, as soon as she’d been allowed to do physical things she’d become a real tomboy. She’d revelled in holidays at her nanna’s near Mudgee, cray-fishing, making canoes to go down the creek, riding billycarts with Ronnie, running wild and turning feral – and coming back with bruises, cuts, teeth missing and even, one day, a broken collarbone that she tried her best to hide for two days until the pain became too bad. Yet now, as well as missing her brother terribly, she started being bullied at her new bush school. She was pushed into the pond on her first day and was threatened with bashings by the other girls.
Three years later, just as Belinda had made firm friends with the local girls, had grown fond of the bush and had discovered a great love for the wildlife – constantly bringing stray and injured animals home – she was shunted again, this time back to the city. Her mum, overwhelmed with guilt for splitting up the family, had gone back to her dad, Ossie, hoping they might be able to work things out. But it was not to be. ‘Mum felt so bad about what had happened, she really tried to give the marriage another go,’ Belinda says. ‘But, in truth, she still loved Stan.’ After a few weeks, her parents parted a second time and her mum returned to Stan. Then three years after the second move, in June 1966, Ossie died as a result of a stroke. He was just 40.
The tough childhood then became even tougher. Ronnie and Jenny were reunited with their siblings when Gwen re-established the family in Sydney’s south-west, even though they now seemed like strangers to Belinda, and Gwen took on a full-time job folding patterns in a factory to try to earn enough to care for her four kids. It was a struggle every week to make ends meet on one wage packet, and a strict, disciplined environment emerged with everyone having their jobs to do around the house to keep things on track. Without it, they all knew, they could never survive.
Belinda, missing her dad terribly and aching to be back in the bush surrounded by animals, took solace at school in the camaraderie of the other girls, sport and a kindly female English teacher who took a special interest in the sad little girl. The teacher asked her if she’d like to do some modelling for a photographer friend and Belinda felt grateful for the attention. Her mum, however, wanted her to leave school before Year 12 to get a job to help support the family. In the end, they compromised. Belinda was awarded a scholarship to study accounting at TAFE and, towards the end of the course, worked as an assistant part-time to an accountant in a mining company. Unfortunately, she hated it. ‘I was thoroughly bored and felt my life was over!’ she says.
So finally she threw it all in and fled with her boyfriend to Tasmania; the closest they could afford to going overseas. Once there, she did a little modelling – agreeing to change her name to Belinda to avoid confusion with two other Lyns at the same agency – and was persuaded to enter the Miss Australia Beach Girl competition for the chance to represent Tasmania. ‘Tassie is always cold, so there weren’t a lot of bikini girls there!’ she explains. Much to her surprise, she won, and was then flown to Perth, her first time in a plane, to take part in the national contest. She won that too, with a prize of $10 000, a gold-coloured Chrysler Valiant Charger car and a first-class trip to Hawaii.
Her return to Hobart wasn’t as happy as she’d imagined, however. She discovered her boyfriend had been sleeping with a friend and, absolutely shattered by the betrayal, told him it was over. He was unmoved, simply dumbfounded that he’d been found out. ‘You won’t leave me!’ he sneered. ‘You’ll never make it in life without me!’ It was all the mo
tivation Belinda needed. She decided to move to Melbourne and continue modelling there. At that point, fate intervened. The organisers of the Miss Australia Beach Girl contest called her to take part in another competition, the Quest of Quests contest. As a result of that, she was selected to represent Australia in the Miss World pageant in London.
A few days later, she parked her car in a Melbourne street, flew to Sydney to borrow clothes from her sister Julie, and took another flight to London. A week after that, she was crowned Miss World, on the same night that Gough Whitlam became prime minister in Australia. ‘It was a pretty big day all round!’ Belinda laughs. ‘But in that one split second I won that contest, my life changed forever.’
For a kid who’d had very little in life, the sudden change in her circumstances was bewildering. She was flown first class around the world and it seemed all she had to do was smile and be nice to people. She modelled for the spring and summer collections of all the top designers: Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Pierre Cardin, Valentino, Jeanne Lanvin . . . She was whisked to Paris for five days, and to Milan for another three. She was wined, dined, linked to some of the most glamorous stars of the age, like singer Rod Stewart, and feted everywhere she went.
At Christmastime, she was taken by comedian and actor Bob Hope around all the American army bases – to the Aleutian Islands, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Guam, Diego Garcia and even via helicopter to wartime Vietnam – to entertain the troops, along with an ensemble of stunning showgirls. At one point, he would lead her onto the stage and ask her why Australian girls were so beautiful, and she’d dutifully reply that it was probably the result of the fresh air and sunshine. ‘And Belinda,’ he’d ask next, ‘have you ever been kissed by an American GI?’ At that, the crowd would all whoop and whistle until he chose one to come up and give Belinda a kiss – an act that would vary from a shy peck on the cheek to a full-on pash.
‘Bob was wonderful and he really took me under his wing,’ says Belinda. ‘But my old insecurities were never too far below the surface.’ One night she confided in him that it didn’t feel right she was there, as all the other girls were so good-looking and sexy, and she didn’t think she was sexy at all. He smiled kindly at her. ‘You’re not meant to be sexy,’ he answered. ‘You’re their sweetheart back home, or their little sister, or the girl next door.’ That night, a little carved wooden angel was left outside her door. The note with it read, ‘You’re an angel! Love, Bob.’
The travel was constant, the crowds were demanding and the pace was hectic. ‘But she was the Aussiest Aussie girl you’ve ever seen overseas,’ says Kevin Nugent, who’s been a close friend from those Miss World days. ‘She always talked about being from Australia, even at a time when the cultural cringe was so strong, and some people had never heard of us, or heard our accents before.’
But it did take its toll. Belinda was often exhausted, jetlagged and, despite being surrounded by other people, horribly lonely. When she saw one night that the Miss World contest was being re-run on TV, she asked a young traveller she met in the hotel lobby to come up to her room with her and have a glass of champagne and watch TV. The girl was startled when she saw Belinda in the row of contestants on the screen. ‘Oh!’ she screamed. ‘That’s you! You’re in it! Who won?’ Belinda refused to tell her until the crown finally went on.
‘The work wasn’t hard and it was an amazing experience and opportunity, but after a while, the loneliness set in,’ says Belinda. ‘I wasn’t allowed to visit home until the Australian tour, which was another 11 months away. In London one night, I lit a little fire in the fireplace for comfort as I was so exhausted, down and lonely, then I was told that wasn’t allowed because of the Clean Air Acts. I didn’t know how to make speeches, I just had to do my best. When we went to dinners, there’d be three knives and three forks laid out and I’d think, What do I do here? We’d only ever had one of each at home. And in Paris, no one eats – they just smoked and drank coffee. I would say when I was modelling that I’d be much more responsive if I had food, and they’d say, ‘No, you can’t eat as you’re not thin enough as it is.’ They starved me.
‘I’d always been a tomboy and I was so sick of wearing make-up. In the end, I didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t. I couldn’t even remember which bits were me, and which bits were Miss World, the commercial commodity. Feminism was getting stronger all the time, and I knew I was being exploited, but it was a big opportunity for me. But I felt terribly insecure too, and I knew I wasn’t the most beautiful girl around. When I did appearances, I almost felt like I was a walking apology. By the end of the year, I just wanted to come home. Often, I’d cry for my dad. I just wanted his big arms around me to tell me it was OK.’
By the time Belinda arrived back in Sydney for Miss World’s Australian tour, she was exhausted, pale, wrung out and bedraggled. Her sister Julie met her at the airport and she collapsed in tears into her arms. Her old boyfriend finally managed to meet her again too. He’d been phoning her since the night she became Miss World, but she’d always managed to avoid him. As she tried to slip out of the room, he shouted after her that he knew she would change, he knew she’d think she was too good for him now. She merely kept on walking. When she was at a store promotion in Melbourne for that leg of the tour, two people approached her. They turned out to be council workers with a $35 fine for her for the car, now totally wrecked, which she’d left on the street when she’d departed for the Miss World contest 11 months before. ‘Oh, don’t worry!’ they exclaimed excitedly, when she looked anxious. ‘We just used this as an excuse to meet you!’
When her year’s reign ended, Belinda settled back into life in Australia, keen to have her feet back on the ground and to try to get her own identity back and rebuild her fragile self-esteem. It was hard when so many people now seemed to want to know her purely because of her title. A lot of men wanted to bed her just to boast they’d been with a Miss World. It was hard to work out who wanted to be a true friend. She was still receiving offers from overseas of screen tests and modelling assignments, but she just wanted to be home. She didn’t feel worthy. ‘What I should have done was just take a break for a month and then go back overseas to take advantage of all the opportunities,’ says Belinda. ‘But I didn’t know. I didn’t have anyone to guide me; I didn’t have my mum or dad to tell me what to do. Instead, I just struggled for a few years.’
In Australia, Belinda did a bit of modelling, some promotional work and some TV, and travelled with girlfriends. But in truth, she was more than a little lost. She decided to set up a PR company and contacted a man she’d met briefly many years before with a crowd of mates at a football game. He’d approached her with a can of beer, pulled the ring off the top, gone down on one knee and said he was in love with her, and would she marry him? ‘Who is that idiot?’ she asked friends later. ‘His name is John Singleton,’ they told her.
John was by now an extremely successful advertising, radio and TV entrepreneur, and he gave her some advice on starting her own business, and then some promotional work and a role as hostess of a TV show. Eventually, they began dating, and she became his third wife in 1982. ‘I think Miss World had been pretty exciting, and I was looking for more excitement in my life,’ says Belinda. ‘He was a bit of a wild bush cowboy and very unpredictable, and I guess I misjudged that for excitement.’
The couple had two children, Jessie, born in 1982, and Sally, two years later, but eventually went their separate ways in 1987. John was to marry three more times, and later to have another steady partner. ‘I think the problem was that John had a very short attention span when it came to women and I basically said I couldn’t live like that. There were always other things that were more important than me and the kids and, while I still loved him, I was very unhappy and couldn’t live the sort of life we were living any more. He was off campaigning with Bob Hawke and I had children and responsibilities and wanted to provide them with the kind of stable home life I’d never had. I just w
anted a normal life.
‘I also felt I’d become a doormat. What used to be excitement and spontaneity had become chaotic. I took a break at a health farm and, when I was there, I realised how much of myself I had lost; I’d become just a shadow of John’s life. I learnt I was a good person, and deserved to be valued. I realised then the value of keeping my mind, body and soul strong, which all came down to what I did with my life. So in the end, I felt I’d do a better job bringing up the children as a single mother than with him. But having had the experience of losing my dad, I thought it was important that we both stay very connected to the kids, and while he mightn’t have been the best husband, he was a good dad.’ The pair remained on good terms and shared custody, with John always being around for birthdays, school holidays and Christmases.
At the end of the marriage, Belinda threw herself into motherhood, and also continued with her media, marketing and public relations career. She appeared regularly on TV, hosting and producing 15 episodes of the lifestyle show Let’s Get a Life for community television, presenting a fashion, beauty and health segment for Ray Martin on his Midday Show, being a regular on Good Morning Australia and serving as a panellist on Beauty and the Beast.
But for Belinda, her children always came first. ‘I’ve known her to be offered some of the greatest jobs, but when she realised they might clash with taking the girls for swimming lessons, or anything they had to do, she always turned them down,’ says Kevin Nugent. ‘Her devotion to her children was absolute. She’s the greatest mother I’ve ever known. When I was sick for a period she even took my son for a while and looked after him. That was her suggestion, never mine.’
She also did a lot of guest appearances at functions for charity. One of her closest friends, Roz Lyon, often accompanied her. ‘Everywhere we went, people would come up to her and talk to her, and she’d never be dismissive or impatient with them,’ Roz says. ‘She’s one of those people who’s always kind to everyone. She was always so approachable. And she was also always an incredible animal-lover. It could be a pain in the butt driving anywhere with her in the country as she’d always want to pull over any time she saw a kangaroo by the side of the road. One time, she saw an injured kookaburra and insisted we stop the traffic and pull over and save it – despite the fact that there were all these cars and trucks zooming up at 110 kilometres per hour. But she was so determined. We ended up getting that kookaburra, and she wrapped it in a very expensive cardigan. Clothes didn’t matter at all to her when there was an animal in need.’