Georgia Hardstark
speaker
4,112 appearances
38 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Georgia Hardstark’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah.
There's also grandstands on the west side of the stadium where people can sit. And that's where Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe are sitting with their two children, David, who's 13, and Joanne, who is 11, on that August day in 1973. Here we are. The family are huge Red Legs fans, and they come to nearly every game.
There are a lot of regulars in the crowd, and the Ratclips soon connect with a woman named Rita Huckle, one of their friends who they see often at the games. And that day, Rita has brought her granddaughter along to this game. She's a four-year-old named Kirstie Gordon, and it's the first time she's ever brought her granddaughter to a game.
So the game begins at 2.10 and even though there's an age gap between Joanne, who's 11, and Kirstie, who's four, they immediately take a liking to each other. Remember when you were like a preteen and a little kid thought you were the coolest?
And it just made you feel so good and like, you know, like babysitting. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, to this day, if a little kid likes me, I feel like special. Yeah. You know?
So I think it was kind of that sort of thing. So they spend like most of the game playing together. Australian football games are played in four quarters and between the two halves, there's a longer break. And so Joanne, her parents totally trust her. She's a very mature 11 year old.
And she's been to tons of games at the stadium before, so they let her go back and forth to the bathroom on her own, but only during the beginning of the quarters, not during the halftime when there's the big rush. Like, they have a sense of, you know, their 11-year-old in a crowd, and they're careful.
So during the first quarter, Kirstie needs to go to the bathroom, and the Ratcliffs and Kirstie's grandma, Rita, agree to let Joanne take her. The bathroom's about 300 feet away from their seats in a concourse area under the grandstand. They go to the bathroom. They come back. It all goes well. No big deal. And they continue to play while their families watch the game.
So then about 3.45 in the third quarter of the game, Kirstie needs to go to the bathroom again. And there's still plenty of time before the break to go between quarters, so the families, you know, let the two girls go. This time, though, after 20 minutes, they're still not back yet.
Joanne's father, Les, goes down to the concourse to look for the girls, thinking they're probably playing somewhere between the seats in the bathroom, but he doesn't see them. He asks a woman to go in the ladies' room to call for the girls. They're not in there. And about 12,000 people have come to the game that day.
But also, the stadium always opens the gates during the last quarter, so people from the general public who don't have tickets can enter for free and just watch the end of the game. And because it's a close match, a lot of people show up that day. And the beginning of the fourth quarter sees a huge, like, chaotic influx of people in and around the stadium.
Like, we went to that football game, soccer game in England. It's chaotic.
Yeah. Like, being a little kid there, just, yeah. So even though the girls haven't been missing for very long, they're both very responsible and trustworthy. So the adults are already alarmed and springing into action. And this is actually kind of rare for the 1970s, right? Completely. They'd be like in trouble and angry at them or just not even know that they were gone for that long.
20 minutes and they're worried.
So that's great. Yeah. So frantic Kathleen, who is 11 year old Joanne's mom, she goes to an office in the stadium and immediately is like, can you make an announcement for the girls to come back to their seat? And the administrator overseeing the match refuses, saying the stadium has a policy against making mid game announcements because it could disrupt the game.
He recommends she talk to the police and sends her off. Although right back in his office, hanging out with him is a police officer. He doesn't even bother.
Yeah. Like that's how flippant he was. Go back to your seat. I'm sure I'm sure they'll show up. Yeah. Right there. The Radcliffs and Grandma Rita spend the rest of the game looking for the girls. When the game ends at about 4.45, they return to the office and ask again that an announcement be made. This time, the administrator makes the announcement.
He says over the PA system, quote, Joanne Radcliffe in Adelaide Oval, come back to your mother and father. End quote. Like no details. Not only is this wording of the announcement super unhelpful, at this point, everyone is leaving the stadium in mass. And so all the noise from that completely drowns out the announcement. There's no emergency to it either. Right.
Did you ever get an announcement called at the grocery store on you by your mom?
Showing 341–360 of 4,112 · page 18 of 206
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