What it’s like being inside the mind of AnzacLive Girl Alice Ross-King
INTERACTIVE: At the age of 27 Alice was cleaning up the mess left by the bloody battles on the Gallipoli peninsula. Join us as we explore her life in real time.
SHE overcame a back story shadowed by challenges then was plunged into a hellish war zone.
Now you can ask Alice Ross-King how she got through — and hear from a TV star who has already gone inside her mind.
The gentle-hearted and caring army nurseis one of the key characters in News Corp Australia’s innovative project #AnzacLive, which takes two-way World War I storytelling to the social media audience.
At the age of 27 Ross-King was cleaning up the mess left by the bloody battles on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Her detailed diaries — which are, a century later, still a gripping, compelling and often tragic read of a young woman thrust into the midst of war — form the basis of her AnzacLive adventures and interactions. And what really shines through is her romantic and optimistic nature, as followers are discovering already.
Each day Ross-King and her fellow characters post on Facebook — stripping away the years to provide a direct link between, for example, the events of today, March 30 2015, and March 30 1915 — and answer readers’ questions in their own words.
TV beauty Georgia Flood knows what readers are in for as they delve into Ross-King’s life. She played her in last year’s acclaimed ABC dramaAnzac Girls and read her diaries voraciously as she prepared for the role.
“She is incredibly articulate, insightful and imaginative,” Flood said.
“Her diary has a lot of imagery and emotion, which set her apart from a lot of the other girls.”
Ross-King’s diary was so detailed the show’s writers Niki Aken and Felicity Packard would often draw directly from it for elements of the script.
“They would write some of the scenes that we filmed directly from the diary so I would bring that part of the diary to set that day,” Flood said.
THOUSANDS ARE FOLLOWING ALREADY: MEET THE CHARACTERS
“I would be able to look at the diary and know where I was at that moment in Alice’s head.”
Ross-King’s diary gives readers a magnificent insight into all aspects of war. The brutality, the heartbreak, the tragedy and the love.
“She spoke so kindly and empathetically about the boys,” she said.
“The series of friendships she made with soldiers along the way that she documents and the close connections she made are quite beautiful.”
As fascinating as Ross-King’s war experiences was her backstory, which seemed dogged by mystery and tragedy as her family moved across Australia — and shows a woman who overcame incredibly hard circumstances.
It is believed she was born as an illegitimate child in 1887. There is a strange and likely false report about her father and some siblings dying in a boat accident and an old newspaper account of her aunt being killed by Aborigines as a child — for more about these visit her Facebook page.
While some facts are clouded by history, Ross-King’s granddaughter Maggie Johnson says what we do know of her background surely makes the achievements in her life more amazing — and could resonate with many of those following AnzacLive who have had to overcome difficult life circumstances.
News Corp Australia journalist Jo Schulz is one of the people charged with the responsibility of bringing Ross-King’s diary entries to life through social media for AnzacLive.
She said readers won’t be able to avoid being drawn in to Ross-King’s personal journey.
“There are so many interesting things where people will make parallels with their life these days,” she says.
“There are entries that are so fascinating when you compare them to how we live now, like when someone leaves a note for her to meet them at 4pm but she is busy at that time so she just doesn’t see him that day.
“That wouldn’t happen now; you would just send a text.”
Readers will be able to interact live with the ten characters on their Facebook pages — plus Twitter and Instagram.
Get started at www.anzaclive.com.au — or simply search #AnzacLive on social media.
Originally published as What it’s like being inside the mind of AnzacLive Girl Alice Ross-King