Inspired Magazine vol 3

Geraldine Cox
Australian woman Geraldine Cox has rescued Cambodian children
from jungle war zones, stared down the face of AK47s to protect kids
without parents and remained in a city in the throes of a military coup to
stand up for the thousands of kids she’s come not only to protect, but to
love through her work at Sunrise Cambodia.
Opposite page
Geraldine has become
‘mum’ to thousands of
Cambodian kids.
It was 1997 and the Cambodian military had
staged a coup against the Cambodian royal
family. As tanks stormed the streets of Phnom
Penh, the royal family and all of their staff fled.
Except one. A red-haired, middle-aged Australian
woman – Geraldine Cox.
Geraldine had been working for the Cambodian
royal family, and helping look after 60 kids at a
nearby orphanage. As the military unleashed terror
throughout the city, a bus of ex-pats tore down
the street to Geraldine’s house, people screaming
out of the bus windows for Geraldine to flee the
country with them. But with the royal family and
its staff already gone, who would look after the
orphans? “I could never sleep another night if I left
those kids and didn’t know what had happened
to them,” Geraldine says. “That was a real turning
point. I realised these kids and Cambodia were my
destiny.” She shook her head and shouted back to
the bus passengers. She’d stay. The bus sped off
without her.
SHOCK ARRIVAL
Geraldine’s split-second decision that day would
spark decades of work in helping Cambodian
kids through the launch and operation of Sunrise
Cambodia. It would lead this woman, who thought
she’d never be a mother, to have hundreds of
children call her mum. It would show her that
happiness comes in service, in compassion,
in kindness.
Not that it had started out that way. Geraldine
arrived in Phnom Penh as a 25-year-old in 1970.
She’d recently discovered she was unable to have
children so she determined, if she couldn’t be a
mother, she’d opt for a life of glamour and travel.
She joined the Department of Foreign Affairs with
dreams of an exotic and sophisticated life in Paris,
or maybe Cairo or Rome. “But I found that I’d
been posted to Cambodia just a month after the
Vietnam War started,” she says.
As the young Aussie stepped into the embassy
car awaiting her at the airport, she was shocked
to watch the drivers check the underside of the car
for bombs. “That was my arrival,” Geraldine says.
“There were rocket attacks every night. There were
amputees bleeding in the streets. There were whole
villages fleeing from the carpet bombing with all
the animals in the streets. There were soldiers with
gun belts and grenades walking around. I felt like I
hyperventilated for the first couple of weeks.”
Yet there was something about this country that
captured Geraldine’s attention. On that first trip
Geraldine stayed in Cambodia for two years. And
even later, when she was posted to Manila, to
Bangkok, to Tehran, and Washington, she found
herself in the file rooms searching for the latest
dispatches from Cambodia.