Task done by students of 3º year Polimodal.

1. Jean Paget was born in Malaya, in 1921 with her parents and his brother Donald. Mr Paget was the manager of a large rubber estate.

2. Jean and Donald moved to England to go to school. When she was 13, her father was killed in a car accident. Years later, Donald and Jean started working in the rubber estate in Kuala Lumpur. Jean spoke Malay, so that was useful for the company.

3. In 1941, Japan entered the war on the side of Germany. The Japanese invaded Malaya on the north-east coast, near a town called Kuala Lumpur . In 1939, Germany invaded Poland and the Second War World began.

4. Jean tried to escape with a family. Eileen Bill Holand Jane Freddie Robbin Jean tried to escape with a family…

5. Their car broke down. They joined a group of people and were taken to Panong. Unfortunately, the Japanese arrived. They expected to find some British soldiers, but there were no soldiers there. They made the group of people prisioners at once.

6. Men and women had to go to different camps, so they said goodbye to Bill Holand. Women and children suffered a lot. They did not have much food or ointment to keep off the mosquitoes.

7. At the end of the first week, most of the prisioners got dysentry. As the months went by, many of them died of fever. Freddie, Jane and Eileen died. Jean took care of the baby. Women had to walked very long distances. Japanese did not want they anywhere. There were not a camp for women.

8. One day, they were walking the main road which runs from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan, when they saw two white men repairing a lorry. They were australians. Their names were Joe Harman and Ben Leggatt. They had been captured too.

9. Joe Harman helped Jean to get some food. JOE TOLD JEAN ABOUT A PLACE CALLED ALICE SPRINGS, WHERE HE USED TO WORK. He stole five black chickens to the Japanese. He was discovered and tortured. Jean thought he had died, so she felt very guilty.

10. The women had only one guard, but he got ill and died. They were in Kuala Telang. They liked the place and they wanted to stay and plant rice. Jane asked for permission to Mat Amin. They stayed there for three years till the war was over. They were taken to Singapore where they met the men.

11. Jean went back to England. She found out that her brother and mother had died. She lived in London and worked for a long time. One day, she was told that she had inherited £53000 from an uncle.

12. She decided to use that money to build a well and a washing house in Kuala Telang.

13. During her stay in Kuala Telang, a man told her that Joe Harman was alive. She felt very happy and decided to find out where he was.

14. Joe Harman lived in Cairns. In this place, women did not work and they were not taken into account. Jean wanted to stay with Joe, but she did not like that. Then she had an idea…

15. Perhaps she could start a workshop in Willstown. She could make shoes out of alligator skins and sell them in England. After four months, Jean was able to send the first box of shoes to London. She also opened a milk-bar and, a hairdressing shop and built a swimming-pool. The population increased and people started talking of building a new road from Cairns and opening a hospital.

16. Jean´s dream was coming true. Willstown was slowly becoming… a town like Alice Jean lived in great happiness with her husband and her children, in the country she grew to love.

17. Melisa Oviedo Julieta Hall Victoria Carignano