US diplomat Mary Burce Warlick on returning to the country where she spent time as a child in the 1970s
©Jayne Newgreen Mary Burce Warlick says Melbourne reminds her of San Francisco
Mary Burce Warlick – career diplomat and globetrotter – became US Consul General in Melbourne last October after nearly three years as the US ambassador to Serbia. Before that, she served in Russia, Germany, Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as several tours in Washington, DC.
“Melbourne is wonderful. It reminds me in some ways of San Francisco,” she says. “It’s been called the most liveable city in the world and I can understand why. Life is centred along the Yarra river. It’s accessible, it’s multicultural, there’s a real buzz.”
Burce Warlick, however, admits to missing certain things whenever she takes up a new post, noting the Bolshoi and opera in Moscow, and the wineries and monasteries in Serbia. “We had a particularly tight-knit diplomatic community in Belgrade,” she says. “In Melbourne, that community is much smaller, though of course I have many wonderful, new friends.”
While her last post in Belgrade focused largely on policy, she is now more concerned with outreach, developing relationships that enhance connections between the US and Australia, such as commercial links already secured by companies such as ExxonMobil, Ford, General Electric and Boeing.
“Australians are warm and welcoming,” she says. Burce Warlick often receives invitations to major events, including the Australian Open, the Melbourne Cup and “Hollywood Costume”, an exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image that the consulate helped to sponsor. Most of her nights are booked with functions. Yet Melbourne is only part of Burce Warlick’s territory. She hops on a plane most weeks to strengthen ties with a growing network of Australians and Americans throughout her vast consular district, including Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territories.
“I still leave packing to the last minute,” says Burce Warlick, who is preparing for a morning speech, a lunchtime talk with the Order of Australia Association’s Victoria branch, and then a flight to Canberra to meet up with embassy colleagues.
“Being back in Australia after so many years is like coming full circle,” she says, referring to her school days in Adelaide in the 1970s. Now that Adelaide is part of her district, she has reunited with old friends from the private Lutheran secondary school, Concordia College, where she felt “very much at home” for five years.
Before Adelaide, Burce Warlick spent her early years in the highlands of Papua New Guinea where her parents served as American Lutheran missionaries for 40 years and raised seven children. “I was born in Enga Province,” she says. She describes a modest house on a gravel road that connected mission stations. “My parents had a wonderful garden, an electricity generator that operated for a few hours each evening, and a rain tank for our water supply.” The primary school for missionary children had two classrooms. She and her siblings boarded there Monday to Friday.
That childhood foundation helps her connect to Australians in her present job. “Right from the start I knew I lived in a different country, which was part of a much bigger world,” she tells students attending the Dean’s dinner at Trinity College in the University of Melbourne. She urges them to consider public service, and underlines Australia’s strong historic ties with the US. The two countries, she emphasises, have many connections, including mutual exchange programmes for thousands of students.
Part of Burce Warlick’s job is to promote US opportunities for Australian students and vice versa. “Australia’s universities and research facilities are truly world class,” she says. “Education is now one of the country’s top exports. Students from all over the world come to study here.”
Entertaining is also part of Burce Warwick’s remit. The US consulate owns her home in Toorak, some 20 to 40 minutes’ drive from downtown Melbourne, depending on traffic. Toorak is an affluent suburb full of stately homes on leafy streets built in the 1930s and 1940s. This Georgian-style brick home is imposing. It includes a formal dining room and living room, as well as a large reception room for official functions.
One recent Saturday, Burce Warwick hosted the consulate’s Ben Franklin Club of aspiring youth leaders at which Lieutenant General Terry G. Robling, Commander of US Marine Forces in the Pacific, spoke about the US’s strategic military rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific.
The following Monday she was hosting a cocktail party for business and political contacts that featured the US Air Force Band of the Pacific, in Melbourne for an international air show.
When Burce Warlick does have free time, she often sees close friends from Serbia. Her husband, Jim Warlick, also a senior foreign service officer, is posted in Washington, and their three grown-up children are on both coasts and in Hawaii. “It’s difficult to be a married couple in the foreign service,” Burce Warlick admits.
While she and Jim managed to work in the same cities for 28 years, that ended when both landed ambassadorships in 2010. Fortunately, while Burce Warlick was in Serbia, her husband was in nearby Bulgaria.
“Certainly, one of the challenges of living in Melbourne is that I’m far away from my family.” They keep in close touch via Skype, despite the vast time difference. This summer her daughter plans to find work in one of Melbourne’s many bustling restaurants where the average wage is about £13 an hour, while her middle son will spend July with them.
Burce Warlick plans to take them to her favourite weekend spots, such as walking to Toorak Village for coffee or travelling downtown on the No. 8 tram, just steps away from her home.
She also wants to take them to an Australian football game at the MCG, to eat at one or two restaurants in Southbank, and to visit the Lutheran and Anglican churches that she regularly attends. The family will also rent a car to see the penguins on Phillip Island, the Great Ocean Road, and the vineyards of Gippsland and Yarra Valley.
Burce Warlick does not know how long she will stay in Melbourne, although a normal tour of duty is three years. However, she says she and her husband will one day probably retire in the US.
“I have a strong identity as an American, but I do not have a strong sense of a place to call home,” she says. “My home is in several places. It’s wherever my family is. It’s often been in the Washington area where we own a house. Many of our belongings are in storage there. I look forward to one day unpacking them.”
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Buying guide
Pros
● Excellent public transport
● Clean and safe
● The downtown area is filled with high quality restaurants, museums and regularly hosts special events
Cons
● Melbourne is very expensive. You need a good income to enjoy what is on offer
● Highway infrastructure is limited; there are often long queues on residential streets at rush hour
● Travelling to the US or Europe is not easy. Plane journeys are long and expensive
What you can buy for . . .
£100,000: Nothing in Toorak
£3.9m: A three-bedroom home in Toorak
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