Obituary: Suzanne Helen Bell (1950-2024)

Suzanne Helen Bell (nee Rohrlach), renowned cook, high-class hoarder, and lover of historical romance novels and coloured glass, passed away on July 20^th, 2024.

Known as ‘Suzie’ to her family and, to her lifelong dismay, ‘Sue’ to everyone else (she preferred ‘Suzanne’; she detested ‘Susan’), she was born in Adelaide in South Australia on November 3^rd, 1950, to Valmai and Oscar Rohrlach, a tenant farmer. The third of four children, her early years in Tumby Bay instilled a deep love of the sea and an abiding dislike of farm life – swimming in shark-infested waters did not faze her; milking cows did.

Her family moved to Adelaide when she was 13, where she caught the eye of Tim Bell. Two years her senior, he pursued her relentlessly and they married in 1970, just after Sue turned 20. Basically, she married her stalker. Three years later, heavily pregnant with her first born, she left kith and kin to move to Townsville, when Tim got a lectureship at James Cook University.

Sue herself trained as a home economics teacher and taught a generation of students at high schools across Townsville. Loved by her students and fellow teachers, she was an outstanding cook and accomplished seamstress – for a time in the 1980s, she created designer outfits for a local boutique under the name ‘Suebelle’.

The same cannot be said for her health and safety skills. She almost electrocuted her husband (twice), accidentally poisoned him (once), and the impressive scar on her arm shaped like the rings of a stove element was acquired by leaning on an actual stove element that she’d just switched off. (She took to telling students it was acquired during an alien abduction.) She also broke glasses and dishes with abandon. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ was effectively her motto as a teacher.

A long-term devotee of the Jane Fonda Workout, the British designer Tricia Guild and Dolly Parton, Sue’s menu item of choice was sweet & sour pork, and she never met a cheesecake she didn’t like. Although her sweet tooth was so strong that her children are still finding packets of lollies and chocolates she deposited about the house, for the record, she was not a secret fentanyl or heroin addict (the only explanation the hospital physicians could come up with for her unusually high resistance to morphine).

She had a soft heart but was not a soft touch – if there were complaints to be made, or wrongs to right, it was invariably Sue, rather than her husband, who did it. She stood up for herself, and was ferocious where her family was concerned. In fact, if she had a blind spot, it was her children, although she went to her grave certain that she was not remotely biased about their accomplishments. She also never played favourites, despite her children’s incessant competition to be declared ‘number one’ in her affections – resorting to such petty tricks as hijacking her phone and sending texts like ‘My darling children, I just wanted you to know that I love Chris the best’.

Suzanne is survived by her husband, Timothy (just; she didn’t manage to kill him) and her children Nikki, Kirsty and Chris (a.k.a. Nicole, Kirsten and Christopher). Although they failed to give her any grandchildren, she did eventually forgive them for the lapse. She is also survived by her older brother Deane and her younger sister Lynnie (Lynette).

As her family and friends are spread far and wide across the globe, a virtual memorial service will be held on August 20th, at 9.30-10.30am, Adelaide time (details are here). Cool River by Maria Muldaur will feature. The source of a long-running argument between her and Tim about who would get to play it at their funeral, she has finally got her revenge for all those games of Connect 4.